Re: [Cbor] CBOR logo experiment

[Jonathan Beri <[e-mail]>]

No apologies necessary! I thought of this as an experiment. The inspiration
came from wanting to create an icon for the new subreddit
<https://www.reddit.com/r/CBOR/> I created. I wanted something with the
visual flair usually found on the site. The basic meaning I was trying to
convey

1) a compressed packet, which includes data as visualized by the little
bits of characters
2) transmission or movement of data

and I wanted to use web-safe fonts and CSS so it could be used in
many places, though I did need a PNG for Reddit. I too agree that a good
logo design requires a certain type of genius - and unfortunately I don't
fit the bill. And as I stared at the logo I think it connotes data
corruption as someone else mentioned and not the type of messaging we want.
Experiment 1 marked as a success - will not use. I think for now the
wordmark on cbor.me works for me. I generated a new PNG logo for Reddit
using https://htmlcsstoimage.com/:
[image: image.png]

Hopefully someone might improve the design one day!

Thanks for the feedback :)

On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 6:13 PM Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> > On 2020-05-30, at 19:21, Jonathan Beri <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > <image.png>
>
> (Insert apologies if, at this time of the day, my autopilot is
> automatically switching into prof-talks-to-student mode here.  I’ve been
> chided for that before.  Then mix in the Whitsunday mood…)
>
> So what is the message that you are trying to convey with this logo?
> Let me try to guess through the eyes of a random instance of a persona
> looking at data representation formats.
>
> We have the base form of the logo, which looks like some old-fashioned (or
> really, outdated?), 1950’s, FORTRANy thing; black and white of course.
> It seems that ancient logo bequeathed from the ancestors then has incurred
> some damage through transmission errors and looks a bit unstable now.
> Needs lots of cleanup before use.
> Not good for the squeaky clean product (security, banking, …) I’m building
> right now.
>
> To provide some contrast, let me do a quick proposal for a list of
> branding properties that a CBOR logo maybe should convey (or at least not
> actively counteract):
>
> — stable
> — efficient, concise, … (I think that’s where the image is closest)
> — and related to that: somewhat minimal, but not simpler
> — approachable, friendly, easy to use
> — open for new business (extensible, with low ceremony for that)
>
> It probably would require a genius to convey all of these properties in
> one logo.
> I’m not that genius, so for cbor.me I settled with the same basic idea
> you used (just say CBOR), and just threw in the font Palatino and the color
> #663399 (please excuse my rusty HTML if you do examine the site).
> That’s where I stopped…
>
> Yes, it requires a lot of background to even see in what ways that is
> actually somewhat minimal (history questions: What is (was) minimal about
> #663399 [1]?  What is (was) almost minimal about Palatino [2]?).
>
> So I’d love to see if someone came up with something better.
>
> If you are looking for something completely different: we also have
> Stefanie Gerdes’ design for a sea boar [3].  But that is maybe more of a
> mascot than a logo.  I’d like that in plush.
>
> Grüße, Carsten
>
> PS.: Here are the answers for the two history questions, and a pointer to
> the sea boar, in case you care:
>
> [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors#Web-safe_colors
> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts#Core_Font_Set
> [3]: http://www.tzi.de/~cabo/sea-boar.png
>
>

-- 
Jonathan Beri
linkedin.com/in/jonathanberi <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanberi/>