Slashdot Mirror
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."
The new logo certainly has more corporate appeal, and its simplicity also allows different colors to be used, which means easier to place on different color background.
Coupled with a trademark, this might enough for people to push it to PHB.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Maybe a headstone would be a more appropriate logo, no?
Try "in a lengthy process".
If you don't know how to use big words, please don't bother trying.
I like it. Clean and attractive. Maybe someone can get that guy to design a new logo/mascot for linux, something other than that annoying-looking penguin.
So they dropped the BSD devils? I wonder what happened? Did somebody send a few planes full of Southern Baptists and Jehova's Witnesses over to Europe to have a little chat with the NetBSD team?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
A month ago this item appeared in the NetBSD Quarterly Status Report:
What will the favicon look like? The logo is nice, but work will have to be done to simplify the fine elements of the design, so that they don't turn to fuzz in small versions of the image.
Netcraft confirms! The old NetBSD logo is dead!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Personally I am very disapointed ... ...
The logo is not cool, not artistic, not insipiring, not anything
I really like what OpenBSD did, they know how to play with their logo, I believe this speaks a lot about the attitude of the people behind the project.
And it says, that they like and want to have fun!
NetBSD have made a terrible statement by this logo, this logo declares in my opinion that the NetBSD is not about fun anymore!
I seriously can't imagine a worst logo
Finally, proof that the OSS community can produce something as generic, uninspired, and forgettable as even the best corporate marketroids. I can't wait for the upcoming Apache Mission Statement contest. ("embiggens a dynamic paradigm in scalable infotecture")
Seriously, is this the best that was submitted? Not trying to flame, but the best feature of a logo is a unique image that's easily remembered. Looking at the NetBSD logo I'm not sure if I'm installing an OS or playing in a CTF clan.
Note to the judges, If the text in your logo needs to be readable to identify your product, it's not a good logo.
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
As a member of the US Air National Guard I don't like the devils raising the NetBSD flag in the likeness of World War II soldiers raising the Unites States flag over Iwo Jima. I hold the sacrifice of my grandfather's generation sacred.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein
I think the new logo looks quite nice. Very simple and stylish. Since the site is somewhat slow loading, I threw up a mirror including the large versions.
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.
I'm sorry, but it's really hard to get excited about that logo. Seems to me they wanted to be so neutral, so inoffensive to everyone in the entire world that they picked a logo that means nothing.
That sound you hear is millions of geeks the world over saying "meh".
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
It has been coming for a while now - the end of the anarchy - the end of the tightly knit communities of hackers with criminal records. Like the commercialization of 60's leftism through a lucrative popular culture, the free software movement is starting to lose its roots. The flag is too polished. It's too professional. It basically makes me think that I am looking at evilcorp.com. This is not what free software is supposed to be about - it's supposed to be about things like EFF, stallman, nogifs, sokol, etc - not about appealing to corporate monery mongering beauracrats. It's perfectly fine with me if it stays fringe - in fact, the downfall of freebsd is its mainstream-ness . . .
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
I'm bummed that they didn't pick one of mine. But at least the flag has a creative idea behind it -- namely, keeping the tradition of the original logo alive a little bit.
Oh well. If any developers would like to claim those logos I made, I have SVG (and EPS, I think) versions lying around. I can send them on, possibly with a project name added in. There is a link at the bottom of my logo page that reads, "contact the webmaster." Use that if you're interested.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Erhm, do you realise that it was beastie that was removed because some people (*cough*christians*cough*) could feel offended? (read: those morons cannot tell a daemon from a demon).
--
HawkinsOS, kicking Smorgreff in the ass since 2004.
Ridiculous! Who could have a bigger ego than Theo??
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
A little plain?? Logos are supposed to be plain. Take a moment and look at some memorable logos. They're generally very, very, simple. This makes them easy to associate with the product. It helps build the brand.
If only more Free Software projects would follow the lead of NetBSD. There are a lot of decent logos out there too but by and large Free Software logos constitute strong evidence that Graphic Design is indeed a valuable skill. Not as valuable as coding, but still valuable.
Specifically, it's not about technical prowess in using your favourite graphics program, it's about being able to come up with strong ideas and express them strikingly, visually.
Not that I'm any good at it...
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Whilst it's good that the NetBSD people have recognised the need for a proper logo, my impressions are...
It looks slightly dated, like something from the late 80s/early 90s when corporate types were going for 'flowing' logos with gentle curves. The typeface and colours also contribute to this impression.
It's also fairly boring. If they decide to have a mascot as well, this won't such a problem though; logo for corporate stuff, mascot for the fans and developers.
In fact, I wish someone would design a proper (generic) Linux logo. Specifically, one that incorporates the word 'Linux' and could be used without fear of looking unprofessional. Tux seems to have become logo (as well as mascot) by default, but is not really suitable for more serious use.
Of course, Tux would remain as the mascot (although personally disliking Tux, I appreciate that I'm probably in the minority). 'Serious' literature would use the Linux logo, everyone else could use either- or both- as they pleased.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The logo was designed by Grant Bissett, an Australian designer.
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.
Sure, it's el-bland-o. That's the whole point. It's a subversive, sneaky way to get our favorite daemon team past the PHBs and into the corporate centres.
It's a DISGUISE, people. The mascot has not changed. The software has not changed. It's just gone stealth, dived below the loony-religious radar.
The new logo is funny because it's so deliberately bland that PHBs won't remember what it means in a weeks' time. It's the semantic relative of '404' or a little green light - means nothing to the beancounters, but speaks volumes to those in the know.
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.
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.
I have to say that I like the logo. It meets my one requirement for a good logo, and in spades:
A good logo can be recognizably spraypainted with one template.
In other words, the logo is simple enough that it doesn't require any serious work to put it on things, it can be read from close up or afar, its not overly complicated and it looks unique. And this logo fits that requirement quite nicely.
I also like the placement of the flag, the diag it makes with the text really gives the logo some oomph.
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka