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NetBSD Chooses New Logo
jschauma writes "Live from EuroBSDCon 2004: The NetBSD Project announces its new logo. The logo was selected out of over 400 submissions in an albeit lengthy process, where the developers considered various important aspects of a new identifying logo. See the official logo contest announcement (to refresh your memory) and the official press release."
Try "in a lengthy process".
If you don't know how to use big words, please don't bother trying.
This is about a new logo, not about a mascot. A logo is not a mascot.
The new logo looks very clean and professional. However, I would have liked to see a logo that continued on with the "team" aspect of the old logo.
It's not the name or the flag that makes NetBSD what it is, it's the people behind it. Unfortunatly that's what was taken out of the logo.
You keep using that word. I don't think that you know what it means.
Hint- if you've used it right, you should be able to substitute something like "although."
How freaking dumb does "an although lengthy process" sound? Another hint. To an educated person, "an albeit lengthy process" sounds just as dumb. It sounds like someone trying to sound smarter than they actually are.
I believe it was because the BSD Daemon is more closely associated with FreeBSD and the NetBSD team wanted something that was more their own. Some one also pointed out the 'raising the flag over iwo jima' might have been a touchy point for some people, especially as NetBSD moves more and more into corporate environments around the world.
BTW some people that believe in the Bible and are Christians actually do have a sense of humour. I personally painted the little devil guy onto my FreeBSD system.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I don't know, it just seems a little ... bland and generic. Looking at it, if you removed "NetBSD" and substituted virtually any short word or phrase it could just as easily be the logo of a political party, or a company that makes ... well, practically anything, really. It seems ... personality free.
Still, YMMV and all that.
Not that the logo makes a difference when it comes to the OS (which I absolutely love. NetBSD is one of my favorite OSs) - but I think the new logo sucks.
.. flag .. and nothing more. It doesn't tell me anything. It's got no feelings, no 'struggle', no cooperation .. and no _daemons_.
.. but .. I really don't care about that.
I loved the look of the old one. The BSD daemons scrambling to raise their banner. It gave me a nice feel.
Now we've got this
But sure.. it's clean looking
Bad choice, imho.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
On its own, it's a good logo. Simple, spot-color, has name, has a key element (the flag).
/.'ers have complained about the lack of "team" in the logo. The very presence of a pennant or flag suggests a team effort, at least in my eyes.
However, by dropping the devil, it obscures its historical relation to other BSDs. This is A Bad Thing.
A small devil silloette somewhere in the logo would've eliminated this problem.
Some
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So... where can I see these other 399 logos that were not as good as this (piece of crap)? Considering that as part of the contest you had to sign it over to the netbsd foundation, the artists themselves can't even display them anymore.
This is about marketing - pure and simple. The people behind NetBSD have every right to make the OS more accessible to as wide a range of users as possible, and part of doing that involves making it look more professional and less like something thrown together by a bunch of gamers in their parents' basement.
The new logo is clean, elegant, shows motion, uses bold colors, and is readily distinguishable from any other OS-related logo. Having a professional logo doesn't make you evil, and it doesn't mean you've sold out. But for better or worse it does mean that people (and not just management types) will tend to take you more seriously.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Note to the judges, If the text in your logo needs to be readable to identify your product, it's not a good logo.
That is not the case. By your definition, no text-only logo could ever be "good". The thing to understand here is that in graphic design, text functions simultaneously as a means of encoding a verbal message and as a formal graphic in its own right. The letterforms or typefaces are significant, the configuration is significant, the colors are significant, and all of those things culminate in a recognizable pattern. Don't view the word and the image as mutually exclusive concepts when looking at the logo (or in general, for that matter). There are more aspects to reaction than the cognitive.
Anyone who knows NetBSD's heritage knows the significance of the flag. The old image has been distilled into something iconic, but by the reactions it seems that many slashdotters have again demonstrated that unfortunate tendency to hastily judge based on instantaneous first reaction. Contrary to some of the criticisms voiced today, this logo does mean something.
I like it. Clean and attractive
I'd call it bland and meaningless, but YMMV. The press release says nothing about why this particular logo was chosen and doesn't mention the color of the flag at all. The color of a flag is supposed to mean something. Orange is usually a warning sign, as in the orange flags on kids bicycles or the orange flags on beaches to indicate hazardous swimming.
So why orange?
Objection your honour.
It is the flag from the old logo taken solely and transplanted. So anyone who has been around long enough to remember the old logo knows what it means. A bunch of d(a)emons sticking the banner on top of a mound of old computer kit. At the same time you can now present it to the PHB. He now no longer sees an image of satanistic computer abuse. You can now even put it on your website and say "driven by NetBSD" without being called onto the carpet.
I do not like the reasons why it is being done, but let's face it, the realm of free Unixes is no longer a realm of geeks. It is a large business now and NetBSD has its place in it.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I honestly believe that anyone remotely interested in downloading the NetBSD logo's has the computer know-how to do to so. I don't think the 9 or so various README's on HOW-TO download images off the web! and suggested html tags are absolutely necessary. it's almost insulting. give us more credit then that!
in the bonds, ppka
I strongly agree -- the flag is boring and un-memorable. It feels generic.
Your (Anthony Boyd) suggested logos are much better; they have the requisite simplicity (they're even simpler than the flag), but are far more striking, and for a logo "striking" is a very good thing. The first two retain the daemon image people like and associate with *BSD, without being too overt about it (keep the fundies at bay). They also simply have a panache that is completely lacking from the flag logo.
I don't know WTF happened with the official selection process, but in these situations it often comes down to picking the choice everybody hates the least -- and nobody actually likes -- followed by a round of rah-rahing among supporters with everybody trying to convince themselves how much they like the new choice, while hiding their disappointment.
Not very inspiring guys. Whatever happened to the image of NetBSD as the branch of *BSD that doesn't compromise its ideals?
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Nice, well-reasoned post, until the final sentence revealed you to be just as unimaginative and immature as the poster to whom you were replying.
I thought I was the only one reading the replies.
The new logo definately isn't cool. Come on people, Open source projects aren't selling products. They don't have to appeal to brain dead managers.
Open Source is about creating free for all solutions for problems. Everyone's problems, not just your bosses.
I think that, considering the nature of the project, a wrong logo was chosen. It's lame and NOT cool. It also isn't playful in any way. This is something I'd expect from microsoft or redhat, not from a bsd OS. Very dissapointed, to say the least...
When I see cute cartoon Tuxes and BSD devils, whether they're doing their imitation of the Iwo Jima flaglifting or not, I think "my god, and we're trying to get onto the corporate desktop here."
I've actually had an experience where I was recommending Linux in a corporate environment, and someone said "Is that the one with the cartoon penguin? How can we take that seriously?"
And it's no joke. You have to remember, appearance is everything to those people. Appearance matters more than reality. And if you have a cartoon demon as your "mascot--" or Eddie from the Iron Maiden albums, or WHATEVER-- nobody but hackers are going to take the thing seriously.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
I can say this, given the tone of the responses to my message coupled with the fact that my comment was rated "Funny" has caused me to loose a great deal of respect for the slashdot community.
To those of you out there who are tolerant of other people's positions, I apologize that you find yourself associated with a group such as this.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein
Meh, I can't say I agree with you at all. Personally, I have a strong sense of cynicism about the world and the power of big business, but I refuse to see "corporate" as a dirty word as many Slashdotters do.
I also see a distinction between "corporate" and "professional," myself. While corporate generally implies professional, professional does not necessarily mean corporate. It's entirely possible to have a professional looking logo while retaining a free thinking attitude.
The whole point of this logo is that it *doesn't* look like some kid sketched it in the margin of his notes during class. It doesn't look like the programmer took 5 minutes away from hacking source to apply his minimal artistic ability to throwing together a logo just because he needed one. It can be the difference between someone feeling comfortable enough to give your project a try or ignoring it. Your logo represents your project, and if it looks like it was slapped together in 5 minutes, people are going to assume that a simliar amount of effort was put into the code, rightfully so or not.
*Professional* logos look the way they do not because the thing they represent is cold and souless, but because a well designed logo should be easy to reproduce, scale, xerox all day long and remain recognizable. If it's simple, it's easier for people to recognize, which makes it easier to remember whatever it represents. If this offends your hacker sensibillities, I'm sorry. To me this is just a good example of why most hackers are poor graphic and UI designers.
Hardly. FreeBSD is the only BSD, now, that has stuck to its original logos, at least in content.
:)
"Corporate" was the first word that hit me when I saw the new NetBSD logo, and judging by this thread I'm not the only one that thinks this way. I hated it for the first few minutes (unfamiliarity more than anything - I'd more hate some glossy kitsch like Gentoo's logo, which, to anyone who didn't know Gentoo, could just as well be a breakfast cereal logo) but now I've grown a liking to it. It constitutes my MSN 'display pic' (Microsoft = long names for simple things, just so people don't have to remember new words like 'avatar') and still is getting appreciated.
Simple is good, but I still think they dropped too much of their proud BSD culture when they 'distilled' the original (I say 'they' because it is now 'their' intellectual property, at least in as much as they chose it over other images which were probably better anyway).
I mean, OpenBSD dropped the BSD Daemon in favor of an icon largely relevant to their cause (for those that don't know, blowfish is a symmetric encryption algorithm, a darn good one at that), and that's fair enough - it's flexible and 'fun'. NetBSD's is dry now, completely unlike the dated but awesome old logo, which had relevance to their cause and the old BSD culture. The new one has some very loose relevance, at least if people recognize the flag, but where's the BSD in it? (not counting the NetBSD text)
We'll note that BSD is still generalised on Slashdot with the classic daemon, even though it now only applies to FreeBSD and (if they keep the older icons, at least) NetBSD.
DragonFly has a good icon, IMHO. It is colourful, which reduces its use on monochrome media and all, and I can't for the life of me remember the whole thing all at once - but it is instantly recognizable as 'dragonfly' even if you've never heard of the project, it's simple and professional enough to appeal to business, while still being interesting enough to appeal to geeks. 'Course I don't run DragonFly since it still has too much of FreeBSD's brokeness (remove kbdcontrol and moused necessity, then I'll go back) to be made up for by the amazing technical merit, most of which NetBSD offers anyway without any of the brokeness - plus it runs as well on my x86s as my Indy
Sam ty sig.
Perhaps it was offensive to those marines who risked their lives to raise the flag there. Seeing the symbol of their courage turned into an operating system logo, where your fellow marines are depicted as devils might be a tad disrespectful. Call me politically correct, but I think I agree with them.
Although, for the life of me, I can't figure out what "religious ramification" the USMC War Memorial has.
I think you know perfectly well they were talking about the devils.
Fun? I though NetBSD was about secure computer systems that run on many platforms? Why would they want a symbol that promotes fun? Are they going to change into an entertainment company? Aren't the mascots supposed to be the "fun" side of a organisations symbolism?