Daniel J Pezely wrote:

Brandon wrote:

...

For shits and giggles, how about a LispSea logo?

What? You don't like the cappuccino inside parens?

...or have you not been to http://wiki.alu.org/lispsea since early last week?

Oops, my bad! Yes I did see it, multiple times... and I promptly forgot it, multiple times. Which means it's not entirely doing its job. Hmm, now what's working about it? Those are good parens. I like the shape of the parens. But they are black, and so they blend right into the rest of the black headers of the webpage. I am not inclined to regard the parens as a logo, but rather as a textual mark. If they were a different color, or if the black LispSea text wasn't immediately above them, and black text wasn't flowing out to the side of them, it would work better. For instance, putting the logo at the top center of the page, alone. That said, a logo should stand out no matter where you put it, or it's not really doing its job. As for the coffee. I only contemplated this the 1st time I saw it, and my reaction was, "Huh?" I was wondering if it had some relationship to the SIGGRAPH Teapot, like this was an endemmic Lisp symbol I just didn't know about. It didn't even cross my mind that a cup of cappuccino represents Seattle. To me it represents Italy, because I've spent time there and know what a real capuccino is supposed to be like. When I think of Seattle, I think of lattes. A tall, milked-down American caffeine beverage product, made ubiquitous by Starbucks. In time, I hope Americans become more sophisticated in their taste, but if the beer market is any guide it won't happen on a mass scale. I also find the use of a photograph problematic. A good logo needs to be visually simple and have strong graphic qualities. A version of it should be printable in black & white for letterheads and such, and it should look decent that way. The smooth transitional tones of a photograph are not good for logos; in particular, the shadow complexity of this one. I have an additional content problem with the use of a cup of coffee. Consider the Java logo, http://www.java.com Do you really want people mistaking Lisp for Java? Note, however: the Java logo is an excellent treatise on what a logo is supposed to be. Simple, strongly graphical, memorable. In summary: +1 parens -1 black -1 photo -1 cappuccino Black and photo can be fixed easily enough. The cup 'o' Java is a dealbreaker. No can do. Looking at http://www.seattle.gov/ , I propose some version of the Space Needle as a symbol for Seattle. Yeah that's a little dull but a lot of the world knows that building, and "dull" isn't a bad thing for business promotion anyways. I thought about Chief Seattle, but that's just gonna look like some injun to everybody else out there. Can anyone think of anything else symbolic of Seattle? Or anything clever, interesting, and memorable about Lisp that would be unique to us. We want to avoid confusing ourselves with other languages, technologies, and non-computer products. The parens will go a long way towards that, a lot of things can be reasonably inserted between them, but bear it in mind. Cheers, Brandon Van Every

On 6/13/06, Brandon J. Van Every <bvanevery@gmail.com> wrote:

Daniel J Pezely wrote:

...

Brandon wrote: In summary:

+1 parens -1 black -1 photo -1 cappuccino

15 minutes (of trying to do anything but what I'm supposed to do at work) with a (Mac) graphics program plus graphic from a free stock photo site yields (beware, huge PNG designed to be scaled down): http://tunes.org/~water/LispSea.png *shrug* Probably a total waste of time, but at least it can be funged with. -- -Brian T. Rice

BTW I am not saying I have a problem with the current wiki page, for now. I'm saying, down the line, the logo needs a redesign. It is not a priority at present. I will cough some things out when I get back from Yakima and see what people think. I'm not afraid of critiques; good logos require brutality. I'll probably be thinking about whether I can spin it in 3D as well. Cheers, Brandon Van Every