PixelFed Logo Contest

[dansup]

The logo contest is now closed. Thank you to all that participated.

1st place logo: https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues/182#issuecomment-396067684 (congrats @rnarrkus!) 2nd place logo: https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues/182#issuecomment-394402432 3rd place logo: https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues/182#issuecomment-394215601 4th place logo: https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues/182#issuecomment-395436435 5th place logo: https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues/182#issuecomment-394203797

Winning mascot: https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues/182#issuecomment-395280862

I will reach out to each winner to handle the prize money transfer!

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Some very generous donors have offered $450 USD to the winning PixelFed logo, and $250 for other prizes!

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A call for PixelFed logos, y'all! Jump in! I will *donate $200USD to the winning #MastoArt'ist that may get picked (this or any other server). You will need to create the logo as well as a hero/header. 2 creative commons released assets. @dansup has full option to pick.

$200 pledge: https://mastodon.art/@Curator/100142757740094921 for 1st place logo $50 pledge: https://djs.social/@damien/100142799177194385 for 1st place logo $200 pledge: https://mastodon.social/@moritzheiber/100143287247845055 for 1st place logo $200 pledge by https://mastodon.art/@Curator to split between 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place logos ($50 ea)! $50 pledge by @dansup for the winning mascot.

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Rules:

• This contest is open to anyone, all entries must be posted as a comment to this issue.
• The contest will be open for ~1 week~ 2 Weeks.
• I will pick the winning logos and mascot after the contest has closed.
• Licensed under Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA-4.0).
• Provide assets in .png & .svg formats
• Do not downvote or thumbs down an entry, any thumbs down will be considered thumbs up!
• Please thumbs up the entries you like the most, it will help me decide which one to pick!

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Prizes:

Place	Contest	Prize
1st	Logo	$450
2nd	Logo	$50
3rd	Logo	$50
4th	Logo	$50
5th	Logo	$50
1st	Mascot	$50

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Good luck!

[faissaloo]

You should specify some dimensions

[hellcp]

@faissaloo considering that it's supposed to be SVG, I would say that dimensions don't matter ;)

[NFGman]

Since the point is photos, I wanted to avoid cameras. What does a camera even look like now that so many of us use our phones? But a Polaroid-alike instant photo is still pretty recognizable. One pixel image, with a gradated tone. The final colour TBD of course, but I went with something that suggests a sky colour, because why have limits? Cut off the corner of the backing, because this pixel is escaping some bounds.

Throw in some variants: with and without gradation in the backing, with and without text, with and without an outline.

[hellcp]

V2:

I wanted to go with something very simple to reflect the fact that the page is supposed to be as unobstructed as possible. It's an image of two hands framing a picture of a single big pixel. I made it so we would have app icon and two logos to chose from (depending on context), as well as logo + text which would be used for header. Font chosen is Open Sans Condensed, which is freely licensed. I chose it to reflect value of freedom and open source in PixelFed.

SVG SVGV2 CC-BY-SA-4.0

[noiob]

I tried to do something that's acutally pixel art, and while playing arount with letters I came up with this simple two-colored camera which incorporates the project's initials. The font is Noto Sans (OFL) but that's really just as an example of how it'd look like with text. The color could also be changed to whatever accent color suits the whole page best. I quite like the gradient though.

[moshpirit]

OK, so it's basically all from my comment here (I won't copy/paste them so they don't use that much space) (see below) and these designs based on Instagram (this is why I add its icon), just like the Social Network (I try to be as coherent as possible):

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And here how would they look like if they have gradients

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SVG file

[razcore-rad]

Helloo peps, I saw the announcement at mastodon art and altho' I have 0 exp. making logos I decided to give a shot cause you never know what you come up with. So I read on the pixelfed website that the look is modern design with clean UI and that makes me think of material design so with that in mind I came up with these two designs, one more serious, one less so :)

B isn't optimized yet, that's to say, it only works on white background cause I didn't properly cut the shapes, just used white here and there.

@dansup what's the aspect ratio/resolution of the header you're talking about? cause that will influence the composition/graphic. Thanks!

SVG CC BY 4.0

Hope you like em, I'm sure you figured out already that it's a play with the words pixel and fed (as in feeding) and in the first case a camera too? Depends on who's watching :p

edit I'll just keep on updating this comment with other ideas (not necessarily included in the original SVG, it's just to output more stuff as I think of it).

[ghaor]

y'll got such good ideas, i'm new to this and mine are a mess and i don't got svg files haha, apologies. anyway, here are my ideas, regardless! i did use a lotta cameras, though i als tried using a combination of p and f, but idk how it came out, and i can see some are kinda generic. but whatever, my contribution!

[trwnh]

Too on the nose...? ;)

(jk, I'll be editing later with more ideas)

[ghost]

Hey everyone, I tried to keep it very minimalistic, still we can try to read a hidden meaning in these logos:

• The squares with sharp edges could represent pixels.
• The two inner squares could be the lens and the flash of a camera.
• The two inner squares could also be two stars that represent the fediverse like a universe where every star/planet is an instance. Because of that I picked the gradient's colors to resemble a night sky.

I used the font Open Sans Bold

Let me know what you think. :)

Logo

Logo as a window

Website

App Icon

GIF

Just had to include the gif because it's cute ^^

CC-BY-SA-4.0 Cleaned Up Version 1.1 as SVG PNGs as ZIP

Note: Design is never done. As with software you always do iterations, updates and improvements with designs. This is just a first concept and I'd modify it to fit PixelFed's requirements if needed.

[ghost]

Hi folks, there are already so many good designs I kind of feel silly posting mine now, but here it is for the fun of it :)

The idea I have is to have a mascot/icon pretty much like Mastodon, while looking for a candidate (and trying to avoid the most common ones like cats, dogs, frogs, tarsiers, etc.) I came across an old pal of the mastodons (time wise): A Glyptodon, a big armadillo from the ice age :D. I know it makes little sense but I did have the image of the camera aperture structure kind of stuck with an armadillo shell in my head.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep it very simple and abstract, have a few variations of the icon, some which are depicting a letter "P" for Pixelfed. For the header I also went for a "flat" gradation instead of the gradient to match the simplicity of the design, with three samples shown. The font is Noto Sans, I personally prefer lowercase but I sampled both.

Let know your comments/thoughts : )

cc-by-sa-4.0 SVG file

Its nice to see so much good designs around here! :) Also thank you all for the likes, one day someone out there ought to find a home for this little glyptodon, if you do, let me know, will be happy to hear that. And to end with a good note, here are some cleanups of the logo. enjoy! :)

[Vhalesa]

I also wanted to make something with the fed pun and and animal. So after several sketches I came to a fe(rre)d ;P @RJQuiralta Love your Glyptodon btw!

svg file

[trwnh]

Pre-design

OK, serious attempt number one: tried to stick to the idea of pixels and keep it as simple as possible.

Good logos are simple, memorable, recognizable, and look good even at small sizes or in multiple environments. This is hopefully some of those things.

How it looks in context:

Refinement

Monochrome assets from the basic silhouette also look pretty iconic, imo

What it looks like at different asset exports

16x16	24x24	32x32

96x24	100x24 (capital F)	192x48	256x64

Different color versions with various masking:

iOS	Android Square	Android Circle	Android TallRect	Android WideRect

In-context previews:

Desktop	Mobile

[uvexz]

emmm......

[qwazix]

This has gathered a few fav's on masto so I'm putting it here.

[Bugsbane]

Please, please just make sure you get input from a professional designer before making the final choice! There are things that need to be considered that people without design experience usually don't consider until running into problems when it's too late to go back. If you have professional design experience, then just ignore this and move along. :)

[hellcp]

@Bugsbane I talked with one, he agreed with my points, conclusion is that this far all logos would need small tweaks at most. So worry not, we got this ;)

[qwazix]

And another, more contemporary approach.

[moshpirit]

• Provide assets in .png & .svg formats
• Create logo and header/hero image.

About that, I propose to ask for the designers who made the X designs you liked the most (maybe 2, 3, 4, you name it) to make the header/hero after selecting the logo. This would save us all a lot of time and effort. After a couple of days of creating the hero/headers then you can definitely select your best.

Or, if you are pretty sure about what are the one you liked the most, just ask this one person to do it.

For example, if you select Loogah's design (I personally love it, tbh, so congrats) then ask just Loogah to do it.

Why doing so? as I said, is saves a lot of time and work, it's not me being lazy, it's me presenting tons of different designs. So, if I need to include all the headers, that would be horrible for my exams. This said, it would also leave more time to create and think in more logos to add, so you can definitely say: OK, authors, I'd go with logos X, Y and Z, please, @authorOfLogoX, @authorOfLogoY and @authorOfLogoZ, create their headers so I can finally tell the best.

The only counterpart this has, it's a little bit of time (from hours to whatever you want) so the best candidates can do the headers. But it would not affect those who already made them or have the intention to do so before this Sunday.

[Julianoe]

Some great ideas here ! @ghaor i like yours, the center one with all the colors but you should display it alone, not surrounded/lost among all the other propositions.

[Sylvhem]

I am no artist or graphic designer, but since I make a small logo for fun, I thought I could as well share it here.

The circle is meant to be a stylized representation of a camera's lens.

[hellcp]

So I was thinking about a mascot in a case that non-mascot submission would be chosen (and I love mascots, look at my PixelFed profile ;) ). I invented: V2:

SVG SVGV2 CC-BY-SA-4.0

So that made me curious, what if the logo was based on Fred?

SVG CC-BY-SA-4.0

BTW: Fred is portmanteau of Fed and Red (Panda) :D

[dabnotu]

Hello there. Here are my submissions for the PixelFed logo contest:

Pixelfed logo proposal, 60 × 60 px (enlarged, 600 × 600 px)

Pixelfed logo proposal, 80 × 60 px (enlarged, 600 × 600 px)

Pixelfed header/hero proposal, 1920 × 1080 px

Made with Inkscape. Published with a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. The font used is my own, 5X5 (http://www.1001fonts.com/5x5-font.html).

Thanks for your consideration, and appreciation for the inspiring entries so far.

[Julianoe]

So !

I've been looking for a logo idea with my bro Arcez0. He does not have a github account and doesn't speak english so i'll be posting only as myself here but it's designed by him.

We have worked on 3 propositions this past few days.

Proposition n°1

Obviously inspired by the centralized version of Pixelfed (Instragram, ever heard of it?) this one aims at making it clear that Pixelfed is a federated self-hostable (hence the cloud shape) app, making use of the famous "share" symbol, looking like connected stars of a constellation.

Proposition n°2

In this one we keep exploring the cloud aspect of it to make it clear that it is a decentralized self-hostable app and making use of the first letter P of Pixelfed as the lens of our camera inspired icon

Proposition n°3

This one takes another direction. A variation of the use of the P of Pixelfed as the lens, center part of the logo. The rainbow like colored aperture underlines the values of diversity (for diverse and fediverse) and sharing that self-hostable apps like Pixelfed are aiming for.

Credits

Designs by Arcez0

Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC-SA

Font used is a modified Montserrat Alternates (licensed OFL) by Julieta Ulanovsky

Files

SVG file with all logos - PNG files.

Disclaimers

Not everything is perfectly clean but if selected will be improved and optimized of course.

The hero images are not yet included. We could discuss it and how they will be used if selected :)

[nicolasmaia]

@Julianoe I love your first proposition but I'm not sure any of them could be used on pixelfed with a nonfree license

[Julianoe]

We might have been confused in the choice of the licence. Which one would you think is the most suitable here? Should I let the modifications authorized in any case?

According to Creative Commons, a NC (non commercial) license is not "free culture" anyways. Yet it could be used in that case :) @dansup let me know if you have any problem with that license in particular

[hellcp]

@Julianoe that prevents us from creating T-shirts and stickers with that logo if we ever choose to have merch store to support the project. It's def not optimal ;)

[qwazix]

May I propose to license the logo as AGPL the same as the software? It helps because then you can regard the .svg as source and require the source of modifications.

Graphic designs are as much software as is a website, imo.

[hellcp]

I wonder if printing AGPL licensed stuff on T-shirts require us to provide source for said T-shirts :smile:

Also wouldn't that mean that every website using that logo would need to be open source too? That kinda limits ability to promote PixelFed, especially on Instagram :thinking:

[simotek]

Yeah using source code licenses for images always ends you up in a really hard place as there are alot of things that are not explicitly clear (especially with licenses that have derivative work clauses), further to that there are very few cases where such things have been taken to court so there is also no legal precedents to look at. Whereas by licensing artwork under a Creative Commons license its explicit and clear whats allowed and where so its a much better option. I generally recommend that open source projects always explicitly state one license for code and another for media / artwork to make this clear.

[Julianoe]

Hey all just a follow-up about the license question. Creative Commons Non Commercial is quite broad. It does not mean for example that it forbids the use of the image created for creating merchs, tshirts, stickers. BUT it means that it's not by default intended to be done for profit.

The Q&A is a good place to have answers about the Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/faq/#does-my-use-violate-the-noncommercial-clause-of-the-licenses

Also i agree with @simotek that using source code related license for artwork and media is not a good way to go. An artwork is more than the code is made of ... and this analysis does not apply then to real world uses.

Anyways as it's our first graphic contribution to a project like that we are opened to discuss it with @dansup and other contributors to define the best license possible for the project.

I really don't see why we should define it as usable in for-profit activities right now.

[mrk-us]

Love the work that's going into PixelFed and wanted to contribute, so here are a few logo designs I put together. Not sure if you have decided on a color palette yet, so that can be changed if needed. Font used are a modified version of the lovely open source inter UI by Rasmus Andersson

Concept.

Download Source Files Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

[y6nH]

Here's something... less rounded, at least. @rnarrkus, I've pinched your pink-orange gradient, it's nice.

My logo is obviously a PF, though I hope it also evokes a grid of pixels, a network, and some kind of streamlined animal - maybe a fat swift, or a fancy goldfish. The square pixel grid is rotated to isometric, for a dynamic feeling. This also lets it tessellate into beautiful hexagons.

The lettering is pretty hard to read, so it's an optional component at best.

Here's a more sober screenshot of the logo in the header - not a full redesign at this point, though I'll update it if I have time.

Here's the SVG file.

[hellcp]

Maybe slightly different idea, based on much older cameras than anything here: Which is a random image I found on internet (realistically idea isn't based on this one in particular, but on style/period of cameras): SVG CC-BY-SA-4.0

[dawidpotocki]

Hello! There are some of my concepts for PixelFed logo. Font used is inter UI. If you want me to change colors or make P and F big, there is no problem with that. I made rectangles rounded to feel more friendly, but I didn't want to go with circles.

Squares are supposed to be lens and flash.

Same as above, but rotated.

Without box.

Something else?

White website

Black website

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Download SVG and PNG logo images here.

[Aurnytoraink]

I don't think that I'm good designer. In fact, I'm not a designer

Ce(tte) œuvre est mise à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International.

You can download it PixelFed LOGO.zip here

[BienOuBien]

Hi all, I tried to use the "p" as a shutter. Typography is Free Sans

Download Files

Another version with color

CC-BY-SA-4.0

[TakenOrNot]

Hey there !

This is what Inkscape and I came to, hope you'll like them. Typography : Grand Hotel

My favorite :

Various concepts (click to see in full size) :

Vector file :

pf_vector.svg.zip

CC-BY-SA-4.0

[IAnandhu]

My contribution to the Mascot entry! Hope you guys like it.