Logos & Branding

[ArtOfCode-]

Andy suggested, and I agree, that we should have a cool logo.

More to the point, it'd be good to have slightly more consistent branding across all our stuff - at the moment, Smokey has one icon, GH has another, and our web projects have another. And no offence to our web projects an' all, but that icon took me literally two minutes to make (and let's not even talk about my artwork on Smokey's icon).

So. Logos, and branding. I'm going to throw my logo ideas so far into the thread below - use standard :+1: :-1: reactions to indicate your thoughts about them.

[ArtOfCode-]

Shield logo

Basic concept: A shield, split up and colored like the SE logo, with half the shield in red. Click for larger versions.

Concept:

Flat version (no gradient):

Gradient + drop-shadow:

Gradient + alt drop-shadow:

Flat + drop-shadow:

Flat + alt drop-shadow:

• How it looks with the name
• How it looks on the website (with a slightly altered font stack to match)

[j-f1]

Places to change the logo:

• [x] Website & metasmoke
• [x] Teams: https://github.com/orgs/Charcoal-SE/teams/<slug>/edit
• [x] SmokeDetector SE account avatar
• [x] @SmokeDetector GitHub account avatar (log in as Smokey first)
• [x] @metasmoke GitHub account avatar (log in as MS first) (differentiate this from @SmokeDetector’s somehow?)
• [x] @Charcoal-SE GitHub organization avatar
• anywhere else?

[ArtOfCode-]

Once we've found something we're happy with, of course. Feel free to make your own suggestions, y'all, it doesn't have to be limited to my designs :)

As for differentiation, I imagine the red could change to other colors. Would need to check how well that works, but the theory is sound.

[micsthepick]

I think that the alt drop-shadow does not look nice, but the other drop-shadow does.

[AWegnerGitHub]

Red Flames with Blue Text (Just the flames) (Full link to the image w/ text. Github seems to be rehosting it for some reason) here

[magisch]

I have no artistic skills whatsoever, so I won't disgrace this thread with something I cobble together, but I think something like a combination of the SE stack and the current fire from SD's avatar would be cool

[j-f1]

@AWegnerGitHub’s logo on the Charcoal homepage:

[Videonauth]

So. Logos, and branding. I'm going to throw my logo ideas so far into the thread below - use standard :+1: :-1: reactions to indicate your thoughts about them.

Erm woudn't it be better then to put every example into an own post/comment?

[AWegnerGitHub]

I don't know if that's needed yet. The hope is to get several ideas. We can put an official and easy poll together when we're happy with the number of ideas we've generated. GitHub isn't great for polls like this.

On Jan 6, 2018 9:36 AM, "Videonauth" notifications@github.com wrote:

So. Logos, and branding. I'm going to throw my logo ideas so far into the thread below - use standard 👍 👎 reactions to indicate your thoughts about them.

Erm woudn't it be better then to put every example into an own post/comment?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/Charcoal-SE/SmokeDetector/issues/1458#issuecomment-355754610, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AGKb553bUSr2K8gCrkI1p46wpCxlDAeUks5tH5MNgaJpZM4RVHlp .

[Undo1]

I like Art's flat + drop shadow icon. I also like the Andy's one, but it looks a little bit like an... onion?

  

My first impression was "whoa, that's a really cool Tor logo". Could probably polish the Tor similarity out of it if we wanted to.

[AWegnerGitHub]

@iBug I have a couple problems with yours. Though I like the idea of combining SE and Charcoal...something so blatant as just pasting an SE logo into ours probably violates their rights. Second, it's SO's logo. We watch much more than just SO.

---

I'm working on another one. I'll see if I can make it work without getting annoyed.

---

@Undo1 what would make it less onion-y for you? Until you mentioned it - and stuck Tor's logo right there, I didn't see it. Now I kind of do.

[Undo1]

It might not be an issue, then. It jumped out at me at first, but the similarity is fading for me now. I think it'd work well for our uses. This is favicon size:

Maybe the branches at the top could be separated slightly?

---

Art's at favicon size (drop shadow version, with background removed):

[tripleee]

As a concept, I like the flames better than the shield, but really, if the identity is charcoal, isn't that still a clash of metaphors? Let me see if I could come up with something with more carbon and/or smoke in it, at least as a rough mook-up.

My impression is that Art's shield specifically does include a reference to the Stack Exchange logo (though it's not IMHO very striking; three stacked blue rounded bricks? Anyway, SE not SO).

[ArtOfCode-]

Also like the flames. Could probably make them less onion-like by making the base less round.

Can also confirm that changing the colors on the shield works for differentiation (say, red for generic Charcoal logo, orange for Smokey, green for metasmoke, etc):

[tripleee]

The Stack logo proper has a "stalk" underneath to make it look like a speech bubble. Could we keep that under the shield as well to maybe make the relationship more apparent? I'm thinking it'd also somehow make us more about communication as well as perhaps slightly differentiate us from "everything slightly security-related must have a shield logo".

[AWegnerGitHub]

Base Blocks:

(https://i.imgur.com/qp8Yugm.png)

Colored Blocks (colors can be adjusted):

(https://i.imgur.com/sdx73p3.png)

Smaller logo - not done would just be the large 'C'. Colors could be either how it is in the full logo or different for just the 'C'

[ArtOfCode-]

Not quite so keen on that one. It's significantly less legible than either of the others.

[AWegnerGitHub]

Yeah. It looked a lot better in my head. I like the flames better than this. Still, tossing it out in case it helps others get ideas.

[tripleee]

Here's a quick and crude attempt based on the concept of a hot coal bed on a grill. I wanted to make the coals more natural but my drawing skills (and possibly drawing tools) are not up to the challenge. If I manage to pull that off, figure out how to add actual smoke.

I don't generally like black backgrounds but it's hard to avoid here. My thinking is that the coal bed and the grill bars could be overlaid with different "stencils" to produce different logos (like in this instance the speech bubble contour). I have a couple of sketches exploring this idea but like the ones above, at this point this is really just something to hopefully stimulate discussion.

[iBug]

@tripleee Just FTR, there is only 4 slices instead of 5, and the "spike" should point to bottom-left instead of bottom-right. Its location (bottom-right) is correct.

[tripleee]

Thanks for the feedback. I quite on purpose avoided looking at the Stack Exchange logo, but four bars instead of three would obviously not be a significant change at this early stage of conceptualization. The "spike" or "stalk" is oriented this way specifically to make it suitable as an avatar in chat, but we could have it both ways of course, or decide to keep it like this just to avoid any plagiarism issues.

[iBug]

Smoke Detector page on Wikipedia :)

Maybe we can make an abstract icon out of a real smoke detector?

[magisch]

@tripleee What about transposing a flame onto the stack exchange logo? Like have the blue logo and then a red flame and maybe shift the colors on one of them to suit the different projects.

[AWegnerGitHub]

We should not be using the stack exchange logo, or a logo that could be reasonably confused with the stack exchange logo.

On Jan 7, 2018 10:02 AM, "magisch" notifications@github.com wrote:

@tripleee https://github.com/tripleee What about transposing a flame onto the stack exchange logo? Like have the blue logo and then a red flame and maybe shift the colors on one of them to suit the different projects.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/Charcoal-SE/SmokeDetector/issues/1458#issuecomment-355832633, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AGKb51IKpKxXYuRW7pYYNmbBBE1Z9Xx1ks5tIOp5gaJpZM4RVHlp .

[tripleee]

I really like the Blaze logo, by the way. Who created that, and would that person be available to maybe develop a set of icons?

https://charcoal-se.org/blaze/

[j-f1]

@tripleee Jan Kovarik, apparently. It’s the fire icon from Glyphicons, which you can use for free with Bootstrap.

[ArtOfCode-]

@tripleee is this the sort of thing you were thinking?

[tripleee]

It's pretty nice, but I wanted the "veins" inside the speech bubble, and in my mind there was something like tiny black cinder fragments, which would be easy to do with a spray paint / airbrush tool in a bitmap drawing program, but challenging in the veotor-drawing program I was trying out. Perhaps I could get my teenage daughter to spend some time on a better sketch...

[ArtOfCode-]

More like that?

[Undo1]

Too much similarity to SE logo on that one, IMO.

[Undo1]

@AWegnerGitHub Do you have a source file for the flames logo? I'd like to play with it a little.

[ArtOfCode-]

Variant on flames:

[tripleee]

@Undo1 is the speech bubble stencil too similar to the SE logo? I can switch to a different stencil, I was toying actually with one based on a stylized symbol for a smoke detector (but it wasn't yet much good) and a radio-activity symbol for Halflife.

The stencil idea can be applied to any design of course -- same color theme, style, and concept, but different image for different logos in the series. The Blaze logo I think could be assimilated too if we want to? I was thinking speech bubble for HQ, something smoke-related for Smoke Detector (if not an actual smoke detector then maybe simply a puff of smoke?), crosshairs for AIM and some flame for FIRE (but in needs to be distinct from the Blaze flare) also just to show that the theme lends itself to this, not necessarily because everything needs to have a logo.

[tripleee]

(Metasmoke can hardly be smoking smoke, can it? But it doesn't have to be hard; a database of smoke?)

[tripleee]

Another grill picture, with no commitment to stick to the speech balloon, just to show what I was trying to explain before.

The glowing coals are clipped from the Wikipedia still image created from their video of glowing coals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_charcoal.ogv

[tripleee]

Perhaps we are condemned to wear a shield ...?

(Not my favorite shield, just whatever happened to be built into Pages. I'd lose the tacky star at the very least.)

[zalmanlew]

It may look a bit like a chicken - it was supposed to be flames.

How it would look on site

[AWegnerGitHub]

Ok, I think this is my last attempt.

(Full image)

(Full image)

[ArtOfCode-]

Let's do some voting, shall we? Results not final, pending further discussion, etc etc. Add a reaction to this comment:

Logo	Reaction
	:+1:
	:-1:
	:smile:
	:tada:
	:confused:
	:heart:

[Undo1]

I like how you gave yours a thumbs up :P Multiple votes per person, I assume?

[zalmanlew]

We could possibly put a C in the middle (or turn those light colored spikes into a C)

[tripleee]

Is the speech bubble with veins collective for all my grill pukery or did I simply not make it to the first round of voting...? Seriously, if nothing so far has spurred much of a positive reaction, let's not rush it.

[ArtOfCode-]

First round, @tripleee. I picked the six (there are six reactions) that seemed to have the best reactions so far. When we get another six, I'll throw another poll in.

[tripleee]

I understand; makes sense.

[angussidney]

Maybe we could combine Andy’s flames and Welz’s C with flames, so that the tendrils shape together to form a C (to work well in a wordmark), but still look good on their own as a favicon?

[ArtOfCode-]

@CalvT proposed another, and will work on a polished/final version:

[CalvT]

Here's my revised entry:

Inspiration:

• First, a shield, as we are a defence.
• The colours of the shield are based on SE's colours, as are the three lines through the shield.
• We have a flame on Smokey's avatar, and also on FIRE.

I'm not happy with the flame, but don't have time to fix.

@ArtOfCode- may submit a better version, as I've sent the AI file to him.

[quartata]

I think WELZ's black logo with one of the shields in the center would be a good combination.

[ArtOfCode-]

Poll! Oh the hugeness.

Logo	Reaction
	:+1:
	:-1:
	:smile:
	:tada:
	:confused:

[j-f1]

How about something similar to @AWegnerGitHub’s 🔥 (^) on @CalvT’s shield?

➕ = ❓