icu4x
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Add social preview icon/logo to ICU4X repo
One would upload image here - https://github.com/unicode-org/icu4x/settings
I'll try doing something in Photoshop - will ask for approval from team before uploading.
From the settings page: "Upload an image to customize your repository’s social media preview.
Images should be at least 640×320px (1280×640px for best display)."
Proposal (PNGs) for the logo. WDYT?
First proposal:
Stylized with no obvious ICU4X wording, but all the parts are there. X, I, 4, C/U in the curve.
Second proposal:
I, X and 4 are hidden in the drawing, CU is spelled out. Little dot on top adds interest + makes i more visible.
To me, the top requirements for a logo are:
- Clear at all sizes, including as small as a browser favicon
- Clean lines and edges
- Unique, memorable, self-explanatory, and recognizable
The plain ICU logo meets these requirements. You can see it here: http://site.icu-project.org/
The first proposal for the ICU4X logo is okay on criterion 1 and, after conversion to an SVG, criterion 2, but doesn't speak to me on criterion 3: it's not very unique, memorable, self-explanatory, or recognizable.
The second proposal won't be good scaled down to small sizes, so doesn't meet criterion 1 for me. It would probably be okay on criterion 2 after conversion to an SVG. On criterion 3, I'd say the it is unique, memorable, and recognizable, but not very self-explanatory (it looks more like "4CU" than "ICU4X").
That's one way to look at the logo (I think ICU logo is very plain/bland, but obvious as in spells out ICU).
Dart has this.
Most Google logos are abstract, say GCP.
JavaScript went minimalistic (after the old almost Java ripoff) here
Anyways, others are free to contribute ideas.
I do have SVG files, but Git doesn't like them, except if I zip them.
If we want something like the original ICU logo, we could try simple variations. Won't win any design awards, but checks off Shane's three requirements.
Maybe we could place four black x on the rim of the U letter to complete the outer circle? :)
I think we should be consistent with ICU4J and ICU4C. Both of them don't seem to have dedicated logos (expect for a terrible logo on the ICU4J Maven page).
I think it's more important to show that we're another version of ICU than to do something overly clever, so my vote would be to just use the ICU logo, which ticks all the boxes for a well-designed logo. We could add a small X subscript outside the circle, but any bigger modifications such as putting things inside ruins it imho.
I think we should be consistent with ICU4J and ICU4C. Both of them don't seem to have dedicated logos (expect for a terrible logo on the ICU4J Maven page).
That image is probably from before 1998. It's a lot nicer at full size. It was probably meant to go on a powerpoint slide and not to be used as a logo.
A proposal I had that I forgotten to post earlier was to have something simple that has a highlight, like one of these
(picking from various unicodey colors)
I love this. The serif X has early Mac OS X vibes, hope there's no copyright issue 😉
My main issue with both the ICU logo and the similar proposed ICU4X logo is that it's kinda hard to see that it's saying ICU4X: I think logos should either:
- be abstract and not say the name of the project, just some symbol representing it
- be clear and readable names of the project
I think the ICU logo is pretty great in that regard, it's abstract enough to not throw the ICU at you, I only noticed it after a while.
I think we should definitely build off the ICU logo, as that's our established brand, and Shane's proposal does that very well.
I'm just a bit worried that it's not square. In square contexts, the ICU part will be quite small.
Could a more "square" X do the trick, e.g. this one with a lower-case Geometric sans serif font (this particular one is DM Sans)...?:
...I also like Manish's design (what font is that Manish?) although if forced to choose, I like the idea of playing off the existing ICU logo
@skywalkerswartz I believe it's just Arial? But we can experiment with fonts too
Thanks Manish!
Steven, while that drawing also solves the "square" problem I think that version will be too hard to read at small sizes
My main issue with both the ICU logo and the similar proposed ICU4X logo is that it's kinda hard to see that it's saying ICU4X: I think logos should either:
Oh, also, I do recognize that the similarity with the ICU logo is nice, but I'm not sure the ICU logo is well known: certainly I only learned about it after we started this discussion.
Oh, also, I do recognize that the similarity with the ICU logo is nice, but I'm not sure the ICU logo is well known: certainly I only learned about it after we started this discussion.
It is displayed on the ICU GitHub, it is used on all ICU Unicode blog posts like ICU 72 Released, and it is the favicon of icu.unicode.org (and it used to be displayed prominently there, I guess before the migration to the Unicode theme)
Could a more "square" X do the trick, e.g. this one with a lower-case Geometric sans serif font (this particular one is DM Sans)...?:
I can make an SVG version of this if desired
It is displayed on the ICU GitHub, it is used on all ICU Unicode blog posts like ICU 72 Released, and it is the favicon of icu.unicode.org (and it used to be displayed prominently there, I guess before the migration to the Unicode theme)
Oh absolutely, but that doesn't necessarily make it recognizeable to most. Basically: is it recognizeable enough that a derived logo gets the message across? (Especially since it's not at all clear what the order of the letters is in the derived logo)
The property I would like to have is that most people on seeing the logo would understand what project it represents even if they've not really seen it before. The Unicode logo definitely has that property, for example.
An idea: https://mihai-nita.net/tmp/iculogo.html (so that we don't leave ICU4J and ICU4C behind, and only give ICU4X a nice cool logo :-)
@mihnita: we discussed some similar ideas with some UX folks at Google, who had a similar idea to yours (great minds think alike?) but rejected it because there isn't actually a need for separate logos for C & J (and if you say "ICU" or see the ICU logo, you mean "ICU4X and/or ICU4J"), and we didn't want to change the existing ICU logo
@markusicu: are you proposing that we take the Serif version in https://github.com/unicode-org/icu4x/issues/384#issuecomment-1371374373 and make it more square like my proposal https://github.com/unicode-org/icu4x/issues/384#issuecomment-1373325646 or do you like the original Serif version and don't care about Robert's concern (in https://github.com/unicode-org/icu4x/issues/384#issuecomment-1371500741) that it's not square?
I think the non-serif X looks a bit like we put devil's horns on the ICU logo. Maybe a monospace serif will be more square?
@markusicu: are you proposing that we take the Serif version in #384 (comment) and make it more square like my proposal #384 (comment) or do you like the original Serif version and don't care about Robert's concern (in #384 (comment)) that it's not square?
I much prefer the ICU-on-serif-X version. The other one doesn't look like an X to me.
Some more drafts:
Square X with serifs and space between the X and the ICU:
Square X with serifs directly connected to the U in ICU: