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nexusformat / NIAC

Issue for the NIAC to discuss (no code)
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Inconsistent NeXus logos with poor resolution #145

Open paulmillar opened 2 weeks ago

paulmillar commented 2 weeks ago

To the best of my knowledge, there are currently three different NeXus logos.

There are two (somewhat related) logos appearing in [NeXus for the Impatient] (https://manual.nexusformat.org/impatient/) document:

There is also a third logo, a simpler "NX" design that appears as:

For branding and consistency there are a few problems:

  1. inconsistent visual identity: which logo should people used?
  2. no vector graphics (e.g., EPS or SVG) version of the logo; only a (poor resolution) bitmap version is available.

Proposed resolution:

rayosborn commented 2 weeks ago

I agree that, as a committee, we haven't been very disciplined about our branding over the years. The logo on our documentation page was the official logo when I was NIAC chair many years ago, and I have higher resolution versions, including SVG and favicon.ico files, available here. Personally, I still quite like them, but I am biased because they were mostly my design. However, Tobias, when he was NIAC chair, disliked the pink color and I think that led to an attempt to create new logos a few years ago (I created a blue version of the old logo then). However, I don't think people thought that any of the replacements were any better so nothing changed.

My personal view is that we should change the main web page to use the Sphinx-generated pages used for the manual. I find it jarring jumping from one to the other because the designs are so unalike, and it makes the project seem unprofessional. Moving that could also be a trigger for creating a brand refresh with new logos, but none of us are professional graphic designers so I'm not sure where they will come from.

prjemian commented 2 weeks ago

Related issues: https://github.com/search?q=org%3Anexusformat+logo&type=issues

paulmillar commented 2 weeks ago

Thanks for the info @rayosborn and @prjemian!

I agree that a web (re-)design would be a good idea, but I would be a little nervous that this might take a lot of time. Perhaps we could improve the logo situation before this happens?

Just providing the SVG logo would be helpful (at least, for me).

Is the above link (anl.box.com) permanent --- can we link to it somehow? If not, perhaps we could upload the files somewhere and make them available?

rayosborn commented 2 weeks ago

@paulmillar, the links won't disappear unless I delete them. I can probably upload them to the NeXpy Github pages, but unless the NIAC authorize it, I'm not sure I'm allowed to upload them to the nexusformat Github. As you have pointed out, we don't yet have an official policy about logos, and I don't know how people feel about the old logo (although I guess nobody has asked for it to be removed from the Sphinx manual yet). Perhaps we can discuss it at the Telco next week.

Since we have a code camp coming up, I would suggest we revisit changing the landing page to be Sphinx-generated.

benajamin commented 2 weeks ago

I converted the Nexus logo to SVG many years ago. I went looking and found it here. I'm not sure why the SVG file didn't get used in the manual at the time. I think we should make more use of the SVG version.

I don't remember the version with the gradient background ever being offical, and it is advisable to avoid gradients so I think we should just delete that file.

I did try to organise a new logo around 2019-ish but I stopped the effort due to a lack of positive feedback.

paulmillar commented 2 weeks ago

Thanks for the input @benajamin!

rayosborn commented 2 weeks ago

@benajamin, by gradient background, do you mean the shadows on the letters in my version? If so, I think I agree that it's better without them.

P.S. I updated the versions on the ANL Box to remove shadows and redid the lettering, because the old versions used pixellated lettering. So the quality is much better, although the Box doesn't seem to be able to render SVG files properly.

benajamin commented 1 week ago

@rayosborn, no, by "gradient background" I mean this image that @paulmillar originally linked to.

The SVG files you have on ANL box requires that the viewer has the "Oxford" font installed, while the version I made uses pure paths that should always render correctly.

rayosborn commented 1 week ago

@benajamin, I hadn't realized that SVG files don't embed their fonts, so thanks for letting me know. I wondered why the previews on the ANL Box looked so odd. I'll try to fix that sometime, not that they are the official versions. That's something for the NIAC to sort out. P.S. I had to convert the text into shapes, albeit with high resolution, in order to create the SVG versions stored here.

phyy-nx commented 1 week ago

@benajamin volunteered to organize this into a proposal. Thanks!