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commontk / CTK

A set of common support code for medical imaging, surgical navigation, and related purposes.
https://commontk.org
Apache License 2.0
827 stars 480 forks source link

Modernize logos/icons #959

Open phcerdan opened 3 years ago

phcerdan commented 3 years ago

I think it would be refreshing to update logos and icons to something more in line with this decade style, FontAwesome web-style or similar. Bigger logos with less background empty space, and more minimalist in general. Seems to me like this is low effort quest to get a modern feeling. I wonder if this has been discussed at some point.

jamesobutler commented 3 years ago

Below is the current CTK logo for reference.

Related is that CTK Instruments appears to have clearly taken inspiration from the CommonTK logo (Color palette/Style/etc). They were incorporated in California seemingly in 2016 as a "supplier of microscopy and imaging products in Southern California".

CTK (CommonTK) CTK Instruments
image image
lassoan commented 3 years ago

We have been discussing this a lot lately. Unfortunately, free iconsets are insufficient and there is resistance in bringing in content that would require usage license fees. Getting custom icons designed is very costly and even more expensive if you want the artist to transfer unrestricted usage rights to you. Finding (and retaining for maintenance) an artist that has a style that is well liked by all CTK user groups (mainly Slicer and MITK) is a difficult and risky job (what if things start out well but the artist then loses motivation, etc).

To get started with an icon set that is sufficient for a full-featured application like Slicer would be at least $50-100k. Maybe if multiple medical image computing software groups (both web and desktop) would put together resources then it could be feasible. Some groups are fine with using free icons (even if they are not meaningful) or tell their users to buy the necessary licenses, so it may not be easy to collect enough money.

phcerdan commented 3 years ago

To get started with an icon set that is sufficient for a full-featured application like Slicer would be at least $50-100k. Maybe if multiple medical image computing software groups (both web and desktop) would put together resources then it could be feasible. Some groups are fine with using free icons (even if they are not meaningful) or tell their users to buy the necessary licenses, so it may not be easy to collect enough money.

Wow, ok, I didn't know the market price of set of icons...

Glad that you are thinking on this, it just surprises me that given the amount of knowledge and effort that developers pour on the open software related to CTK, there is not a collective path to get new icons.

I tend to prefer cleaner logos not completely related to the action than old or too crowded logos, but I understand it's hard to get it right.

Thinking out-loud, this seems like a niche for a crowdfunding, open source software related to research in medical image analysis looking for new logos. Or a contest to novel designers in college classrooms, with a final price of 5-10K or something like that, and put the name of the uni and class in the contributors section! Contest: 25 specific icons for medical research.

The general purpose icons, open file, play, etc, I think it should be all right to use the free ones.