On Wed, 2014-07-02 at 03:57 +0000, ed via Digitalmars-d wrote: […]
> Maybe it's just me but quite frankly I don't care what the logo or web site looks like as long as I can read content and navigate the links easily.
[…]

Having chipped in early on in this debate I have avoided becoming embroiled since I think it has all been too detailed and in the wrong direction, and I have little time just now for any email. A few points:

– Branding is important.

– I heard Walter's comment early on, that he has repeated a number of times: he likes the current logo and doesn't want to change it.

– Constructive effort needs to go into a D brand to set it up to compete for hearts and minds of programmers and their managers against C++, Go, Rust, etc.

– Discussing a new logo is not constructive at this time, since it is not part of a whole brand discussion.

– A new website is being proposed, it is an opportunity to create a brand, based on the current logo.

I have to get back to Python stuff now. Also I am not a brand designer, just a somewhat experienced brand evaluator.

-- 
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On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 05:01:44 UTC, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> – Branding is important.
...
> – A new website is being proposed, it is an opportunity to create a
> brand, based on the current logo.

All this "branding" sounds like branding cows. ;) Not the most pleasant procedure.

My humble opinion is while even D's syntax is so far away from being settled, not to mention the absense of RTL or IDE, it's way too early to brand anything.

Look at Java, PHP, or, say, Linux - all have pretty simple, or even weird, logos (fat penguin with tits? wtf?) and they never really cared about "branding" their creations, but they had tremendous success because they concentrated on the code quality instead.

This is getting really out of hand. I never intended to propose a new logo designed by me. I just implemented what was in Aleksandar Ruzicic's mockup enough to show that it was feasible and started working from there. I'm waiting for someone with honest graphic design experience to find a way to fit a logo which both fits the brand and the new site design. Bearing in mind that brand identity is often evolving to fit the world around it.

As always, I encourage others to contribute to the new design. Nothing I'm working on should be considered a finished product, and I'm working on it in what time I have available during evenings and weekends, and responding to feedback, in the hope that I can contribute to a site redesign for the purpose of generating more site traffic. I would greatly appreciate any pull requests for the project, including good changes in design, new (maybe from old) pages, improvements to the framework, and so on. If you feel strongly enough to talk about how much you hate a logo for hours, your energy would be better spent designing a logo to replace it.

On 7/1/2014 11:53 PM, w0rp wrote:
> This is getting really out of hand. I never intended to propose a new logo
> designed by me. I just implemented what was in Aleksandar Ruzicic's mockup
> enough to show that it was feasible and started working from there. I'm waiting
> for someone with honest graphic design experience to find a way to fit a logo
> which both fits the brand and the new site design. Bearing in mind that brand
> identity is often evolving to fit the world around it.
>
> As always, I encourage others to contribute to the new design. Nothing I'm
> working on should be considered a finished product, and I'm working on it in
> what time I have available during evenings and weekends, and responding to
> feedback, in the hope that I can contribute to a site redesign for the purpose
> of generating more site traffic. I would greatly appreciate any pull requests
> for the project, including good changes in design, new (maybe from old) pages,
> improvements to the framework, and so on. If you feel strongly enough to talk
> about how much you hate a logo for hours, your energy would be better spent
> designing a logo to replace it.

I do appreciate the effort you've put into this, despite my liking the existing logo.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 06:53:42 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> If you feel strongly enough to talk about how much you hate a logo for hours, your energy would be better spent designing a logo to replace it.

I did. I posted a flat SVG version that use a minimal amount of beziers and circles to approximate the current design without gradients. The advantage is that you can inline it in the HTML and get automatic retina resolution and fast loading. It needs tweaking, though.

One advantage of using a flat look is that gradients are more heavy to render and creates problems if you try to do animation. So yes, getting rid of the gradients is a good idea.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 07:30:11 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 06:53:42 UTC, w0rp wrote:
>> If you feel strongly enough to talk about how much you hate a logo for hours, your energy would be better spent designing a logo to replace it.
>
> I did. I posted a flat SVG version that use a minimal amount of beziers and circles to approximate the current design without gradients. The advantage is that you can inline it in the HTML and get automatic retina resolution and fast loading. It needs tweaking, though.
>
> One advantage of using a flat look is that gradients are more heavy to render and creates problems if you try to do animation. So yes, getting rid of the gradients is a good idea.

Thanks! Is there a chance you could upload the SVG somewhere I can download it? I tried copy and pasting the XML into a file and loading that, but I messed something up somewhere and it came out looking very wrong.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 07:44:14 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> Thanks! Is there a chance you could upload the SVG somewhere I can download it? I tried copy and pasting the XML into a file and loading that, but I messed something up somewhere and it came out looking very wrong.

My fault, it was late at night and I did a cut'n'paste from emacs that retained the "\" at the line-wrapping. This should work in your browser. You can tweak the location of the circles using cx, cy, and stretch the "D" using scale(), and move it using translate(). The viewBox should probably be redefined to be tighter.

The cool thing about having it inlined is that you can animate the colour of each element using CSS (like having the circles fade in first).

<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>D logo test</title>
<div style="background:#800;padding:10px;">
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 36 25" style="fill:#fff;">
<circle cx="27.2" cy="8.7" r="5.8"/>
<circle cx="34.1" cy="2.4" r="1.9"/>
<path transform="scale(1 -1.04)translate(0 -31)"  d="M 0.745,6.162 C 0.3725,6.162 0,6.534 0,6.907 L 0,29.255 C 0,29.63 0.37,30 0.745,30 L 10.057,30 C 21.6,30 26.445,24.04 26.45,17.92 26.45,11.8 21.59,6.17 10,6.16 L 0.74,6.16 z M 5.59,10.63 11.92,10.63 C 15.64,10.6 20.86,13.24 20.86,18.08 20.86,22.92 15.64,25.53 11.92,25.53 L 5.59,25.53 5.59,10.63 z"/>
</svg>
</div>

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 08:00:59 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 07:44:14 UTC, w0rp wrote:
>> Thanks! Is there a chance you could upload the SVG somewhere I can download it? I tried copy and pasting the XML into a file and loading that, but I messed something up somewhere and it came out looking very wrong.
>
> My fault, it was late at night and I did a cut'n'paste from emacs that retained the "\" at the line-wrapping. This should work in your browser. You can tweak the location of the circles using cx, cy, and stretch the "D" using scale(), and move it using translate(). The viewBox should probably be redefined to be tighter.
>
> The cool thing about having it inlined is that you can animate the colour of each element using CSS (like having the circles fade in first).
>
> <!DOCTYPE html>
> <title>D logo test</title>
> <div style="background:#800;padding:10px;">
> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 36 25" style="fill:#fff;">
> <circle cx="27.2" cy="8.7" r="5.8"/>
> <circle cx="34.1" cy="2.4" r="1.9"/>
> <path transform="scale(1 -1.04)translate(0 -31)"  d="M 0.745,6.162 C 0.3725,6.162 0,6.534 0,6.907 L 0,29.255 C 0,29.63 0.37,30 0.745,30 L 10.057,30 C 21.6,30 26.445,24.04 26.45,17.92 26.45,11.8 21.59,6.17 10,6.16 L 0.74,6.16 z M 5.59,10.63 11.92,10.63 C 15.64,10.6 20.86,13.24 20.86,18.08 20.86,22.92 15.64,25.53 11.92,25.53 L 5.59,25.53 5.59,10.63 z"/>
> </svg>
> </div>

Ah, thank you. I think that looks pretty good.

I know what you're saying about drawing gradients being a bit slow. I tried using a linear gradient in the background coming out from the logo, so it looked a bit like light reflecting from a Martian moon or something, but it very negatively impacted the smoothness of scrolling through a page on every browser I tried. Rasterising the logo to fit a gradient in like the current logo I think is an acceptable option though. It stays at one fixed size pretty much.

On 01/07/2014 10:29 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/1/2014 10:45 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
>> Here is the present and official D logo:
>>
>> http://media.sukimashita.com/d/d-5.svg
>>
>> I suggest we keep it.
>
>
> All excellent points, and I agree with you on all of them. And I like
> the current logo, and want to keep it.

So what counts as the current logo? That exact image and no other?

Which of the colours from the gradient fills do we match the colour scheme of a refreshed website to?

If there is going to be "no change" to the branding, can we at least have a definitive statement of what the current brand is that isn't just a link to a single image.

[Incidentally, I found the copyright notice that goes with the current logo at the bottom of this page: http://media.sukimashita.com/d/ (the gallery of designs that the current logo was chosen from)]

A...

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 08:27:06 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> Ah, thank you. I think that looks pretty good.

I can redo it so that the lines are pixel aligned for sharp edges when the design is final. It depends on the actual size of the logo so it should be the last step in the redesign.

> I know what you're saying about drawing gradients being a bit slow.

They can be, especially on low-power machines. Though, I suspect CSS gradients are faster than SVG gradients on some browsers.

Getting fast reflow of the layout is important for how people perceive a website like this, I think. So simple is sometimes better than fancy.

> I tried using a linear gradient in the background coming out from the logo, so it looked a bit like light reflecting from a Martian moon or something, but it very negatively impacted the smoothness of scrolling through a page on every browser I tried. Rasterising the logo to fit a gradient in like the current logo I think is an acceptable option though. It stays at one fixed size pretty much.

Yes, unfortunately SVG and image fills are buggy in some browsers, but scaling up a blurry gradient is of course not a big issue either. It is possible to get some of the same visual feeling with flat shading and a modified design.

However, I'd rather suggest doing a layout redesign where you avoid the rectangle and thus don't need the same kind of balancing act. Like having an off-white page with a dark colour side bar on the left and impose the white logo on top of it. Or embed the the D logo in a red circle (a very powerful symbol, think of how recognizable Lucky Strike branding is).

I'll come up with a suggestion later.