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OO.org Selects Its Own Sea Bird
Elektroschock writes "A new mascot of the OO.org project was announced today: A crazy sea gull. I wonder whether it will help to convince office workers of Open Office. "Andrea [Maggioni]'s contribution is not only beautiful and effective but also illustrates the potential of young people to contribute importantly to real projects under the banner of Free and Open Source Software." Andrea, "whose cheerful drawing, of a fun-looking seagull holding a fish, plays on the "OOo" shorthand of OpenOffice.org"... ehemm, it's a crazy sea gull."
Migration? maybe?
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
No offense. But how do you expect to be taken seriously when that's your logo? People laughed at MS's attempts to have things like paperclips, and you go and find something worse?
That seagull was drawn by a 4th grader. While I don't think that they need to go "mainstream" with a mascot. It certainly can't hurt their cause any to have a mascot that is a little more serious.
And no, this isn't flamebait, this is an observation made by someone who is in the advertising industry.
If OO wants to have a shot at gaining more credibility in the business world, this logo is not the way to do it.
While I most certainly respect the creativity and thoughtfulness that went into this...corporations won't "buy" into the cute, loveable image. They want something that looks a tad more professional. Even the Linux penguin looks much more cleancut in this. So, perhaps the concept for the logo has some potential, but this current crude implementation does not.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Microsoft's products all use formless colored figures as mascots. How come we don't get to use boring mascots like they do? All we get to use are high quality creative characters. That's not fair. I think all free/open source programs should adopt boring businesslike formless colored figures, so we can appear as boring as that crowd.
Seriously ... All of these open source projects seem to take a wrong turn when it comes time to market their creation. A crazy seagull with irrecreatable vectors as the hair-doo? People need to market this shit! Stop creating goofy mascots to go with your product. This isn't a Sega game. It's something you want to sell to a CEO, and he doesn't want a goofy shitting bird on his desktop every time he goes to open up a document.
thats good to hear, because while it is a nice picture and all. I dont think this is the logo that will get them international respect as an alternative to microsoft office.
However i do applaud them for involving school aged children into this project and their efforts to bring open office to schools. This will not only save schools hundreds of dollars (more like thousands) but also will having children involved with the development of such a product has countless educational value.
I tip my hat to them
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Amen brother. What the hell is the deal with so much of the visual symbology for OSS being ... well ... retarded? We're trying to draw folks in here, not push them away, right?
Proceed mods, I'll let the karma burn on this one.
Is it fascism yet?
The "OK" sign is another way of referring to the female genetalia in some countries, and is considered obscene, which could be a bit of an impediment to OO use in some countries.
Maybe they should have researched this a bit more...
That's a nice price, sure. But for a girl who's prolly still in high school or maybe even elementary school?
Hate me!
1) While it's true that the winner looks pretty solid compared to the competition (which mostly look like they were drawn by a demented seagull) "professional quality" may be overstating it a bit.
2) Getting your copy of Photoshop off Kazaa doesn't make it "100% free software".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I agree that this is head and shoulders over the others, partially because the use of a computer made it more easily integratable into electronic media. The kid clearly had a very good sense of what it takes to make a good logo (the image creates a relationship with the viewer, with the bird looking straight in the viewer's eye).
Very nice, too, is how both the bird and the fish are smiling, which makes the image very cheerful and "childlike" (in the way adults define it).
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Now that open source is becomming more popular, this branding is inevitable. A sign of success. But I hope these efforts stay focused on their target audience.
Maybe its just me. But I'm really getting tired of open source branding efforts. Go ahead and do this stuff but have developer.*.org with none of this. I dont care about branding. I'm interested in the code, the bugs and the developer discussion.
At developer.*.org place the following one click away with no product branding:
source tars
cvs information
bug reporting
developer mail lists and archives.
Fairly simple request. Nobody will go to developer.*.org for binaries.
Consider developers a seperate 'branding' effort.
Its my impression the branding efforts how their understand users but not developers. Keep them away.
Cute bird. have fun.
Thank you (and could someone please explain to me why the parent was moderated redundant when three different people all wrote that this isn't the mascot for all of OOo and were all modded interesting?)!
/. karma: nothing.
/. userids have been auctioned on eBay, but that doesn't prove karma has value, only that a low /. userid does. And that some people have way too much money and way too little clue.
I don't see the need for mascots at all, and they are all so cutesy I could hurl. Tux, the BSD mascot, now this seagull which is the worst all all. Maybe the reason MS still owns the desktop and we don't is that they don't have a mascot, and the repulsive clippy is easily kept out of sight (in Japan, clippy is replaced by a Dolphin, which is less annoying but just as needless).
No doubt we'll both be modded down for daring to criticize open-source maskets as the disgusting, cutesy things they are, but I not only have karma to burn, I have a well-grounded grasp of the real-world value of
OK, I know
Is it just me or does the artist not seem to really know what OO.o is nor care?
Okay, so I sinned and did RTFA. Here's a quote from the last paragraph, which is ROTFLMAO, IMHO.
Context: case study of OOo being burned to CD in a school project.
It'll be a cold day in hell when Bill Gates will sponsor OOo for schools! That would go straight against his business strategy in so many ways...
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
You're right as to the qualities one might want in a general-purpose OOo mascott, though perhaps there's a misunderstanding about what this image is for.
Still, even for a kid's education program, the image suggests a goofy, amaturish feeling that implies OOo may be merely qualified as a children's application, i.e., not suitable for professional work
It's worth noting, too, that despite what the article says, people are refering to this as *the* OOo mascott. An unfortunate bit of misinformation that may be hard to squash.
(I also think that the doofy Tux penquin does not help the Linux image one bit, though apparently it hasn't hurt it much either.)
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Well it's just a mascot - not like they have to use it everywhere. I assume the OO.org brand will still be identified by their logo. Goofy mascots? What about Tux, or the Greek olympic mascots, or the MSN butterfly guy?
Although I'd love to help correct the politically correct problem out here, I don't feel this situation is the right place for me to do it. Getting people to use free software is a higher priority for me. Therefore, I apologize up front about the name and then do my best to convince people to try the software.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The problem is, it doesn't matter if it's "just" the mascot for OOOedu -- it reflects on the entire OO.org brand. Unfortunately, it communicates "sloppy, stoned bird," rather than "whimsical kid-friendly software."
The idea of using a kid's drawing is good, but as you see, the results leave you explaining it EVERY TIME ("see.. it was drawn by a kid.. see?). What about incorporating the feedback of kids? What about working with kids to come up with various themes? or having various schools vote on a selection of professional designs?
Cute isn't going to win us (the open source software movement) any battles.
Yeah. Because a penguin is not silly at all.
Uhmm.....
I guess it's time to go back to proprietary software because the Free Software group has obviously lost their drive for just general fun. Sure that mascot looks a little crazy but for crying out loud this is "free" software. You want world domination go clone Napoleon or something.
Damn people have some fun will you.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
As far as graphic designers and marketers go (I'm a graphic designer, too, although I find that "salary" and "talent" are hardly synonymous), I think you're missing the point. Especially on the PR front.
This was a PR ploy, and as such, was successful. Okay, so you're saying that the unschooled efforts of a 15-year-old are a poor reflection on a competition targeted at schools? Um. Yeah. As any good designer will tell you, the right design for the project.
Secondly: opinions are subjective. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it didn't fulfill its purpose. Bad designers forget to target the average person and instead waste their time trying to impress other designers.
Oh, and by the way: a mascot is not a logo, by any means; that's why we have two different names for them. Do you think the MGM lion, an easily recognizable and well-known mascot, would fulfill your criteria? No. Does that nullify the hitherto-successful history of MGM? No.
A well-paid opinion does not make it a good opinion (although possibly a pompous one with an inferiority complex who takes pot shots at teenagers.) It just means that you're good at convincing other people with no artistic sensibilities that you know what you're doing.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
The mascot is simply amateurish.
Maybe because it was done by a child... I dunno.
The
Who's the target here? If kids are making the decision to roll out OO in schools, then by all means go with the demented bird, but if you're trying to sway Principals or MS-happy IT staff, then you might want to choose something that suggests professionalism, reliability, and easy for kids to use.
The retarded bird says unprofessional, flaky, and unattractive.
The competition was surely a great idea to get awareness up amongst kids, but I wouldn't run around with that bird as a letterhead to managers of schools and boards representing schools.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
So tell them it's "The GNU Image Manipulation Program" and let them figure the acronym out for themselves!
The what?
Guh-new Image Manipulation program?
Guh-what?
Guh-new, G.N.U.
WTF?
Guh-new's not Unix
What's Unix?
An Operating system, don't worry about it, it's the Guh-new Image Manipulation Program.
That's stupid.
No, it's great, check out www.gimp.org
Haha. Nice try, that's a hardcore porn site right? I don't think I want to hang around with you anymore.
I'm serious, it's a graphic program, it's great, it's written by free software devlopers. It's licensed under the GPL.
The GPL?
The Guh-new public license
You're frightening me.
Try the GIMP, it's not very good on Windows though, you should try it on Linux.
I think I'll stick to Photoshop. There's a new version coming out. Check out this glossy book I picked up.
I don't have to pay for my documentation.
Where is it?
www.gimp.org
Ooooh Kaaay. I've got work to do now, please leave.
You beat me to it on the "GIMP" comment.
.snd or .mus or .tun or .trx? OGG? How do you market that? It sounds like someone trying to cough up mucus! You're supposed to be marketing to people who like music! The name should be as cool as the tunes it's playing.
Why, OH WHY, can't nerds come up with names for their projects that don't sound like overt attempts to make the straights grimace?
Names matter.
Ogg Vorbis? I get where the name comes from, being a rabid Pratchett fan, but what does it have to do with a sound file format? Why not
No one gets the joke, even if there was a joke (or a bad pun). PRATCHETT people don't get it. A combination of the torturer priest inSmall Gods and the family name of the witch Gytha Ogg of Lancre? WTF??
The GIMP? The name of some poor bastard imprisoned in a box, zipped up in filthy leather from head to toe, tortured for months until he loses his mind and identifies with his torturers? This is a name you want to drop at the art department at Cosmo when you're trying to convince them that it's better to use open source than Photoshop? You want to put up a name meaning ultimate degradation to people who want to deal with beauty? Are you TRYING to fail?
Now a bloody seagull. Not just a seagull, but a freaked out, stoned seagull. For kids. And the office environment.
ARRGGGHHHHH.
Now I can hear the snorks and wheezing laughter out there as all the geeks cut loose. It is ultimate geek humor, I know, to make up a totally inappropriate name to describe a prosaic project. If the dumbasses out there can't take a joke, fuck 'em.
Which is why geeks don't do marketing. They don't do GUI's either. Not much into making music. They don't identify with the common herd, so there it is: they torpedo their own projects in the real world.
I mean, what else can I say? Ogg should have been OpenSound, GIMP should have been OpenDraw, and OpenOffice should have a more mainstream symbol.