OpenTK needs a logo

Posted Monday, 10 November, 2008 - 07:11 by the Fiddler

Project:	The Open Toolkit library
Version:	all versions
Component:	Miscellaneous
Category:	task
Priority:	normal
Assigned:	Unassigned
Status:	open

It would be good if the website logo and splash screen logo are exactly the same. To increase recognition. That means it should work at very least on the website's background color and black background. (maybe black outline around it)
The logo might be shown next to the OpenGL and OpenAL logos. It should not be too freaked out compared to them.
Rather work with shapes and color, instead of glow, lensflare or other state-of-the-art effect.
The logo should be sharp, not too blurry.
People who use OpenTK are software engineers. Some kind of tool or parts used in engineering are good candidates for a symbol or icon. This is not limited to nuts&bolts or gears, think fine mechanics (e.g. clock) or electronics (e.g. computer hardware).
OpenTK assumes cross-platform through .Net&Mono is the future. No medieval fonts. No anvil. No forge. No brutish tools.
OpenTK favors productivity over full low-level control. A "simple, yet elegant" logo could imply this.

Comments

OK I got an idea - please comment on this first draft:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/1381/opentkeu5.png
(I know the art is lame - but maybe the idea is something a better artist than me can brush up upon?)

I like that! Actually the bolt itself can respresent both letters. "T" sideview, "O" bottomview. But the nut makes a great "O" anyway.

Please don't mix green and blue, they are too close to each other on the color wheel. Best effect is when you use colors from opposite sides of the wheel.

Often when thinking of a tool kit, it it represented by a gear.
The thought here is that OpenTK is a tool kit (gear) made up of other tool kits (OpenGL, OpenAL, etc...) and they form the inner workings of OpenTK.
The attached opentk2.txt is actually a svg file. I used Inkscape to make the logo. Feel free to modify or change it however you want.

Attachment	Size
opentk2.txt	30.62 KB

Thanks, interesting idea.

(Fixed the settings so you can directly upload svg files now.)

Inertia - I used gray and green, not blue and green.

Too bad the new site theme is blue and green :)

I see some amazing updates on the website, I am glad for this. ;-)

Inertia - I used gray and green, not blue and green.

Indeed. :)

As I understand it, Inertia is challenging guideline #4 from the opening post. I'm no artist, but he does have a point: an orange color would contrast the blue theme more than a green one.

Keep the ideas coming!

Oh - sorry for the misunderstanding then! :)

Yep, was merely pointing out that 4) in the list will result in "biting". Due to color problems, we cannot use the logo I made for the wallpaper/splash screen a while ago either. (It's not a good idea changing the website to black background at this time of the year.)

The 'gear' idea has potential, especially for a 16x16 icon (for the top-left of a form). It's very hard to do anything with such a low resolution, but 2-3 gears might fit in there. With the nuts&bolts I still have problems wrapping my brain around abbreviating OpenTK with OT. OTK - maybe. TK - sure. but OT?

Well -- in pure english and the way you pronounce OpenTK is "Open Toolkit". That's just english.

But sure - a single gear is easier in a 16x16 icon than a nut+bolt. But is there a big demand for 16x16 icons these days..? I'd rather like a cool logo in higher resolution instead ... And just having the nut in 16x16 icons is one trick.

But I'm speaking for my own idea - democracy is the way to go in the open source world.

Another idea is a gear + bolt. The bolt could "grip into" (or whatever you say, hope you understand what I mean..) the gear for example.

I like gears - I've loved them since childhood - I even told a toy-store owner "I love gears." But Gears are so over-used in logos for mechanics, software etc. etc. It's just very popular.

My 2cc

How about this as a temporary solution? I'd really like to have more color up there, and orange should work well with blue. No offense, but that green and blue up there does simply not work.

@objarni: I don't really want to walk the "was done before" road, it's pretty subjective what has been overused and something uniquely original is very rare to find.

Inertia, would you mind making the background transparent? It's a little difficult to visualize this on a blue background right now :)

check e-mail, maybe rotate the moon 120° CW and put it into the upper-left corner of the site? Might be more interesting and *could* look as if the OpenTK letters illuminate it ;)

Ok, I've uploaded the suggested logos. You can view them by clicking on "My account" -> "Edit" and selecting one of the different "test" themes.

Inertia, I've rotated the planet as you suggested. JTalton, I've changed the hue to orange and rendered the svg at 256x256. Objarni, I've tried to take the "OT" part of your mockup, but GIMP changed the gradients for some reason (or maybe it's due to alpha transparency).

I've also made some minor alterations to the layout (header takes 100% width now, instead of 90%). Note that the test themes, unlike the main one, are not optimized for speed.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Edit: Make sure to refresh twice after changing the theme, otherwise the layout may be garbled.

Gears get my vote, assuming those semi-transparent ones can be removed. Maybe it would be best if someone with solidworks or some similar CAD software experience models it and make sure the width/height of the teeth fits precisely, so it could work in reality?

My vote goes to the orange planet as it is positioned in community test theme. Maybe with a small visual game in the letters of Open TK?

I would like to lend you a hand :), I had created the previous OpenTK logo (yep it's me, Kostas :P )... If I were to start an OpenTK logo from scratch, I would seriously consider your ideas, also I would mix all of them and come up with:

[] Style with Gears -> Mechanics (nuts and bolts seems quite nice, but I can't figure out where to place them...)
[] Style with CAD/Electric -> Principles / Theory (more formal CAD style than the current abstract-geometric)
[] Colorful -> Cross platform / Easy / Fun (like the nice palete Inertia posted)
[] Extras -> Planets? Not sure enough, perhaps it would be a reference to OpenGL's "eclipse".
[] Other -> Would be the the letters glossy and crystalized? Definitely! :P

Think about them, and propose/add your own ideas.

Nice work everybody ... Some ideas:

While I think both 16x16 icons and website-logos in top left corner are nice and somewhat important (especially the latter), I think the OpenTK community should concentrate more on a good-looking bitmap for the intros of our games.

Remember Steams (the ones that created HalfLife) man-with-red-"thing" in his eyes? It hardly fits 16x16 icons. So please think a little more broadly on what the image expresses. And if you build a game - you really like to design your own game icon, not use OpenTKs.

I'm not saying this is a company logo - but I surely would like the logo to look at least semi-professional.

I still vote for my own *idea* -- not implementation. So flopoloco if you could try that idea a little I would appreciate it. I'm thinking symbolic (some shaded polygons maybe implicit borders - what do you mean by you don't know how to place them?)

Nut + bolt = fits together, just like the parts of OpenTK fit together nice. Sure gears do that to - but a logo should be _identifiable_ (ie. you should recognize it and not mix it with something else ... Linux Penguin, Gnus GNU etc.) and frankly a nut+bolt is much more unique than yet another gear... Even Inertia must admit this! :)

So what is the extreme hurry? We've had this discussion, what, two days?

I see your point objarni here, and you are right. Nice idea you have for the intro screens, I like it.

Who said we are in a hurry? We do need a logo, preferrably something appealing and distinctive and we should take the time to get it right. No need to rush things here! :)

Here is my contribution: a simple, somewhat stylized "OpenTK" (hey, Microsoft gets away with this, so why not? :p) At this point, I'm trying to get the shape right (no colors). Typeface is Gentium, which we can actually redistribute with OpenTK. This means we could conceptually code a short "intro" that we can include in programs, using nothing but the font renderer.

Flames welcome.

Attachment	Size
logo_simple11.png	26.28 KB
logo_simple10.png	27.07 KB
logos.7z	400.41 KB

I like the simple text without the graphic.

Fiddler: When you and Inertia started modifying the site with the three ideas available - I got the impresseion that was all we had and had to choose then and there.

Maybe we could peek a little at SDL (SimpleDirectMedia Library):

Programming libraries seem to have a fetish about simple text logos. Glorified programmer's art?

(I love the last one)

The OpenTK thingy is alright but I don't like the look of that font. What's got orient to do with this project?

Here is the same concept with Helvetica, which is as unassuming as it gets. Is this any better?

Edit: reduced size.

Attachment	Size
logo_helvetica.png	19.24 KB

I liked the first two better ..

Well, I made this a while ago to be a centered, non-tiled wallpaper.

No spacing between letters. Looks solid and implies to have certain weight.
Standard Impact font, with a twist in the N letter.
the N looks rather sharp. Cutting Edge! :p
Color choice derived from the color-wheel above.
Looks slightly overbright on LCD, but just right on CRT.
Slightly overloaded. There's no focus point that draws attention.
Only 1 out of 3 people could decipher it on first sight.
The slogan really, horribly sucks.

As you may have noticed: I like color. Please, let's have some color in the logo. Thanks!

Here's what I think the website logo guidelines should be:

It would be good if the website logo and splash screen logo are exactly the same. To increase recognition. That means it should work at very least on the website's background color and black background. (maybe black outline around it)
The logo might be shown next to the OpenGL and OpenAL logos. It should not be too freaked out compared to them.
Rather work with shapes and color, instead of glow, lensflare or other state-of-the-art effect.
The logo should be sharp, not too blurry.
People who use OpenTK are software engineers. Some kind of tool or parts used in engineering are good candidates for a symbol or icon. This is not limited to nuts&bolts or gears, think fine mechanics (e.g. clock) or electronics (e.g. computer hardware).
OpenTK assumes cross-platform through .Net&Mono is the future. No medieval fonts. No anvil. No forge. No brutish tools.
OpenTK favors productivity over full low-level control. A "simple, yet elegant" logo could imply this.

The website is something like your business card and 1st impression is important. This list is probably not perfect or complete, but it narrows down the options alot. Feel free to criticize, art is very subjective. (Some people love Van Gogh's work, some think it stinks.)

@objarni: Shouldn't we sort out the website logo first, before icon and splash screen? I know you like to go Off-Topic and OT is your favorite abbreviation for OpenTK. But please, 1 thing at a time :P

@flopoloco: Forget about the planet. It was just the first (c)-free image found on my disk, that could replace the spawn-mask's shape.

@Fiddler: I don't get what does the logo design implies - is OpenTK a reciprocal?

It is meant to emphasize openness and imply speed, but YMMV (I'm an engineer, not an artist :p)

Mind if I copy the guitelines to the opening post?

Edit: Nvm, just did that ;)

Edit 2: Which slogan are you talking about..?

"Structure requires a solid core to build upon" from the molten-metal logo

Home of the Open Toolkit library

OpenTK needs a logo

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