Son of more Fedora.next logos!


Where we left off last time was basically a brain dump of some random ideas. Thank you again for all of the great feedback and commentary around the designs. It really seems that folks are digging the “C” series of logo designs the most – here’s a bunch of iterations of that concept:
00-c-series
A lot of comments focused on the cloud logo not looking quite like a cloud, but the other logos worked pretty well. Other comments talk about how the cloud logo represented ‘scaling up,’ which is a good thing to represent. I poked around a bit with the cloud logo, keeping the vertical design for “scale up,” but varying the heights of the components to suggest a cloud a bit more:
01-cloud-shapes
Here’s those shape variations in context with the other logo designs:
02-cloud-shapes-in-context
Ryan and I talked a little bit about how these shapes are so simple, we could do a lot of cool treatments with them. One issue with making a logo design too ‘cool’ or ‘trendy’ is that the logo tends to get dated quickly. The basic shape of the C series logo designs, though, is that they are so simple they could have a timeless quality about them. You could dress them up with a particular treatment and then go back to basics or use a different treatment to keep up with trends but also not date the logo as trends change. We both really like this recent geometric pixelly fill kind of design (there are a few examples in the pixely pinterest board I put together), and Ryan came up with a great workflow to create these textures using the prerelease version of Inkscape from his copr repo. (We need to document and blog that too, of course. 🙂 I promised banas I’d make it happen!)
Anyway, here are the original C series mockups with that kind of treatment:
03-treatment
Well, anyway! That’s just an update on my thinking here using your feedback. banas has also put together a blog post with some great sketches / iterations for the logo, and I suggest you take a look at his ideas and give him some feedback too:

Dreaming up Fedora.next logos

I know he had some computer issues that prevented him from being able to do these up in Inkscape, but he agreed to share his sketches as a work-in-progress – I think this is a great open way of sharing ideas.
Of course, as I hope is clear by now – your ideas and sketches are most certainly welcome as well, and we’d really love it if you riffed off the ideas that have already been posed by myself, Ryan, and banas. I think together we’ll end up with something really awesome. 🙂
In case you want to have a play with any of the stuff posted here, I’ve uploaded the SVG containing the assets:
http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/fedora-logos/next/fedora-next.5.svg
Enjoy 🙂 Productive feedback welcomed in the comments or on the design-team mailing list.

27 Comments

  1. I like it. I agree, this is going to end up awesome.
    This may be so obvious that it’s not even worth saying, but, eh, just for the record: the simple shapes also go into the fedora-shape leaf/speech-bubble very comfortably.

  2. zeta says:

    Hello Máirín,
    I still don’t understand how you can make 2 or 3 straight lines look that awesome 😉
    The cloud is really the tricky one here, but the other two are so simple they are beautiful. Workstation icon is for me better like this than with a lot of buttons to try to mimic the keyboard.
    Sarup’s blog contains good ideas too, but the logos here are a lot simpler which I prefer. I really like his strip A with the fedora logo as the main item, and then only the product icon.
    By the way, Sarup’s take on the cloud icon in strip A may be something to dig a little bit, with the central line not aligned vertically with the two lines on the sides. But I have not enough skills in design to help more there, unfortunately…
    Ryan’s icons are a lot more explicit, but are more complex than the ones here (so will look old faster), and are less consistent between the 3 icons (square workstation, rectangle servers, rounded cloud). But as it is more recognizable for anyone, it is an interesting way.
    How much could they be simplified to find a middle ground between yours and his ?
    Thanks for this, it is a pleasure to follow, and to see how things evolve from the first ideas to the final icon !

  3. I really like E2. It’s simple, effective, and is an easy way to visually distinguish the three versions. I think the cloud logo should be more visually distinguished from the server that a simple 90 degree rotation like A2, and E2 does that. Simple and effective, good work.
    Also, best domain name evar.

  4. F or G are looking pretty awesome. I have to say they look even better without Fedora logo hanging over them. They provide aesthetic clarity on what product is about.

  5. AnoniMouse says:

    Hi, nice designs here. But I’ld actually like 2 c a even more simple version, meaning not round. Maybe just polygons more or less in the same shaped as u did. u know, im the kinda guys, who think that lines r “building” shapes. yeah, im really a minimalistic person 😉

  6. shaiton says:

    love it:)
    I prefere A2 however using H without text (pic only) would be good where the full logo does not fit.

  7. A combination of H+E2 looks like a best choice to me. Thanks for working this way with all of us on the new artwork!

  8. Alexander Smirnov says:

    Variant for workstation with more grid. – http://inkscaper.fedorapeople.org/Fedora.Next/Brand/

  9. William Moreno says:

    I like a lot this set of logos, design are very clean :), will work great fors stickers 😉

  10. Maria Nedelcu says:

    I vote for E2. I agree with Scott Baker: simple, distinguished, clear.

  11. Agree 100% with zeta about amazeballs. 🙂 I like E1 and B1 cloud icons, and E2/B2 similarly look right to mewhen I compare them among all the arrangements. I like the asymmetry of B1/B2 but I can easily see how E1/E2 might be preferred by people who don’t dig any asymmetry. (B1/B2 seem more cloudy in that the asymmetry gives off the sense of a random cloud formation.) I’m not so strongly in favor of B1/B2 that I don’t like E1/E2; I’d be happy with either. I like F in the treatments, while G and H seem busy in terms of their color pattern. But it’s such a minor quibble, I honestly like all of F-H.

  12. All of them are nice, but there has to be a way to differentiate the server from the cloud besides rotation, so E2 seems the best option for me.

  13. neil says:

    Mairin,
    Don’t over-think the cloud logo. The first time I saw the original uniform height logo I understood the symbolism. From a physical perspective, the vertical lines represent rack cabinets in a data centre and from a logical perspective they represent the horizontal scalability of virtual servers. So cool to capture that so beautifully, and with such simplicity.

  14. John says:

    I echo neil’s comments about the cloud logo. The A1 iteration for the cloud logo works best for me. I love F, G & H. This is going in the right direction! Cool work Máirín!

  15. C2 and D2 suited well for the theme. E2 is too close to Cisco logo. When I come to one choice, C2 distinguishs itself.

  16. Noel Casimiro says:

    The E2 set is the best so far because the logos are visually unique with each other.
    E2 Server: 3 parallel and proportionate horizontal bars which resembles a server rack.
    E2 Workstation: 2 horizontal bars, 1 disproportionate with the other. Resembles a desktop.
    E2 Cloud: 3 parallel and disproportionate vertical bars. It signifies the vertical scaling of cloud computing and also our natural cloud (in the sky). Clouds in the sky are disproportionate.
    Suggestion: Why not the Fedora speech bubble instead of circle?

  17. random.user says:

    A bit unrelated to your post (SORRY!) but I noticed you used to contribute to openclipart.org, and you had some beautiful images… come back and share some more?? 🙂

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