Introduction

Back In Time need it's own logo. Beside technical details also license and copyright issues need to be taken into account. This is a follow up of #215 where some work and discussion was done to come up with a new logo.

Recommendations

Creation & technical details

Licensing & Copyright need to be considered. See next section. Please don't start drawing before being clear about the licensing.
There are no restrictions on the creative part. We have some ideas and sketch up's (see below). But we are open and free for fresh ideas.
Beside the resulting images (ico, png, ...) the project also need access to the original raw source file (e.g. SVG).
First focus on one big application logo, e.g. used in the about dialog.
Beside the "big one logo" systray icons need to be considered. This means...
- Light/dark versions
- The smallest resolution that should be supported is 22x22.
There is a helper application AppIconPreview to preview different versions and themes of the same icon.
Consider Gnome Icon Guidelines https://developer.gnome.org/hig/guidelines/app-icons.html .
Also consider this comment https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/215#issuecomment-1646945614 .
If possible a "banner" (1500x500px) would be nice to add it to our Mastodon account.
Blog Post about icon design: https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2019/12/30/designing-an-icon-for-your-app/
Blog post about SVG favicon and create SVG files supporting dark and light mode https://css-tricks.com/svg-favicons-in-action/
License & copyright discussions:
- https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/how-to-licence-a-project-specific-software-logo
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2024/08/msg00013.html

License & Copyright

If you are familiar and experienced with licensing of creative work please feel free to suggest and choose your options. If not we can assist and would suggest the following points.

Copyright is kept by the author (you) of the logo and always cited that way.
License need to be chosen for the raw source file (e.g. SVG) and the resulting images (png, ico, ...).
We suggest using "GPL-2.0-or-later" for your work because it fits the project license.
We don't have a trademark and also don't have the resources nor money to invest in registering a trademark.
Because of not having a trademark, there is no way of preventing the following situation. Because of the GPL-license the logo might be legally re-used by other projects, products or companies, in a context different from Back In Time. This is theoretically and we are not really concerned about such a situation.

Sketch Up's

In the following you will find three sketch up's. These are just suggestions or ideas. The final logo don't need to contain any of the aspects shown in these sketch up's.

Previous ideas

Please see #215 for some inspiration.
https://inkscape.org/forums/cafe/open-source-project-back-in-time-looking-for-an-artist-creating-a-logo/

Simple discs

A stack of 3 discs indicates storage space.
And an arrow (see description below).

Discs with hardlinks

Again a 3-stack-storage indicating 3 snapshots.
A vertical component (columns) added to it indicating hard links.
First column (on the left) is cut into 3 pieces because the file it symbolize was modified between each of the 3 backups.
Middle column has a hardlink between the first and second backup because the file was not modified.
Third column (on the right) without any horizontal cuts as one block because the file was never modified.

"BIT" Abbreviation

The arrow again.
The letters B-I-T in the middle.
Johannes mentioned that this logo could be associated with bitcoin. Might not be a good choice because of that.

Round arrow

In all three previous examples there is an arrow around the logo.

For me this indicates the movement in time.
The direction might be against the clock because of the "back" in "Back In Time".
The arrow is thin in the beginning and becomes thicker to indicate some dynamic that is going on.
If the arrow is to "loud" it might not go all the 360° but less.

Dec 06 '24 16:12 buhtz

I just wanted to add that the design prototype "BIT" Abbreviation looks quite a bit like the bitcoin logo. At least that was one of the first associations I had, when looking at it.

Dec 21 '24 07:12 hannes101

Boring.... My first steps with Inkscape.

Here is the original Inkscape SVG if someone wants to jump in and work further with it. :laughing: versuch_disc

Dec 23 '24 17:12 buhtz

Not judging your efforts ;-) But something I already thought about before, perhaps we could ask this project for help. From what I understand they are exactly looking for open source projects, which need design expertise.

https://opensourcedesign.net/

Dec 23 '24 17:12 hannes101

https://contribute.design/

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/app-icon-requests

Jan 24 '25 09:01 buhtz

I came to tackle code, but this logo design stole the show! What do you think?

Apr 30 '25 20:04 behnamcode

Hey Behnam, thank you for your efforts. It's nice. I like the idea with the I in form of the disc stack. What is about the dot on top of the I? It feels a bit "restless".

I have no clear opinion about the colors. I am not an expert on colors.

How would this look like as a small application logo?

Apr 30 '25 20:04 buhtz

Hey Christian, you’re welcome. About that dot on top, it’s a lowercase “i.” Since I couldn’t find any branding or style guide in the repo, I used black and white just to show the digital sketch. Here’s another version, take a look and let me know what you think.

May 01 '25 04:05 behnamcode

Thank you for that draft. I'll request feedback from the community.

Did you checked the license and copyright issues? How would you proceed and decide on that? I just want to prevent you from wasting resources and in the end we can not come to a conclusion about the legal issues.

EDIT: Am I allowed to use your draft in the Mastodon post requesting feedback?

May 01 '25 08:05 buhtz

Sorry for the delay. I’m not very familiar with copyright issues, but I have no problem handing the logo over to you. If the community chooses to proceed with it, I can send all the necessary files, make any final tweaks and finalize the design. I just want to contribute, and I understand there may be complications around copyright. Whatever you decide, I’d be happy to help. And yes it's ok to share it anywhere you like.

May 04 '25 16:05 behnamcode

I like the idea, it's just that there are many lines that make the logo draf feel "noisy" (and might cause trouble with scaling).

The letter B and T could maybe improve with fewer lines, and I think would make the dot on the i a solid circle.

Just my quick idea :)

May 04 '25 17:05 emtiu

Awesome. Than we can go over to creative part of the task. 🥳

Beside myself the rest of the maintainers currently quit inactive. But I really would like to get some feedback from them (@aryoda , @emtiu , @Germar ) and some users. So it will take some time until we get some feedback.

I really like your design. But I am not sure if it will look OK in a small version of an application icon because there are much fine details (thin lines, etc).

Someone mentioned a tool name AppIconPreview (but only available via Flathub as Flatpak 🤮 🤮 🤮) which can help to see how an icon will look like in a real desktop environment in its several resolutions.

And I am not able to make that AppIconPreview work for me. Opened an Issue and reddit-post.

May 04 '25 17:05 buhtz

No worries. Once others share their thoughts on this draft, I'll make another revision and also test how it looks as an application icon.

May 05 '25 19:05 behnamcode

Mhm... Once again that issue become stall. Maybe I do something wrong. Can someone enlighten me on this? 😃 Why aren't we able to get an icon?

Jun 24 '25 08:06 buhtz

This issue is schedule for the milestone after upcoming 1.6.0 release. So it will be "solved" in the first half of 2026, not earlier.

If no one jumps in I will draw an icon myself. 🚸 I warn you. 🤣

I don't care if it does not look very good. The primary intention is to have something unique.

Jul 07 '25 07:07 buhtz

Note to me: Someone at reddit offered feedback.

Jul 07 '25 12:07 buhtz

Just another quick n dirty idea.

Jul 07 '25 14:07 buhtz

What is wrong with the proposed ideas from @behnamcode, they were a nice starting point, no? Incorporating the feedback from @emtiu it would be certainly nice and clean.

Jul 07 '25 14:07 hannes101

Maybe I do something wrong. Can someone enlighten me on this? 😃

Just adding my thoughts about this, but I'm using Back In Time since years and didn't even know this was an issue. From a user perspective there always was an icon that I could find in the application menu and click on. It always was the same icon as well, so I knew that icon was referring to Back In Time.

If there is no dedicated logo for Back In Time yet, then sure, that would be a nice improvement, but it's likely that many users (like me) are not aware this is missing a (dedicated) logo and that may be why there's not that much feedback about this 😁

Regarding the logo itself, I'm not a design person, so whatever you (and the other maintainers) are fine with, is ok with me as well 👍

Jul 07 '25 19:07 burned42

What is wrong with the proposed ideas from @behnamcode

Nothing wrong with it. But no further progress or response.

Jul 08 '25 07:07 buhtz

From a user perspective there always was an icon

That is the default "save" icon used by the desktop environment theme. It depends on the theme used by the user.

Jul 08 '25 07:07 buhtz

That is how it looks like when I am doing Inkscape. Unique, isn't it? 🤣

Jul 08 '25 08:07 buhtz

its funny because I saw the document-save icon after catting the .desktop file in debian, and i thought to myself "that's kinda basic, huh?". It ends up being jarring on non-skeuomorphic icon themes because it as a monochrome lineart icon that doesn't look like any of the other icons. maybe for now we can switch it to the dejadup or luckybackup icon on the .desktop file just for consistency's sake, as a stopgap? In several icon themes, the logos for dejadup and luckybackup are symlinked to each other anyhow. Just a thought.

Jul 28 '25 02:07 MrReplikant

Hello MrReplikant, thank you for your feedback and your expertise. I needed to checkup the term "non-skeuomorphic" first. 😄

maybe for now we can switch it to the dejadup or luckybackup icon on the .desktop file just for consistency's sake, as a stopgap? In several icon themes, the logos for dejadup and luckybackup are symlinked to each other anyhow.

Both applications using their own destinct icon. No matter if it is legal or not I am assuming they wont like it to be used by someone else. I also won't like to use it. I don't care if it is "good looking". The primary goal is to have a unique and recognizable icon just for BIT.

I have several ideas but not the skills to realize well.

Regards, Christian

Jul 28 '25 07:07 buhtz

Q'n'D idea. Why not just using the "Back to the Future" colors for the B (with or without arrow). This is from the original movie poster.

EDIT: Here are some variants generated with an LLM. These are just scetches! I refuse to use LLM generated content as a logo. I would build it by myself, if no one else with more skills will jump in.