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."

Comments

Why am I reminded of that scene...

[Xpilot]

...from "Finding Nemo", where that seagull picks up our fishy hero.

Oh and there's only one 't' in 'mascot'.

The "OK" gesture is obscene in some countries

[GringoGoiano]

In Brazil the mascot will look like a perverted psychopath with a thing for fish.

Cuter...

[megabyte405]

http://ryand.net/oss/abi/abiantgnomepencil.png
AbiWord Word Processor


(leave off the file name for more images of Abi the Ant)

In my well paid opinion

[aghorne]

I am a lecturer and tutor in Graphic Design at Monash University. Perhaps I can add some comments on why this winning entry does not communicate well: - Its complex. As a rule of thumb a logo or mascot should be legible when printed out at about 10mm square and run through a fax machine. - Its not cheerful. This bird looks dazed and confused like it has been drinking all weekend. - It devalues the OO.org brand by making it look amateurish not accessible. The quicker open source projects take a leaf out of Firefox's approach to branding and identity the better. If open-source projects are going to have any kind of influence on mainstream software usage (which OpenOffice indeed has the potential to) it really needs to get serious with the way it comes across. Please do judge books by their covers and applications by their icons and mascots. No mascot is better than a bad mascot.

Re:In my well paid opinion

[FattMattP]

Good point. I'd like to add that this should be applied to program names as well. I have found through personal experience that it's extremely difficult to convince people to use The Gimp due to the name. It has a negative connotation associated with it and many people find it offensive. They look at me as if I said it was called The Retard or something to that effect. There are other folks who just see it as good free software and don't care about the name. But in my experience they are definitely in the minority. I've reached the point now where I always apologize before I tell them the name.

As a professional graphic designer...

[Aqua OS X]

As a professional graphic designer, I'd have to disagree. Moreover, I image most of my colleagues would have opinions similar to the one I am about to voice.

That seagull somewhat works as a mascot (which it is) but not a logo.

Logos need to be simple color pallet . Moreover, logo's need to be scalable and preferably vector based. They should be recognizable at 3/4 squared as well as 4 feet squared. These factors allow one to easily apply a logo to a building, sign, letterhead, etc. Giant complicated bitmap logos are only going to give you problems.

Moreover, simple logos are easier and faster for a human brain to retain. (psychology and sociology are fairly important subjects for graphic designers to understand) People are more likely to gain sense of familiarity and comfortability with a simple logo.

But... anywho... I could go on and on.
Suffice to say, I'm not a big fan of the seagull in it's current state. Mascots can get by with silly complicated forms since they are (usually) not logos. However simplifying their characterization usually increases there ability to gain acceptance.

The seagull is a good start, but it could be cleaned up a bit.

just my 2cents