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

From: Brandon McCaig <bamccaig@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 11, 2014, 21:25 UTC
Message-ID: <CANUGeEbZ=uO1-cQ+iFkg7TTVdR8h9_sZBzTXQ3ZpsqGprdpVrA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqr453sm76.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

Junio:

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> The pages at https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page are
> done primarily by developers, and between the two logos on that
> page, the one that appears inside the page under "Main Page" header
> has long been the logo that Git people immediately recognised as the
> Git logo.  That logo originally appeared on gitweb, I think, and is
> in my tree (on the other hand, the logo in question on the motion
> does even appear anywhere in my tree).  We didn't feel a need to
> declare it was the official logo.  That was from back when Git
> community did not have strong needs for "branding".
>
> The one on the left-top corner was one of the alternatives that
> received favorable reactions from multiple people (I am not sure if
> there was a clear "majority" though) submitted when we briefly had a
> poll to come up with an updated logo.

*snip*

Show 28 quoted lines

> In any case, this motion is not about "let's declare the logo we see
> on git-scm.com today as _the_ official one".  It is not about "that
> logo on git-scm.com sucks; let's come up with a better one".  People
> are welcome to do that discussion elsewhere, and I do not mind a
> repository of contestants created somewhere, but personally I think
> the project is too mature for that and it is too late, even though
> the "bleeding-red fork" logo may not be my favorite.
>
> The motion is about this:
>
>     Outside people, like the party who approached us about putting
>     our logo on their trinket, seem to associate that logo we see on
>     git-scm.com today with our project, but we never officially said
>     it was our logo (we did not endorse that git-scm.com is our
>     official home page, either, for that matter).
>
>     It is silly for us to have to say "Ehh, that is a logo that was
>     randomly done and slapped on git-scm.com which is not even our
>     official home page, and the logo is licensed CC-BY by somebody
>     else.  Go talk to them.", every time such a request comes.
>
>     Please help us by letting us answer "Yup, that is a logo (among
>     others) that represents our project, and we are OK with you
>     using it to help promote our project" instead.
>
> That is what I meant by "our official logo" in the first message.
>
> So,... seconds?

I guess it's not exactly clear to me what the difference is between the "official logo" debate and what you're asking.

I think that the problem with this entire thread is that there is no such logo that is understood to be Git (i.e., that you could ask people out of context what the Git logo looks like and they'd be able to remember without being tainted). If you want proof of that take that logo from git-scm.com, remove the word "git", and show it to a random sampling of people in the tech. community and ask them if they recognize it. I know that I wouldn't (like many others I had to request http://git-scm.com/ to check what it even was), despite being a long time Git user and relatively active community member (mostly in IRC). I suspect that most Git users wouldn't be able to identify it.

I don't particularly like it the logo on git-scm.com[1], and I think that several good points have been raised here about its weaknesses and lack of any real strengths. I'm not sure that my say is worth much, but I'd be in favor of using the one that spells out git (the one in the top left of the wiki[2]) over the one with the nonsensical commit nodes[1]. :) Or even take the idea from the wiki and tidy it up a bit. I think it's a clever idea that works well with the name and we shouldn't throw it away. Or even take the other and resolve the problems raised above (the color is secondary, but the logical structure of the repository is pretty universally backwards).

I wouldn't really be in favor of us encouraging the use of [1], but if we do it's not the end of the world either. I don't think it's particularly good so the question is do we and should we care if the project becomes known by an ambiguous, flawed (apologies to the designer) logo?

I'm not even sure that I'd agree that Git needs "marketing" at all. That sounds like a gimmick to maximize "market share" instead of solve a problem well and I think it belongs more in the rivals' camps. ;) I think this project should continue to focus on being better instead of being presented better.

[1] http://git-scm.com/images/logo@2x.png [2] https://git.wiki.kernel.org/skins/common/images-git/wiki.png

Regards,

-- 
Brandon McCaig <bamccaig@gmail.com> <bamccaig@castopulence.org>
Castopulence Software <https://www.castopulence.org/>
Blog <http://www.bamccaig.com/>
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