Changing the logo

[thewhitetulip]

The current logo has too much details, if you see the logos of Keep or Gmail or Hangouts or any other Google app, the logo that they have doesn't have much detail and they normally have transparent background, the current logo embodies the O and N as scratchpad and a set of three pencils, that is too much of details, I am working on a new logo, will post it soon.

To see what I mean compare the logo with the ones displayed above

[federicoiosue]

I believe most of the above icons are not a good example of simplicity, they're full of inner shadows to improve their tridimensional consistency and they're not missing any detail for sure (mainly People and Calendar icons).

Anyhow I perfectly agree with you about ON icon, but not being myself a designer that's the best I can do with Inkscape.

Look forward to see your works, and thanks for contribute!

[thewhitetulip]

How are these one? If you have suggestion as to how you want the logo to be then please let me know.

The third one is symmetric, it has an O, m, n, i

Yes, I now realize my mistake, I quoted the wrong icons. :)

[federicoiosue]

Try posting this, on Google+ community, not being a real issue it doesn't need to be tracked and there you could have more visibility!

[federicoiosue]

Nice work by the way!

[thewhitetulip]

Okay, my internet speed kind of sucks, but will post it there, meanwhile if you have liked any logo then let me know, I will stop brain storming for alternate logos

[federicoiosue]

I like the first flat-style because is simple but I'd like to keep into the logo both the letters. Also I'd prefer a blue coloration :dancers:

[thewhitetulip]

Okay, give me one week, I'll theme it blue.

The thing with writing only N in the logo was the O is in the background, anyways, i'll post it when it is ready.

[thewhitetulip]

How is this?

[ljrk0]

HI, I agree with the old logo looking... old? Anyways, blue logo has some nice aspects, yet I think there is missing something (Idk what). An idea would be to have a picture of a notebook as background, cut in "O"-Form and maybe "notes" scribbled on somewhere. For clarification i made a draft (no endversion -just for clarification what I mean ;-) ). Anyway I dont have the right for the background image...:

[bradipao]

What about this, with the "O" represented by the outer circle, and the "N" by the pencil across the sheet of paper?

[ljrk0]

Wow, looks really nice, though the pen is maybe not so easily recognized, maybe not directly from edge to edge but in an other angle?

[federicoiosue]

That's what I was searching for!! +10 for you @bradipao

[bradipao]

I have just setup a public share for the SVG, if you want to tweak it further. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55984782/omninote.svg

[ghost]

Federico do you really want both the letters in the icon? xD

[ghost]

I'll design a unique shape soon. But in the meantime, I gave bradipao's icon a makeover.

Again, the rich colours get washed out on my phone's LCD -_- But it'll look good on an AMOLED or a better LCD

Feedback appreciated :)

[ghost]

Another one closer to his version

[federicoiosue]

Hey a lot of you guys are great designers!

I like them all, so I'm thinking about creating a post on the G+ (more accessible for the most of the users) to show them and get some feedback. I'll do asap!

[ghost]

[brunelli]

This last one is great! It should look nice with the current Lollipop icons :)

[ghost]

Thanks man :)

[bradipao]

arjerine, I like the version of 3 days ago inspired by my original version, but I would make a few changes: 1) the shadow should have the same angle of the pencil 2) the gap between pencil and textlines behind should be removed or increased to a "grid step" [1].

[1] When drawing icons that have to be heavily scaled, it is recommended to draw shapes and geometry on a "grid". Android guidelines suggest a 48x48 grid : all shapes and geometries should be drawn on that grid, so that important details are preserved in scaling down.

The last version of icon is a beautiful, but impossible to scale down. It could be used as icone on very high dpi displays.

[ghost]

Thanks for your feedback

• I wanted the paper to be bigger so consequently pencil is not parallel to the shadow. Looks fine though, in my opinion. I can change it, but then the size of the pencil will be smaller and might look odd when it's actually scaled down and used as an icon.
• You'll have to explain that grid thing a bit more. I just started making icons last week, so don't have any professional experience and haven't read many guidelines. I use 512x512 on Inkscape
• Yea I didn't think about that. I have an XHDPI device so it looks fine. Will try it on another phone for reference

[ljrk0]

I need to say that the one by bradipao is still my favorite - i just prefer less when it suffices, meaning no colored pencil, when you don't need to color it because you already understand what it is. the last one submitted is a nice approach, too though I'ld be for less colored again. Additionally it might be a bit to detailed for lowdpi displays as already mentioned before.

[ljrk0]

and I prefer the brandipaos blue^^

[ghost]

The colours just depend on the sort of device you're using. AMOLED shows better saturation so it reproduces the image better. Some LCDs might wash it out harshly, so have to keep that in mind

[ghost]

@bradipao if Federico likes the last one for high DPI, I can make another version with less details but similar style for low DPI devices.

[ljrk0]

for me it's not ab. what colors you are using but that you are using them ;-)

[ghost]

That was in reply to “bradipao's blue”.. I just chose the blue which went in tandem with my PC and phone's screen. And I think it came out rather beautifully

As to usage of colours at all, well that's your preference and depends on your device. I can but won't criticise that. I saw Google's guidelines and they certainly use a lot of colours. So do many others and it looks good in my opinion

[ljrk0]

It's really depending on the application whether they use colors or not. E.g. the explicit GApps are with the typical colors whilst phone, messages etc. are mostly 2-colored.

[ghost]

You're comparing Google and AOSP. Different things. I haven't liked stock AOSP icons much (although Lollipop seems to change that)

[ljrk0]

The AOSP Icons are by Google, too. What I mean is that Google's icons are just colorful because these colors are "needed" to express that these are GApps. Here we don't need colors to express that this is a pen -the shape already does this job more than well.

[ghost]

Firstly, AOSP is handled differently if I'm not mistaken. Because it has to be generic. It's forked a lot, so the icons can't be similar to Google. Although that seems to changing with Lollipop. I've seen some icons https://imgur.com/a/quWTj and multiple colours are being used to follow Material guidelines. Perhaps you won't like that

Anyway let's end this now. I got your point but Android is getting a lot of colours Lollipop onwards.

[ljrk0]

Wait, yes, android gets more colored -but no, I've got nth against that. The Icons alone are still not colorful, though everything together makes it colorful -that's my point!

[ljrk0]

I have. And I just say: Contacts, Downloads, Clock, Calc, Mail, ...

[RadarNyan]

+1 for @bradipao 's design.

I agree with @LeonardKoenig , the icon should have only two colors, maybe three but no more. And it should be looking nice on both light and dark backgrounds.

About @arjerine 's design, I looked at it again and again just can't figure out what's the blue band behind the paper... by looking at this icon I feel it more like a "attachment" instead of a note.

[ghost]

I don't think there's a hard and fast rule for that. Google Camera has 9 colours but still looks good. It's the end product that matters And every detail doesn't have to mean something. So the blue band is just cosmetic. The paper clip there doubles up as 'n' since Federico was looking for both alphabets O an N. It also signifies that you can attach anything to your note which Omni is capable of

[ljrk0]

Yes, the Google Camera is colorful -but as I stated before: It's a Google App and Google wants it to be recognized as one, thus using Google's colors

[ghost]

Yea but doesn't mean the rest of us are forbidden :D I do agree the pencil one is too colourful but the last one is fine in my opinion Here's a screenshot from my phone (best viewed on a phone with 720p screen I think)

[ljrk0]

Can I have that wallpaper? :D The icon seems to be rendered low, you can "count the pixels" on the diagonal edges -at least on my PC ^^

[bradipao]

arjerine, if you want to make shadow parallel to pencil, don't touch pencil, just (slightly) change angle to shadow. Parallelism of lines is something that you like but you don't know why.

Regarding the grid, the idea comes from the fact that MDPI icons are 48x48. So, while drawing icons in vector format, put also a 48x48 grid on the background, then draw shapes and geometries taking into account that grid. Because each cell of that grid will be a pixel in the MDPI icon. If you use the 48x48 grid as a constraint for position and size of shapes, likely that icon will downscale nicely.

Note: I am not a professional designer, but I spent a lot of time in the past designing icons for fun and I realized that "the best icon is the icon without anything else to remove". If you can, remove as much details as you can.

[ghost]

@LeonardKoenig It'll look horrible on a PC. 'AOSPA' is the reference. Must look pixelated too if the icon is. My phone's res is 720x1280 so I advice you to view it on a phone with similar dimensions. The wallpaper comes with my ROM. I'll have a look if it's possible to extract :)

@bradipao thanks for your feedback. Understood and appreciated :)

[ljrk0]

@arjerine which rom then?^^

[ghost]

Paranoid Android

[ljrk0]

thx

[ghost]

@federicoiosue any ETA for 5.0?

[RadarNyan]

Let's take a look at Android 5.0 AOSP mail launcher icon.

1. It's not flat. It still has round corners, different colors, lights and shadows...
2. It feels like paper folding. It's not just about this app, Google just updated their apps to Material design and all of their launcher icons feels like this.

There's no design guideline for launcher icon in official material design document at this point, but I think it's safe to say that we can do it like this "paper folding" feel.

[federicoiosue]

@arjerine https://plus.google.com/102629628248642947234/posts/KtMm6uQURu9

[RadarNyan]

Here's my unfinished failed work... I made one serious mistake - too much content. It might be looking OK on this size but the smaller size version is horrible...

The reason I still post it here is to make my point:
Why do we need to focus on "ON"? Is there supposed to be something called "OFF" ?
Well, that was just joking. What I think a good icon for Omni Notes is:

• Looks like a note-taking app.
• Show what Omni Notes can do.

I tried to show some features: colorful notes, rich attachment, reminder. And obviously I failed... they just won't fit in one small icon. Maybe I should just put 4 icons in a 2x2 grid I guess, but I'm done here...I'll just leave the work to real designers.

[ghost]

@RadarNyan That idea looks interesting. Will make something based on that soon

[ghost]

@federicoiosue for splash screen what do you think? (going to make a similar icon)