Creating a logo for Zarr

[jakirkham]

Many prominent open source projects have a logo. Something simple that users can distinguish as signifying the project whether it is on a presentation slide, sticker, coffee mug, webpage, etc. It would be great if we could come up with a logo that we feel represents Zarr. Better still if we can reach out to a graphic designer to help.

xref: https://github.com/zarr-developers/zarr/issues/291

[rabernat]

Perhaps the folks from the UK Met Office informatics lab could help with this, since it falls within the scope of their work on Pangeo. Pinging @niallrobinson and @meganfitzsimons.

[alimanfoo]

Some help with a logo would be awesome.

On Sun, 23 Sep 2018, 20:03 Ryan Abernathey, notifications@github.com wrote:

Perhaps the folks from the UK Met Office informatics lab could help with this, since it falls within the scope of their work on Pangeo. Pinging @niallrobinson https://github.com/niallrobinson and @meganfitzsimons https://github.com/meganfitzsimons.

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[meganfitzsimons]

@rabernat @jakirkham I'd be happy to have a go at this, let me know if you have any specific thoughts or ideas on what you might like it to look like.

[alimanfoo]

Thank you @meganfitzsimons. Here's a couple of thoughts just to get the ball rolling.

Obviously the letter "Z" is visually striking. You could probably make a good logo just by doing something visually cool with the letter. You could also think about ways to include it in combination with some other visual element(s).

Zarr is about storing N-dimentional arrays, a.k.a. tensors. So some kind of visual representation of a tensor, either 2 or 3-dimensional, could be something to use. This has been done already in other packages, e.g., it's central to the xarray logo, so would somehow need to differentiate if used.

Zarr is also about compression. So some visual representation of something being expanded from something small into something big could be used.

Zarr is also at least in part about storing data in the cloud.

I am the worlds worst graphic designer, so please take these as nothing more than food for thought, but here's a couple of sketches...

"Z" on the side of a cube:

"Z" on the side of a cube with perspective (which suggests compression/decompression):

"Z" inside a hypercube (which also maybe suggests compression or just maybe a cool visual concept):

"Z" formed from cloud below and array above, with some vapour connection between them:

[aparamon]

Playing on the idea of Penrose stairs might be fun...

[meganfitzsimons]

Hi all :)

I've drafted out a logo idea, open to feedback, first go so let me know what you think!

I know the colours are a bit out there but wanted to differentiate from the other packages out there. I'm open to trying out different ideas etc if needs be.

[rabernat]

I think it's beautiful! A bit similar to xarray, but that is perhaps inevitable. For that reason, having the Z directly on the data cube is maybe better.

I really like the colors. But I also think it would be nice to have something with a white bg, since that's how the logo will most commonly appear in the wild.

[alimanfoo]

Very nice! I like the Z on the cube, and the fact that the cube perspective messes with your mind a bit as your mind flips between the two ways of seeing it :-)

Would the first version also work if the face/edge colours on the Z in the cube were reversed? I.e., solid pink with blue edging?

Colours are cool too. Yes might also be good to have a black on white version to use where you need maximum contrast and don't want to clash with another scheme.

[jakirkham]

Thanks for working on this @meganfitzsimons.

Agree with others that I like the Z on ( in? :) the cube.

[jakirkham]

Are we happy enough to add the first logo as our GitHub icon?

On a different note, am planning on giving a talk soon-ish where I'd like to (briefly) mention Zarr. Would it be ok to use the first logo in that talk? If it helps, the talk is of a scientific nature (where some software naturally comes up) and would like to give a slide or two to mention Zarr and the problem it helps solve.

[alimanfoo]

Are we happy enough to add the first logo as our GitHub icon?

SGTM

On a different note, am planning on giving a talk soon-ish where I'd like to (briefly) mention Zarr. Would it be ok to use the first logo in that talk? If it helps, the talk is of a scientific nature (where some software naturally comes up) and would like to give a slide or two to mention Zarr and the problem it helps solve.

Also SGTM

[rabernat]

I'm wondering if @meganfitzsimons might be able to do another iteration to finalize the logo design, provide SVG version, etc.

We could put this in a new repo zarr-developers/zarr-branding.

[meganfitzsimons]

Hi, sorry I've been quiet on this - slipped under my radar! I should have some time to work on a white background version of the logo this week, so will post it shortly.

[jakirkham]

Maybe too short notice? But it might be nice to use the logo on SciPy slides and on some Zarr marketing material (sticker? mugs? other suggestions?).

[alimanfoo]

Good call, I haven't started on the scipy slides yet, will definitely use the logo. Planning to use reveal.js as per Matt's examples.

Also anywhere else on our web presence where logo could be added, please anyone feel free to make a PR.

On Thu, 13 Jun 2019, 15:57 jakirkham, notifications@github.com wrote:

Maybe too short notice? But it might be nice to use the logo on SciPy slides and on some Zarr marketing material (sticker? mugs? other suggestions?).

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[jhamman]

Was a white background version of the the zarr logo ever produced?

@meganfitzsimons - if you have the purple background design files, I can take a swing at inverting the color scheme.

[ryan-williams]

fielded a request today for SVGs of the (wonderful) images above; if anyone has them I would appreciate links here!

[ryan-williams]

I used the logo above in our slides for the CZI EOSS Kickoff Meeting yesterday (which @jakirkham presented).

I had to play with the color picker a bit to fill out our title slide:

For reference:

• background: #25245f
• foreground (cube/text): #d6366f
  • curiously, Google Slides apparently renders text colors incorrectly, so I actually had to set this to #e8166f

We still need vectorized assets here (that we can also change to other colors, esp. just black+white probably; @jrswedlow had some issues with lack of contrast / general color-scheme of our logo recently). Using some EOSS funds to continue the great work that's happened up-thread here makes sense.

[jakirkham]

It might be worth asking NumFOCUS if they can help identify someone to work on the logo (unless people here know of someone).

[ghost]

[joshmoore]

fwiw I've started vectorizing the purple/pink logo

or just a single element:

[patrick-koenig]

Hello, I've created a B/W version out of the logo that is used in the readthedocs:

It is better for usage within slides with white background.

[joshmoore]

Hi @patrick-koenig. Nice. Thanks for posting this. Do I understand correctly that you just modified the colors in the PNGs above? Or do you have a new implementation we should work from?

[patrick-koenig]

@joshmoore I just modified the colors in the PNGs of @meganfitzsimons above with Photoshop. I needed it for a presentation with white background for better readability. But I'm not an expert in vector graphics, unfortunately. :)

[joshmoore]

All-

After the recent informal poll on Twitter, we discussed the logos at the bi-weekly community meeting call on Dec 1 and chose (with an additional sign-off of the a steering council) to move forward with the pink-on-solid color option A.

The (not all too) new version 4, updated by Chelsea Friel, is now available in a new repo, https://github.com/zarr-developers/zarr-logo

Summary of changes to date:

• now available in SVG!!
• the purple has been dropped (😢)
• the pink color now has a gradient (to-be-known as the "zarr gradient"!)

Current feedback is that we need to consider how this looks at small sizes (favicons, etc.) but otherwise the general feeling is that we're approaching the finish line and can plaster this everywhere.

Special thanks to @meganfitzsimons for starting us down this path and to everyone at NumFOCUS for all their help.

~Josh