srdjan.prodanovic
December 19th, 2006, 03:27 PM
My final entries
Logo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_horizontal.png
Primary application, intended for legibility from greater distances
Vertical logo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_vertical.png
Secondary application for initial wave of re-branding. Used to introduce the new
ideogram.
Icons
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_icons.png
In most countries, these are called 'work in progress' :-)
Stationery
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_stationery.png
Just another draft
Post-rationalisation
As I've been pretty busy in the past week, I couldn't dedicate as much attention to
communicating the choices I made in the development of my proposal for the Compiz
visual identity, although I planned to do it extensively, in order to satisfy community
requests with feedback as well as turn the project into a collaborative effort.
I'll take more or less a timeline approach to writing this up, so things should be
stacked in their chronological order.
Typography
The first step I took, was making the logogram for the identity (the text that displays
the name). That process usually consists of picking the right 'font', it's appropriate
weight, spacing the letters properly and modifying the shapes to make the font better
suit the word.
The nature of Compiz excluded script and serif faces, although I tried a few, just in
case one might really fit the word. However, I really narrowed down my selection to
modern sans faces, that reproduce the 'tech' feeling.
In the final rounds, I dealt with the following typographies.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/sansa.gif
Sansa
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/klavika.gif
Klavika
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/vista-sans.gif
Vista Sans
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compatil-fact.gif
Compatil Fact
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/ff-max.gif
FF Max
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/stratum-2.gif
Stratum 2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/neo-sans.gif
Neo Sans
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/ff-unit.gif
FF Unit
The roundup
Unit is actually a strict Meta, so because of close resemblance to Firefox, I ruled it out.
Max was too wide and reminded me of the UPS clone of Barmeno.
Stratum looked a bit too rigid and boring.
Vista and Compatil were lovely, but they had too little character for this sort of usage.
Neo Sans and Sansa didn't lack in that area, but Sansa was too childish,
and Klavika just did Neo's job better in my book.
Final touches
I chose the light version, to mirror the agility and limberness of a Compiz-powered
desktop. So now with the logogram written in Klavika Light, it was time to space it
tighter, add a distinctive feature to the 'capital' letter, and shorten the descender,
to make the word colour more horizontally
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_logogram.png
The fruit of the process
Design stage 1: An introverted box
As I stumbled upon this contest a day before the deadline, it was crucial to make
something decent as fast as possible. I found a distinct point of view on the cube,
as I played with surfaces in my head. It reminded me of the 3d renderings with inverted
normals, as well as held a nice recognisable shape.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_introverted.png
Not a winner, but it's a decent entry :-)
Design stage 1.5: Attempts of corrections
There were a few constructive replies to that image, requesting more defined surfaces.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_introverted_green.png
And colors other than green.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_introverted_colours.gif
Somebody suggested a swash ending on z, to compensate for something. I think it had to do
with balance.. Not sure what kind :-)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_swash_logogram.png
I took inspiration in a great typeface called Poetica. The problem is, that Poetica is
a calligraphic marvel, and I tried to forge its soul on a character with no contrast in
widths. Certain dead end.
Design stage 2: New ideas
Soon it seemed like there were plenty of options. All of them could be offered to the
community to decide. But the three days of 'unlimited pimping' were tempting enough, to
make me think in other directions. At first, I reviewed the past identity of the project,
and better understood the way some new suggestions relate to it.
As it's an open-source project, I figured it might be a good idea to build the identity
together, and tried to enhance or refine some of the suggestions that were already uploaded.
A few years ago I was reading about identities online, and stumbled upon a quote saying
that 'a logo has to be easilly recognisable, as well as create a visual game of shapes,
that makes the viewer play in their mind'. So I started playing with the idea of an
exploding box, an opening box, a box of arrows, etc..
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_sketches.png
After these experiments, there were a couple of days left, and I was still not confident
in my proposal. Especially after I questioned the 'uniqueness' of these 'new ideas'.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_cubes.png
There were probably thousands of logos with cubes made of arrows, some way better
than my sketches. I felt the depiction of a window was not captivating enough,
and the box didn't in any way relate to what Compiz results in..
a hyper-effective user interface.
Design stage 3: Boost the UI
From the moment I recognised the relation between Compiz and the user interface,
the device most commonly used for human-computer interaction appeared to me
as the perfect symbol. Since Compiz relates to display, the pointer is a great
representation for the ideogram.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_ui_first.png
Combined with some ideas from past, this mockup was done.
Design stage 3.5: Refine the construction
This is where it all turns to patterns. A visual identity should adhere to rules,
which can be reproduced on different materials, on different formats. Distinct forms
are also easyer to recognise. Take a look at the animation below, to see how I
constructed the final version.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_construction_anim.gif
I tried out a few colours.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_ui_colours.gif
Somehow blue seemed to be the most associative to desktop. Why doesn't anyone like green,
or yellow.. Or pink? :-)
Thanks for reading.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_tatoo.jpg
Because a logo is carefully constructed in the end, it's shapes are recognisable
in applications like stationary, web graphics, icons, and the ubiquitous hot-air baloons..
or tatoos for that matter
Logo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_horizontal.png
Primary application, intended for legibility from greater distances
Vertical logo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_vertical.png
Secondary application for initial wave of re-branding. Used to introduce the new
ideogram.
Icons
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_icons.png
In most countries, these are called 'work in progress' :-)
Stationery
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_stationery.png
Just another draft
Post-rationalisation
As I've been pretty busy in the past week, I couldn't dedicate as much attention to
communicating the choices I made in the development of my proposal for the Compiz
visual identity, although I planned to do it extensively, in order to satisfy community
requests with feedback as well as turn the project into a collaborative effort.
I'll take more or less a timeline approach to writing this up, so things should be
stacked in their chronological order.
Typography
The first step I took, was making the logogram for the identity (the text that displays
the name). That process usually consists of picking the right 'font', it's appropriate
weight, spacing the letters properly and modifying the shapes to make the font better
suit the word.
The nature of Compiz excluded script and serif faces, although I tried a few, just in
case one might really fit the word. However, I really narrowed down my selection to
modern sans faces, that reproduce the 'tech' feeling.
In the final rounds, I dealt with the following typographies.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/sansa.gif
Sansa
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/klavika.gif
Klavika
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/vista-sans.gif
Vista Sans
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compatil-fact.gif
Compatil Fact
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/ff-max.gif
FF Max
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/stratum-2.gif
Stratum 2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/neo-sans.gif
Neo Sans
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/ff-unit.gif
FF Unit
The roundup
Unit is actually a strict Meta, so because of close resemblance to Firefox, I ruled it out.
Max was too wide and reminded me of the UPS clone of Barmeno.
Stratum looked a bit too rigid and boring.
Vista and Compatil were lovely, but they had too little character for this sort of usage.
Neo Sans and Sansa didn't lack in that area, but Sansa was too childish,
and Klavika just did Neo's job better in my book.
Final touches
I chose the light version, to mirror the agility and limberness of a Compiz-powered
desktop. So now with the logogram written in Klavika Light, it was time to space it
tighter, add a distinctive feature to the 'capital' letter, and shorten the descender,
to make the word colour more horizontally
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_logogram.png
The fruit of the process
Design stage 1: An introverted box
As I stumbled upon this contest a day before the deadline, it was crucial to make
something decent as fast as possible. I found a distinct point of view on the cube,
as I played with surfaces in my head. It reminded me of the 3d renderings with inverted
normals, as well as held a nice recognisable shape.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_introverted.png
Not a winner, but it's a decent entry :-)
Design stage 1.5: Attempts of corrections
There were a few constructive replies to that image, requesting more defined surfaces.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_introverted_green.png
And colors other than green.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_introverted_colours.gif
Somebody suggested a swash ending on z, to compensate for something. I think it had to do
with balance.. Not sure what kind :-)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_swash_logogram.png
I took inspiration in a great typeface called Poetica. The problem is, that Poetica is
a calligraphic marvel, and I tried to forge its soul on a character with no contrast in
widths. Certain dead end.
Design stage 2: New ideas
Soon it seemed like there were plenty of options. All of them could be offered to the
community to decide. But the three days of 'unlimited pimping' were tempting enough, to
make me think in other directions. At first, I reviewed the past identity of the project,
and better understood the way some new suggestions relate to it.
As it's an open-source project, I figured it might be a good idea to build the identity
together, and tried to enhance or refine some of the suggestions that were already uploaded.
A few years ago I was reading about identities online, and stumbled upon a quote saying
that 'a logo has to be easilly recognisable, as well as create a visual game of shapes,
that makes the viewer play in their mind'. So I started playing with the idea of an
exploding box, an opening box, a box of arrows, etc..
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_sketches.png
After these experiments, there were a couple of days left, and I was still not confident
in my proposal. Especially after I questioned the 'uniqueness' of these 'new ideas'.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_cubes.png
There were probably thousands of logos with cubes made of arrows, some way better
than my sketches. I felt the depiction of a window was not captivating enough,
and the box didn't in any way relate to what Compiz results in..
a hyper-effective user interface.
Design stage 3: Boost the UI
From the moment I recognised the relation between Compiz and the user interface,
the device most commonly used for human-computer interaction appeared to me
as the perfect symbol. Since Compiz relates to display, the pointer is a great
representation for the ideogram.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_ui_first.png
Combined with some ideas from past, this mockup was done.
Design stage 3.5: Refine the construction
This is where it all turns to patterns. A visual identity should adhere to rules,
which can be reproduced on different materials, on different formats. Distinct forms
are also easyer to recognise. Take a look at the animation below, to see how I
constructed the final version.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_construction_anim.gif
I tried out a few colours.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_ui_colours.gif
Somehow blue seemed to be the most associative to desktop. Why doesn't anyone like green,
or yellow.. Or pink? :-)
Thanks for reading.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/compiz/compiz_tatoo.jpg
Because a logo is carefully constructed in the end, it's shapes are recognisable
in applications like stationary, web graphics, icons, and the ubiquitous hot-air baloons..
or tatoos for that matter