Re: Our official home page and logo for the Git project

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 11, 2014, 13:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20140411132448.GA5845@nysa.casa.local>
In-Reply-To: <20140411114017.GC28858@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 10:24:24AM +1000, Andrew Ardill wrote:
> 
> > It's normal for an organisation to have a collection of logos to
> > choose from, with one 'official' version. For example, a black and
> > white version is useful for print. Similarly, it's useful to have a
> > couple of different contrast level/colours that can be used in the
> > appropriate situations.
> 
> There are a few options at
> 
>   http://git-scm.com/downloads/logos
> 
> for matching the logo to the background.

That doesn't change the fact that bright red is a horrible color, and that bright red is used *by default*, as you can see here[1].

Moreover, even the black ones have the issue I already mentioned; they picture the equivalent of two root commits (with no parents) that are immediately merged, and the history continues, but who is interested in the initial commits? And who has multiple root commits? No one.

I am willing to bet whomever designed this logo had never used Git in his life.

My version of the logo is the equivalent of to head commits that diverge from a common one, which is extremely common; everybody works on the latest commits, and has multiple branches.

This is so obvious and simple, that I bet nobody even bother to analize the logo, they all though "OK, I'm not a designer, it's a logo, anything's fine for me".

Secondly, the logos that are not black, are bright red, which is horrible; not only do they look bad in almost every situation due to the contrast, but in a Git's mindeset red implies old, a minus, the hunk removed, an error, which is not good. Even in the old logos[2] (whick even gitk is using), there was always a "-" represented in red.

In my version green is used instead, which represent progress, a plus, the hunk added, success.

Show 8 quoted lines

> > There is nothing wrong with having alternates that have been approved
> > for various situations.
> 
> I'm not sure if this is how you meant it, but I want to emphasize that
> there is no "approval" necessary for using alternate logos. Saying
> "let's recognize this one as an official logo" is not meant to shut down
> the use of others. It is only meant to say "when people ask for an
> official logo (e.g., GSoC does so), this one is a good answer".

Yes, but that doesn't mean we should shut down our brains and just accept anything as the main official logo (of which most of the alternates would be based on).

I would actually like you (everyone) to be honest and answer this question;

Have you actually analized the logo? Or are you just arguing against change, because the logo is already used by git-scm.com, and related stuff?

[1] http://felipec.org/contrast.png [2] http://git-osx-installer.googlecode.com/files/GitLogo.jpg

-- 
Felipe Contreras