Refreshing GDAL's logo

[nirvn]

@rouault , I remember a tweet from you mentioning the wish/will to refresh GDAL's logo (while PROJ was looking for a logo of its own). Along those lines, I've had a new logo in mind, which - in my humble opinion - would be a nice improvement to the current one and help project a more pro look on first approach.

nirvn_v3 -- VERSION 3 A few commenters requested a stronger visual link to a satellite. Solar panels added.

nirvn_v2 -- VERSION 2 Taking @rouault's mention on not feeling so great about stressing the A part of GDAL, here's an updated proposal:

This is actually growing on me by the minute. The addition of an earth depiction (the curved green light) draws a nice link to GDAL's original logo.

The "mug test" passes too :wink:

And, it does look very good (actually, arguably better) when the logo is used as a small icon:

nirvn_v1 -- VERSION 1

Here's how it looks:

The whole logo is simplified quite a lot and - as with QGIS and PROJ - makes use of its spelling to add a GIS hint (a compass here, which still looks like a satellite scanning down to earth :smile: ).

It would sit very well alongside other osgeo projects, and is more of a circa 2019 styled logo.

Bonus: just like some folks are spelling PRØJ with that special Ø sign, GDAL could be spelled GDΛL :wink:

[nirvn]

Here's how the website would look like with the above-proposed logo:

VERSION 2

VERSION 1

[nirvn]

And here are a couple of reduced "A" icon "real-world" scenarios:

IMHO much better looking than the old logo as this proposal allows for a much simpler 'A' representation that is still clear when scaled down to 16 pixels.

[nirvn]

The GDAL's A icon also looks great on mugs:

[jef-n]

The GDAL's A icon also looks great on mugs:

You are really fishing for Λttention ;)

[rouault]

I remember a tweet from you mentioning the wish/will

Actually somebody else raised this. Not sure who :-) Thanks for having a try at this. I've absolutely bad design taste, so not sure I'm the best judge. Could you bring that to the mailing list ? I'm not sure if the A as the short icon will be super intuitive. I guess the focus on G would be more natural.

[mloskot]

I think this is the twitter thread that @nirvn refers to https://twitter.com/AndiNeum/status/1171710048810274817

[nirvn]

@mloskot , you are correct. God my brain is failing me.

[jratike80]

It looks like Scandinavian Å https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Å and gives one more possible pronunciation for GDAL, with IPA characters something like [gdɒɒl].

[nirvn]

@jratike80 , cool fact :)

@rouault , the G was not so welcoming to a nice streamlined logo :) I'll drop a note on the mailing list, and cross fingers for cool stickers for the next GIS hackfest ;)

[mloskot]

@jratike80 I'm not convinced we need more pronunciation variations. It already needs to be explained

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/72120/why-do-people-pronounce-gdal-geospatial-data-abstraction-library-like-goo-dal

https://gdal.org/faq.html#what-does-gdal-stand-for

[nirvn]

VERSION 2 Taking @rouault's mention on not feeling so great about stressing the A part of GDAL, here's an updated proposal:

This is actually growing on me by the minute. The addition of an earth depiction (the curved green light) draws a nice link to GDAL's original logo.

The "mug test" passes too :wink:

And, it does look very good (actually, arguably better) when the logo is used as a small icon:

[andreasneumann]

Actually somebody else raised this. Not sure who :-)

Yeah - that was me. Sorry for not working on it. I just thought that the existing GDAL logo looked a bit dated. Not that it matters much to me, but if someone (like @nirvn) can work on it, I think it is appreciated.

Thanks for your drafts so far - @nirvn . Just a tiny question what the logo represents: it is a (pair of) compass (Zirkel in german) on the earth - right?

IMHO: I like that logo a lot, but personally I would associate that logo more with proj, not so much with GDAL/OGR.

[cpaulik]

This looks like a great improvement but as a gdal user I am a little confused by the compass (Zirkel). The satellite in the old logo made more sense to me. But I'm probably biased because I use gdal strictly with remote sensing data

[nirvn]

@cpaulik , actually, roughly half of people I consulted while drafting the logo saw a simplified version of a satellite hovering the earth and scanning it (similar to the old logo, except far more abstract). I can see both the compass and the satellite, a perfect fit for gdal's vector and raster support :)

[nirvn]

@andreasneumann , see above mention of the satellite.

[m-kuhn]

I'll buy a mug of version 2 if this is made official.

I confess I was one of the guinea pigs seeing a satellite. And I confess I shared @rouault doubts about stressing the A (without expressing that publicly).

[nirvn]

@andreasneumann , a pair of solar panel could be added here, while not breaking to overall attempt at being simple and abstract.

[andreasneumann]

That's a good idea. Being a big fan of renewable energies, I would support that idea! That way it looks less like a compass and more like a satellite.

Thanks!

[jmckenna]

Great work @nirvn ! To be honest, I still wear my old GDAL shirt, with the satellite logo, from 2006. I like the proposed changes, but also your most recent idea to add a solar panel, so it brings back the raster focus as well, to the logo. Thanks again for this work!

[nirvn]

@jmckenna , nice to see the green on the t shirt being reflected in the draft.

Glad the solar panels seem to be the missing element that satisfies you guys.

[NathanW2]

New logo is looking really good. I like the latest draft.

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@jmckenna https://github.com/jmckenna , nice to see the green on the t shirt being reflected in draft.

Glad the solar panels seem to be the missing element that satisfies you guys.

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[rouault]

Perhaps we should have some informal "competition" to have potentially several propositions from different people. Like was done with PROJ. Happy to let anyone organize that.

[mloskot]

@jmckenna Apparently, I had less GDAL-special occasions to wear mine, hence its better condition ;)

I find it hardly possible any new design will beat that design for t-shirt purposes, especially in terms of sentiment and memories :-) I'd love if we could arrange reprint of those t-shirts. At the time, it was quite a limited edition.

Historical note: if I remember correctly, the batch was printed before FOSS4G 2007, not 2006. I do remember myself walking to post office in Victoria to ship the t-shirt to Norman Vine :-)

[andreasneumann]

@nirvn - you created a wave of nostalgia with your new logo proposal ;-)

[mloskot]

@andreasneumann Our worst enemy is our own habits and memories :-)

[nirvn]

This proposal is certainly not trying to compete over sentiments & memories. And it's cool to see these t shirts, a nice blast from the past :)

That said, I'd argue that, putting attachments to memories aside, this PR embraces the premise that GDAL, in 2019, would benefit from a logo revamp, a refreshed identity bringing it in line with contemporary standards.

The current GDAL logo is more of a text overlaying an image than a logo per say. I'm sure we could come up with a nice poster featuring the image on the t shirt above with this proposed logo :)

@rouault , a public call for logos would indeed give more choices. It does come with its set of burdens, but as you said if someone out there is willing to put the time and energy into this, why not :) how much time do we give said person to come forward before we conclude it might not happen? :)

[rouault]

how much time do we give said person to come forward before we conclude it might not happen? :)

There's no emergency. Maybe January 17th as deadline for submitting proposals, with a hint that early propositions will get more community feedback and chance of being improved (at least that's how it worked with PROJ). We probably also want to mention that the delivery must be SVG file, and under an open data license. I would tend to favor CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), as was used for PROJ, but we'll try to credit the author appropriately. Eh didn't I say I wanted to stay away from that :-) ? (as a word of caution, I think one important thing to mention is that the final decision of the PSC might be that we stay with the current logo if there's no clear consensus on a new one...)

[nyalldawson]

One great thing with this proposal is that it fits really nicely with the new PROJ logo, AND could easily be carried through for an updated GEOS logo too:

Keeping consistent branding by reusing the same font families, sizing, weights and spacing across the three libraries would certainly help showcase them as part of a larger unified set of libraries :+1:

[PeterPetrik]

i really like version 2 and 3 of the logo.

[tobwen]

Perhaps add the pronunciation in IPA? But I love the variants of ”Goodle”, “Gee-Daal” and others given in many talks 🤪

[nyalldawson]

(also would be nice to add a similarly styled logo for mdal!) Mmmm consistent branding across gdal, proj, geos and mdal sounds very appealing!

[tobwen]

(also would be nice to add a similarly styled logo for meal!) Mmmm consistent branding across gdal, proj, geos and mdal sounds very appealing!

Hehe, it looked way better in my mind...

@nirvn Could you please use a free font? FF Meta is beautiful for sure, but we should use something open.

[nirvn]

@tobwen , your font detector got confused ;) the font used here is Fira Sans, and it's open:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fira_Sans

[tobwen]

@nirvn Font detector? Nah, it was my brain (again). But come one: designer is Erik Spiekermann and it's based on FF Meta - I wasn't that wrong :-)

You're right... there are big differences. Thanks, I've learned something (will save money for feature Meta licenses, hehe)

[tobwen]

Hehe, my ideas are getting worse

[3nids]

Very nice work @nirvn !!! My vote to version 2 but without the solar panel (to me it brings an unnecessary complexity) What are the next steps to get the logo accepted?

[rouault]

What are the next steps to get the logo accepted?

I'd like this initiative to be announced on the gdal-dev mailing list. Not everybody in the community follows GitHub issues

[tobwen]

Which license will the new logo be in?

[tobwen]

I'll be able to silkscreen print a prototype in the next days. I've created a quick vector copy. I'll drop the solar panels of course.

@nirvn Could you publish the vectors please?

[nirvn]

@tobwen , as creator of the logo, it'd be a contribution to gdal. Not intimate with trademark details (if relevant here).

I can share the SVG when I'm at my office.

Re solar panels, I think there was a majority in favor of those, I assume that version defacto wins the PR popular vote.

[tobwen]

@nirvn So you might pick this one? https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed In many countries, there needs to be a license. CC0 is a good way to publish such art.

Maybe I need to order the silkscreen today (I'm in contact with the guy, who creates them at home). As the creator of the logo, could you give my copy a "go"? I will create a prototype only, just for fun and showing-off :-)

[tobwen]

A friend of mine said, the satellite would look like a drafting compass or the Tauri glyph from Stargate :-)

He suggested this one:

[nyalldawson]

Anyway to move forward on this? It seems a shame to let interest die off while there's some great designs being submitted...

[mloskot]

@nyalldawson it needs this https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/issues/2117#issuecomment-569912011

IOW, it needs a champion interested in the initiative who will take this to the GDAL community, organising the poll or whatever is suitable way to select final logo.

[rouault]

Informal contest informally opened by https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2020-January/051524.html . Please follow potential developments to that mailing list thread if interested

[tobwen]

[jratike80]

I do not mean that it matters, but for some reason I can't stop thinking about a young human being who has lost their body.

[sgillies]

I love seeing the design mocked up on swag and web pages, that's awesome. Two comments that I made on gdal-dev that are maybe better put here.

1. the green is sort of basic and I'm not a fan (I know, I know :bike: :house:)
2. could we see if tightening up the spacing of the letters improves it? As in the classic tee shirts?

[rouault]

What about nirvn_v2 design with the compass on top of GDAL rather on the left (like on the mug) as being the official logo. On the left this makes the overall shape very rectangular/landscape shaped. I'm wondering if it would reduce nicely. That said on the top it is quite vertical/portrait shaped. Perhaps something closer to a square shape ? The current GDAL logo fits in a square. Looking at other logos, they all have a square variant (for QGIS this is just the Q). The compas itself could fit in a square, but identifying it to GDAL without the "GDAL" text would not be obvious

[jmckenna]

I propose that we use the Twitter poll tool, posted from @rouault 's account, to decide between the final 4 logo options. It might be fun to see the community's result that way. (people love to use Twitter to criticize, so let's leverage that). More about the voting tool: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-polls