gleam
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gleam-lang
New logo and mascot
Hello! 💖
The Gleam project could do with a new logo and mascot as the current one isn't as legible and popular as we'd like it be.
This is an open source project of volunteers and we have little to no budget for this work, so we're treating this like all other aspects of the project and relying on the kindness and enthusiasm of the open source community.
We'd like to develop a new logo and mascot in conjunction with the community, finding something that fits right in with us and our vibe :)
The selection process
We'd like to iterate on designs here and on the Gleam discord. Once we have some potential options we'll solicit a final round feedback from the community before the Gleam core team makes the final decision, likely going with whichever is most popular with the community.
Vibes
Gleam is all about friendliness, both technologically and socially. We're proud of how supportive and enjoyable and cosy our community is, and it's important to us that all manner of folks feel welcome, especially those from under-represented groups in tech such as but not limited to trans people, and black people and women. We also want it to be clear to troublemakers and hateful people that they would not fit in and are not welcome.
The pink branding is intended to communicate these values, and we want a cute logo and mascot that also communicates this.
The current branding can be seen on the website, including Lucy the star, the current logo. https://gleam.run/
Goals
We want the mascot and logo to be clearly identifiable as whatever it is, and also distinctly as Gleam.
We want the mascot and logo to be usable at all sorts of different sizes, from a tiny website favicon, to printed on a t-shirt, to projected onto a conference wall during a presentation.
The logo and the mascot don't have to be the same thing or a variation on each other, but we certainly want to have something for each.
I think a low colour count (or low colour count version) would be desirable such that the logo and mascot can work in more places, such as other websites with different branding. We'd have vector versions of the images to ensure highest quality whatever the size, and to avoid having to have the work redrawn. I'm not a designer though, so perhaps I'm wrong with how this works.
Animals
Here's some animals that have come up in discussion
Flamingo
Pink and fabulous
Inca Tern
Has a fancy moustache
Seahorses
Fits alongside Erlang's unofficial squid mascot. Erlang being the parent language of Gleam.
Small bioluminescent sea creatures are quite Gleamy.
Jellyfish
Similar to seahorses! Bioluminescent!
Starfish
A continuation of the current logo.
Prior art
Original branding thread: https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam/issues/84
Here's some existing logos and mascots that I like
Alpaca language
Go language
One thing that is really cool about Go is how the mascot can be adopted by Go projects
Pikelet language
Hy language
Rust language
Not much of a link between their logo and their mascot, and that's OK!
Ash framework (Theo's mascot)
Witchcraft framework
Fly platform and their blog artwork
As Louis mentioned, apart from the gleamingo (possibly a flamingo wearing shades), I was mostly interested in small, biolominescent sea creatures (hopefully precluding the horrifying sort).
Sea stars and sea horses both have some fitting representatives.
One difficulty is the word Gleam doesn't easily lend itself to a square/round shape (e.g. avatars, favicons), but it might work to get creative with letter arrangements, such as pairing Gl, ea, and m, with the "ea" stacked above the "m." I don't see a problem with using just the mascot or iconographic part of a logo for those cases though (like Witchcraft does).
Here's a very rough sketch for the concept of "sea star as A."
A shorter version
Here are some inspirational images.
gotta love the jellyfish concept, they're brainless (the language is simple) they can be glowey and shiny (gleamy as one might say) and they're also pink.
im sure someone could come up with some kind of a cute way to do a jellyfish
Hey there! Bear with me as I'm on mobile, Australian internet is terrible.
Here's a few sketches as were riffed on over in the discord, the seahorses seem to be a fan favourite so far
I'm a huge fan of the second image's seahorses—so cute! I could easily see those becoming Gleam's mascot.
It's not the cute direction the new logo/mascot is going in, but I had fun breaking out the felt-tips and colouring pencils to see how my what-if-Lucy-was-a-flamingo idea I had a couple days ago would look.
It's not the cute direction the new logo/mascot is going in, but I had fun breaking out the felt-tips and colouring pencils to see how my what-if-Lucy-was-a-flamingo idea I had a couple days ago would look.
I love this! I feel like something like this could work super well as a logo in conjunction with a matching mascot with a more complex and characterized design maybe? But it's such a good vibe ✨
The flamingo / Lucy merging is cool! One thing I think we'd need to be careful with is how that looks at small sizes. Currently Lucy doesn't scale well.
hemarkable on twitter says:
I honestly like Gleam's mascot which looks like Staryu. Maybe giving few more features to your Staryu could be enough?
More Pokemon! 💜
This is my lunch break contribution to this, it's highly unrefined, and lacks a mascot. Probably needs thicker strokes for small-size legibility, and tweaking the colours slightly, but here we go! I liked the idea of a 'beam' of light, with added sparkles for good measure. Keeps the gleam pink, but with a blue sky, and white sparkles that stand out.
Maybe the style for a fun, cute mascot can be similar to this panda from https://panda-css.com
[a bit of an infodump here so take your time]
I'm not really a programmer by profession, but I do love making art related to programming, especially with the mascots. Here's my take on the Gleam mascot, a somewhat cute, glow-in-the-dark starfish. The second option is a starfish that ended up looking like a gemstone-thing (I don't know, looks weird).
I tried playing around with the starfish's expressions, to see if things just fit for some reason. Note that this isn't the final design, and I made this under an hour for fun.
Forgive me if the colors look a little lighter (technical issues, I guess). And forgive me if I don't seem to be kind (this is the first time I've posted something here, so something of a new experience to me).
(Sidenote here if you love some trivia, the current working name for the starfish is Aster).
Wow that's really nice @suppyluppy ! I love how expressive the face is while still managing to be super simple. I could imagine this working as both a mascot and a logo
To me it looks like Lucy (the existing star mascot) in a new style?
I like both styles but it seems like it's a bit tight around the fact in the second more-3D style
Just dropping some of the other sketches I put in the discord but forgot to post here.
Working on getting these into high-fidelity digital drawings
update on the glow-in-the-dark starfish (additional designs and some fun facts?)
I've done more designs for Aster, the starfish, just to showcase some possibilities.
To @lpil about Aster looking like "Lucy in a new style", by the time I did the design, I didn't read the part where the star is named Lucy (so sorry on that part). I thought Gleam needed a new mascot, so I made one from scratch.
I decided to name the starfish Aster, because I took it from the starfish's scientific name, and Aster is a name that can be used by anyone. I left Aster's gender unknown, so that anyone can interpret Aster however they like.
But since Lucy is the canon, it means Aster should be Lucy? I don't know.
Meanwhile, here's Aster doing stuff with a "portable computer that can be folded into half".
(Sidenote again, @Theosaurus-Rex's seahorse design looks great enough I was planning to do a colored rendition of it!)
One thing I like about this being Lucy is that she gets to live-on in the Gleam-world, rather than being a historical note.
P.S. @suppyluppy ! I'd love to talk to you about some details! Perhaps DMs on discord (lpil) or via email ([email protected])?
Alright, so to re-introduce myself, I made the current version of the pink starfish, Lucy. I know that the issue is closed now, and the new Lucy has become canon, but I'm here to say thank you to everyone here (and the contributors, and the community), for the love and support you all have given to (dearest) Lucy, and a belated congratulations (i'm so sorry) on the 1.0.0 release!
I'm planning to do a Q&A about Lucy, but that's for another time (and if anyone is interested)...
@kamikyoku would you be amenable to us updating the link to your profile on the v1 blog post? It currently points to suppyluppy which returns a 404
I guess not. I appreciate the credit, but for some reason, I don't want people to know me as "that one who made the cutesy pink starfish from a coding language". It's better to not do anything with it.
@kamikyoku just FYI someone made a very fun widget site where you can customize Lucy/Aster's shape by adjusting multiple parameters and it's been a hit in the community. I thought you'd like to know 😃
People have came up with a pufferfish Lucy, a stop-sign, a vinyl record Lucy, and many more, and yet it's still unmistakably Lucy the Gleam mascot. I think this is a solid benchmark of your design as it remains recognizable in these crazy scenarios, so congratulations on a job well done 😃
Thank you so much, everyone!!!
@ffigiel First of all, thank you for telling me about this Lucy project. Lucy is now Lucy. Aster has turned into Astra, her current middle name.
Shout-out to @0xca551e for the "n-sided Lucy"! There's a few easter eggs here and there. Blinking Lucy, "kiki-bouba" reference (I guess all the parameters have "special values" when you put them to each end). I'm going to have a fun time giving suggestions for this one (such as making Lucy glow).
I've heard some interest in Lucy merch as well, but I think that's for another time!