[ANN] Redesign 2005, Round Two

[James Britt]

Hi James,

We kind of made our work based on our ideas and the feedback we've got
on the first round, but that doesn't mean that we will impose that
logo or that we all think it's perfect. In fact, I'm glad a lot of
people is participating right now and I liked to read your opinion, as
it all adds for a better outcome.

Oh I don't mean to suggest there is some sort of secret society planning
out the "Ruby look", and it would be crazy to try to get constant
feedback during the process.

James

 

[ES]

Hi --

Now that there is (mostly) agreement on a ruby icon, I think it would be= =20
great to come up with some nice images to put on our own websites/blog.
I'm not just thinking of "ruby powered" images but also something like=20
"Ruby Developer", "I Love Ruby", "Ruby Contributor" and such on the lines= =20
of the mono gif[1]. What do people think of this?

This one has graphical problems and I know of them, but perhaps somebody f= rom=20
the VI-Team would be able to take the idea and rework it consistently into= =20
the style of the current gem graphic. I'm not sure what the exacts=20
requirements for being considered a "Ruby Hacker" would be (do we need the= m=20
at all?) but chris2 seems to have suggested that being in the change log o= r=20
not might be one.

There's no requirement for being considered a Ruby hacker other than
that you be a Ruby hacker and want to call yourself that. (I usually
go with "Rubyist".) Or that you are not one but want people to think
you are

Woo hoo! I will experiment a bit and put out a couple t-shirt
designs. There is an 'official' ruby non-profit, right?

David

E

 

[Nikolai Weibull]

Ilias Lazaridis, May 11:

Nikolai Weibull wrote:

Simply open an new thread, [SLOGAN] ..., and ask the community to post
a slogan.

Then collect the results on a wiki-page, thus anyone can review for
some time.

please note:

The new [slogan] will not [be] selected by democracy (vote).

It results out of research, reasoning and rationality.

Or?,
nikolai

 

[Rob .]

Mark Hubbart, May 11:
=20
Then how about making the comment read "Ruby: Makes Programming Fun!"?,

+1 for "Makes Programming Fun"

 

[gabriele renzi]

Nikolai Weibull ha scritto:

Mark Hubbart, May 11:




Then how about making the comment read “Ruby: Makes Programming Fun!�,
nikolai

IMVVHO "Ruby: Fun Oriented Programming" is still the best

 

[Nikolai Weibull]

gabriele renzi, May 11:

IMVVHO "Ruby: Fun Oriented Programming" is still the best

That’d be “Ruby: Fun-Oriented Programming†actually. Perhaps this
spin-off is viable as well: “Ruby: Putting The ‘Fun’ In Object-Oriented
Programmingâ€. This would be a reference to the “putting the ‘fun’ in
functional programmingâ€-type comment about functional programming
languages,
nikolai

 

[John W. Long]

Thanks Jeff, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. I lot of what I
am trying to communicate through the current design is the elegance of
the Ruby language. It's not just fun, it's beautiful. I want the website
to be that way too.

 

[Paul Battley]

Then how about making the comment read "Ruby: Makes Programming Fun!"?,

IMVVHO "Ruby: Fun Oriented Programming" is still the best

Personally, I rather like the "best friend" slogan on the current
redesign, although I think it should be "The programmer's best friend"
rather than "A ~".

Paul.

 

[David A. Black]

Hi --

Personally, I rather like the "best friend" slogan on the current
redesign, although I think it should be "The programmer's best friend"
rather than "A ~".

I agree. I actually think that while programming Ruby is indeed fun,
asserting "fun" can be a turn-off. Let people discover it themselves



David

 

[Paul Battley]

Oops. Before anyone gets confused and/or upset about the placement of
the previous reply in the thread, I feel I should preemptively
apologise and attempt to shift the blame entirely onto Gmail's
flattened threading display.

Paul.

 

[Paul Battley]

I agree. I actually think that while programming Ruby is indeed fun,
asserting "fun" can be a turn-off. Let people discover it themselves

Exactly. If you need to say that something is fun, experience says
that it usually isn't!

Paul.

 

[Nikolai Weibull]

Paul Battley, May 11:

Personally, I rather like the "best friend" slogan on the current
redesign, although I think it should be "The programmer's best friend"
rather than "A ~".

No, no. The indefinite is definitely the way to go,
nikolai

 

[gabriele renzi]

Nikolai Weibull ha scritto:

gabriele renzi, May 11:




That’d be “Ruby: Fun-Oriented Programming†actually. Perhaps this
spin-off is viable as well: “Ruby: Putting The ‘Fun’ In Object-Oriented
Programmingâ€. This would be a reference to the “putting the ‘fun’ in
functional programmingâ€-type comment about functional programming
languages,
nikolai

then should'nt our become "putting the 'proc' in .." ?

 

[Nikolai Weibull]

gabriele renzi, May 11:

then should'nt our become "putting the 'proc' in .." ?

Heh, I guess so ,
nikolai

 

[Karl von Laudermann]

Yea, I am not a fan of that logo either. I personally like Michel
Martens' version that looks like a red square with a thick red border
and the top-right corner is hacked off to give a sort of silhouette of
a ruby. Not that John's isn't a lovely image however.

I like the gem logo. The square logo that you like looks sterile and
corporate to me. The site mockup that uses it doesn't look like the
home page of an open source programming language with a vibrant user
community; it looks like the corporate web page of RubySoft, Inc.

anything other than a computer screen, or at smaller sizes. It's got
that distinct Photoshop'd look to it.

Huh? What would you try to reproduce the image on, where it wouldn't
start out as a Photoshop file anyway? You want it on a piece of paper?
Print it out. You want it on a T-shirt or banner? Send the Photoshop
file to a print shop. The logo is all geometric shapes and gradient
fills. There's no reason the source image can't be vector-based instead
of pixel-based, and thus nicely scalable.

Check out some of the icons/logos/emblems/whatever used at the top of
these other open source project web pages. None of them are flat,
simple geometric shapes, and I'm sure they've all been
reproduced on T-shirts and trade show banners.
http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.linux.org/
http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.opendarwin.org/

 

[Karl von Laudermann]

Mark Hubbart, May 11:


Then how about making the comment read "Ruby: Makes Programming

Fun!"?,

Or how about "Ruby: Rediscover the Joy of Programming"

 

[Michel Martens]

Check out some of the icons/logos/emblems/whatever used at the top of
these other open source project web pages. None of them are flat,
simple geometric shapes, and I'm sure they've all been
reproduced on T-shirts and trade show banners.
http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.linux.org/
http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.opendarwin.org/

Karl, those are examples of bad logos. The Ruby gem is infinitely
better than that.

Besides: I don't think that all open source projects should look
alike, and good design can be found in projects like Firefox, Mozilla
(http://www.mozilla.org), PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/),
WordPress (http://wordpress.org/), etc.

Michel.

 

[Jason Foreman]

=20
Karl, those are examples of bad logos. The Ruby gem is infinitely
better than that.
=20
Besides: I don't think that all open source projects should look
alike, and good design can be found in projects like Firefox, Mozilla
(http://www.mozilla.org), PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/),
WordPress (http://wordpress.org/), etc.
=20
Michel.
=20
=20

There is a huge difference between a nice image, and a logo. Many
people make the point that there should not be a Ruby logo, however a
logo has many benefits, the most important of which in my opinion is
instant recognition. If you're going to go to the trouble of having
an image there at all, make it one that people will remember and
associate with the site/language/community/whatever, rather than just
one that is 'pretty'.

I think the gemstone image fails in that regard. It's too obvious,
and it has nothing to set it apart from any other image of a ruby. I
like the links that Michel provides, and suggest also OSI [1], Debian
[2], and even Java [3]. All have logos that I could pick out of a
crowd very easily. I'm not saying I like the websites themselves,
just the logo.

Also, I still think the gemstone is limited in its use. I think it'd
be bad on a tshirt or other clothing (never seen a tshirt with smooth
gradients like that, at least not one that lasted more than one wash)
and it'd be bad at smaller sizes because it would lose too much
detail.

I posted some other comments on the blog yesterday too. I basically
don't like the look of the latest designs much at all... But I am
certainly in the minority.

Jason

[1] http://opensource.org
[2] http://debian.org
[3] http://java.sun.com

 

[Jon A. Lambert]

It results out of research, reasoning and rationality.

After a lot of the above and a few pints I came up with...

"Ruby: Don't take your love to town."

 

[John W. Long]

BTW, I'm no expert on gems. I'm just going on what I've seen by googling
the topic. I would be thrilled if someone pointed out that Rubies do
actually occur in that shape.

It's called brilliant cut:

http://google.com/search?q=ruby+brilliant

Although what we are using is a simplified version of it.