[cgiapp] CGI::Application Logo

Ron Savage ron at savage.net.au
Mon Aug 17 22:02:17 EDT 2009 

Hi Alex

OK. Bushfires are at a minimum, at least for the moment, so I have time
to reply.

On Sat, 2009-08-08 at 23:46 +0200, Alex wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I don't think that anyone who does such things like design as a professional
> would consider the logo any good. No offense to the effort creating one, but
> I would consider it an absolute failure.
> I have to admit, and I think I'm not the only one, that I'm not able do it
> any better. I such at designing things. But I would rather stick with the
> old logo, than inventing something much more worse.

Well, if you can't do better, then you can't really claim to speak on
behalf of professionals.

> I think, when you proposed to make CA somewhat more visible to the world,
> you didn't indent to trigger negative reaction because the image looks like
> crap. Let's have a somewhat realistic look at the logo.
> 
> It uses three colors. Corflowerblue (I think it's the name of the

It's SkyBlue, as used by Image::Magick.

> wannabe-blue in the background), red and yellow. The only purpose of these
> colors is to distract the viewers eyes. They do, because the colors don't
> stick together. It's like a car crash. It's damn ugly, but you can't look
> away. Sure, a car crash causes attention, people probably will talk about
> it, or even take a closer look. But the general intention is negative.

Nope. The purpose is to remind the viewer of the real world, where a
reddish and yellow sun appears in a blue sky.

These colours are warm, friendly, and comforting, besides being
universally familiar.

> It was a football player who said, that the round thing must fit in the
> square thing. But there isn't even a nice square thing. Omitting the blue
> background would be a start. Then the need to put the read font on white
> background for the CA lettering would not exists. Do you ever saw a
> professional web page with red font color on white background? Did you ever
> feel such thing would be easy to read? No (I hope). Even if there are error
> messages on a webpage that have a red font color, they have a dark
> background for the contrast. Mostly they don't use red, they use something
> like orange, or #b42e33 or wine.

Come one! It's not that hard to read, surely. It's for glancing at and,
hopefully, recognizing. It's hardly a War and Peace type of thing.

And it's not meant to be a web page, but a logo on a web page. And given
the likelihood the containing pages will soon be many and varied in
colour, having a logo which does /not/ vanish because it's too similar
to many web pages, can't be all bad.

> Then, what is the meaning of the round yellow-red thing? Are we related to
> sun? Is there any reason why it is a round thing? Why don't just pick a
> triangle? Or, totally unrelated to a plugin featuring framework, a puzzle
> piece?

Yes, it's the sun, as explained above. Perhaps that's just my Australian
background peeking thru.

And if you wish to put the Freudian interpretation on it, that's it's a
baby emerging from the womb, I certainly wouldn't mind, since Perl and
CGI::App is our babies.

And let me repeat, these a positive, strong, and life-affirming
connotations.

Compare that, for instance, with the obsolete-before-it-was-released,
black-and-white, on the new perldoc web site: http://perldoc.perl.org/

Yuksville!

Of course, anyone can impose their own interpretations on it, anyway.

> It's not that I simply want to arbitrary flame your approach. I wish I could
> do it any better. I would spend you a new logo (for free, in mercy). But if
> I would try to make a logo now, it would be done in paint and have a similar
> look. I just really hope, that this logo won't make it to the official
> representative logo of CA - or any log representing CA.

I do appreciate that you're frank enough to say that.

But if you're not going to do it, who will? And do we need a new logo?

These are reasonable questions.

I deliberately aimed to avoid the mechanical connotations of the cog,
even though it's based on the wheel, and thus bears some similarity to
my design.

The problem with the old logo is precisely that mechanical/masculine
look-and-feel. We don't need it - that's what I'm saying.

> So *please*, don't use this logo. Use the old one instead. Let it look like
> a machine, like a pluggable mechanism intended for use by geeks only. It's
> not that bad. On the contrary, I find it (the old one) really good.

Nobody /has/ to use it, and I would not go so far as to say my design is
superb. It isn't. There's something lacking I agree. But since I'm not a
graphic designed either, I have not yet worked out what needs to be
fixed.

Nevertheless, I hope this discussion will propel others to dabble in
similar experiments.

> That's my (personal) opinion on the logo.

Likewise.

> Regards, Alex
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cgiapp-bounces at lists.openlib.org
> [mailto:cgiapp-bounces at lists.openlib.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Carville
> Sent: Samstag, 8. August 2009 18:17
> To: CGI Application
> Subject: Re: [cgiapp] CGI::Application Logo
> 
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 7:46 PM, Ron Savage<ron at savage.net.au> wrote:
> > Hi Folks
> >
> > Here's a sample:
> >
> > http://savage.net.au/three.jpg
> 
> Thanks.  Here is an example of it in use.  You won't be able to get past the
> login page but the remainder have a similar layout.
> 
> http://www.totalflood.com/tf-check
> 
> --
> Stephen Carville
> 
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-- 
Ron Savage
ron at savage.net.au
http://savage.net.au/index.html

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