Suggestion: Design a new Thorium icon

[antermin]

From https://about.google/brand-resource-center/brand-elements/#product-icons , we should be distinct from Google, and don’t copy their visual style.

A new icon also creates less confusion - for example in https://jpegxl.info/why-jxl.html , Thorium is featured as one of the web browsers supporting JPEG XL. As Thorium's icon is too similar to Chromium's icon, people may not notice the black ring in Thorium's icon, thinking that Chromium supports JPEG XL (which no longer supports it now).

Related: #125

---

Edit: Following a feedback from the JPEG XL Discord, I've changed the title (and description) so that it doesn't sound so adamant.

[jonsneyers]

For now, I made a simple variant of the Thorium logo that besides the black ring also has "Th" in the middle: https://jpegxl.info/icons/sw_thorium.svg

Feel free to use this one if you like it. Of course the choice is up to you, if you decide to go with something else, just let me know and I'll update it on https://jpegxl.info/why-jxl.html. The current one is just too easy to confuse with Chromium which makes it look like we're trying to spread deceptive information (it looks like we're saying that Chromium supports jxl), so we needed a quick fix to avoid that.

[Alex313031]

@jonsneyers @antermin Ok I will look into modifying the logo, however, if I'm going to add text to it, it would be sans serif, preferably Ubuntu's font or another FOSS "rounded corner" type sans serif font.

However, I would like to put out there that the Chromium icon is free use, and doesn't have to adhere to Google's brand guidelines. If I were using google colors or fonts, or using the google chrome logo, then it would be different.

And as far as confusion goes, I could see someone getting the wrong idea based on the logo, however, as soon as someone actually runs Thorium, it is easy to see that it is a fork, since their are UI changes, and the thorium name string is used throughout. But, this doesn't help a new, non-techy user when deciding on a jpeg-xl enabled browser, for example when they are browsing Jon's site.

I cant promise that I will update the icon, but If I do, it will still be based on the Chromium icon, but more heavy modification than just the internal ring.

Thanks guys for bringing this up.

[rubyFeedback]

For some reason this keeps on coming up. :)

I don't fully understand why folks are so obsessed with an icon. To me the functionality / feature set is so much more important. (And documentation, too. I found that great software that lacks documentaiton isn't quite so great, even if the code is epic ...)

I guess in the long run / future perhaps there may be a "Thorium" branding e. g. icon / images. There are tons of skilled folks happily investing their time for designing libre software, e. g. the graphics folks at wesnoth (the game).

[jonsneyers]

The icon doesn't matter at all in my daily use of Thorium, but it is practical to have a somewhat clearer distinction between Chromium and Thorium, e.g. when you are using both for whatever reason (for web perf testing, say), or in this case when showing icons of browsers that have JXL support, where people could get the impression that upstream Chromium has JXL support while it doesn't.

To me it sounds good to keep it based on the Chromium icon since it is in the end still mostly Chromium :)

[GrimPixel]

The Chrome icon is designed with some efforts, as described at https://blog.google/products/chrome/how-we-redesigned-the-chrome-icon/. I think Thorium can be largely different than Chromium's, just like Mercury's to Firefox's.

[fancellu]

Actually it would be nice if we could simply get around this issue by being able to specify our own icon.

Personally I'd prefer to make the icon the same as chrome, as it is what my eyes are expecting so see, so there is less cognitive load. I see that blue icon and my mind thinks MS Edge

[allancoding]

What about something like this?

[Alex313031]

@allancoding I would have actually preferred this in the candy icons (where they recently added thorium and mercury logos to the iconset), because theirs doesnt have the black inner ring, and instead it has purple.

I will save this logo, and add it to the //icons/STAGING directory, for possible future use.

[allancoding]

I used the candy icons to make this. I do like the black better. Thanks

[Alex313031]

@allancoding Also, the inner ring on both yours and theirs is every so slightly too large.

In any case, would you happen to have an .svg and/or higher resolution .png than 512px. Ideally 1024px or higher.

[allancoding]

I do have the svg that you can edit to your liking. I just did the same size as the chrome one for the inner ring. Github added support for svgs lol, cuz it didnt work last time. :)

[allancoding]

Do you want me to make the black inner circle smaller and export a 4k image for you?

[allancoding]

@Alex313031 Here you go: Png: Svg:

[MulverineX]

@gz83 this isn't resolved :) (no worries, please re-open it)

[gz83]

This is a batch closing operation (can also be regarded as a ping), I will reopen the issues that still have new responses