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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.
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
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 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...
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
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.
Yeah, stupid Walmart and their cute little smiley guy, or the AOL running man, what a DUMB idea, and that whole Jack-In-The-Box and M&M's, Little Caesar's, Aflac, Coca-Cola Bears... not professional, like a duotone flag.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.