Maemo Logo Contest, Inside INDT, Team one is ahead!
As some people know, I work for INdT where we develop a couple of applications for
Maemo, and we are really fans of the platform and the whole linux mobile in general. So when I read about the contest it was clear I should make a internal competition with the members of the design team. Here is team.M first works, and of course I said it’s not good to be submitted :) This team is based in Manaus (in the amazon) and it’s composed by 3 really nice guys: Miguel, Abrãao and Glauber. Here is their first iteration on the brands:
This is their message about the candidate for entries (they need to be approved by me after some modifications etc):
“We would like to start this post saying that branding design is not
our main area of expertise or business. Knowing that, what we’ve done
was try to apply some graphic design principles to accomplish
something that may look rather simple but is in fact one of the most
complex things in the design field: Construct a visual identity. As
every design process should, we have started the job by doing some
research on the topic, our goal was to define “what means maemo.org to
its users, what values does it represent?”. After doing some internet
research, digging a lot in the forums and conducting a survey with a
bunch of developers, we ended up with the following characteristics,
aspects, keywords and etc for maemo.org:
People, Freedom, Mobility, Internet, Nokia ITT, Linux, Technology, Nokia, Internet, Challenging, Nerds, Fun, Share… and so on.
With these in mind, we gave a look at the alternatives that were
produced so far for contest and in some famous, and not so famous,
logos to avoid “copying”. I hope we did our homework well. After that
we gathered our design group over a rounded table and generated the
biggest number of alternatives we could, nothing was discarded, no
devil advocate was allowed. With a lot of paper in our hands we did a
old technique to let creativity flow: Every member of the group got
one alternative sheet from the pile and had a small time (15 min.) to
make some “improvements” over the alternatives he liked and then pass
the paper to the designer next to him. We keep doing that until all
the alternatives were reviewed.
With half of the process gone, we selected the best alternatives with
the help of some good willed developers and went to the computer. There
we still did some small changes over the main idea, defined the logos
final appearances(plain and fluffy) and illustrated some use cases for
them, like application over t-shirts and caps. That may be not the end
of the road, but we think that we are on the right way.
People Involved:
Abraão Affonso
Glaubert Oliveira
Miguel Peres
And a lot of nice developers
”
——-
-
- Proposal 01 from Manaus Team
-
- this as said by miguel can be a nerd with glasses :) lol
I think these designs are disgusting at best. I hope you retards can do better than this!
June 28th, 2008 at 4:34 pmI was thinking of not approving this comment :) If you placed your name would having been fun to see your work and start a flame or any other really fun nerd-internet-based-I-am-bigger-than-my-ego activity :)
But life is not the way we want :) and I think we, the retards indeed can do better than this!
Be happy Tampa boy :)
June 28th, 2008 at 4:46 pmGreat post.
Although I prefer a couple of the already submitted logos its great so see so much effort going in to the new logo both from individuals and corporate entities alike.
Designing something like this is a minefield; it’s so subjective. Some will love a particular design where others will hate it. In the end I’m sure the best solution will be chosen. That’s the beauty of the open-source community which we choose participate in. There is no barrier to entry, only that of the individual who either chooses to do something or not.
Jamie
June 29th, 2008 at 11:27 amhttp://www.linuxuk.org
Hi Jamie!
For sure! As I was involved in graphics for a lot of years, I have seen things like 1million dollars worth logos that don’t say nothing (but comes from “branded” designers) and also have seen cheap logos that proven themselves to be design solid even with the lack of formal education.
I think the most important is : the people should be listened when doing it. It should really try to be imagined on those developers and contributors t-shirt. You are never going to satisfy everyone but at least you can do a really nice work just by hearing them out and trying to translate complex ideas into a simple logo.
For me the only problem is the .org need : / this really kills most of things or brings “faces” to de design (even in our second attempt).
But let’s see how it goes :)
more designs from us to come to help this great initiative!
BR
Marcelo
June 29th, 2008 at 11:38 amHello
I like the first one a lot, the ae almost looks
June 30th, 2008 at 3:03 amlike OE (OpenEmbedded), and that is of course where we all want to be :p
The first one is nifty.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:51 amI liked so much that yellow focus on the middle (on ‘E’) and the small ‘.org’.
I hope it wins.
Congrats
Nice try. But there is one good proverb. “Boat sails just like you called it”.
If maemo logo will contain no sense (just like current logo or 90% of current entries) — Maemo Community will be superficial, windy.
Lgog is not a cuttie gradient and fancy curve. It’s not a word, typed with some extraordinary, or even ordinary font.
if Maemo will be just the gradient and reflection on the floor - then the community will be just like you called it, fancy gradient and reflection on the floor.
Cheers :)
P.S.: Color, btw, contain the sense too.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:11 amHi Wazd, here goes my comment on your comment :)
“Nice try. But there is one good proverb. “Boat sails just like you called it”.
If maemo logo will contain no sense (just like current logo or 90% of current entries) — Maemo Community will be superficial, windy.”
I agree with you, and while there’s indeed gradients and curves there in our STUDIES (you read my post right)? our worries was exactly with what you said. The guys from the team in manaus (the ones who proposed) not only RESEARCHED a lot the maemo name, the members of community (talking, trying to understand what it means) and all their logos have a full justification. So they are not only a name with an extraordinary or ordinary font, they are a work of thinkering and trying to come up with an identity, something maemo lacks.
For example people didn’t know to explaing what is maemo. So I think for me is valid what the guys are trying to do: explore alternatives.
They know I’m against (maybe like you to those gradients) and I have “reproved” several studies there were really way more shallow, something like you said.. “typed in a font and got this”. Also: I personally asked them to remove the reflection on one of the entries. (Maemo is not a web2.0 site guys)
“P.S.: Color, btw, contain the sense too.”
This was also heavily discussed, sorry dude if you want to insinuate that we are not worried about this, but we are indeed (you have all the right to disagree) experienced designers, and miguel for example has all his education around Color and Semiotics, so we do worry about color, shapes, readability and the whole composition.
Creating a mark is a challenge, and we are just sharing the process after all is an open source community. So we are dealing with a name that for me seems to not be created over a small process for naming, with the .org on the end to make things worse and trying to come up with something that makes the developers who are part and core of this community proud of, and we are asking them, does this make any sense?
But thanks for stopping by, critics are part of the process and I’m really really used to them (I was just called retarded in this same post :) ) but I just want to make sure you also know that we do know a little bit of our things, and even if we are not brand creators we do respect the aspects that go into it, but a brand is not a work of 3-4 hours spare time, not a fancy curve, not a word with a nice, groovy font (we do respect the work of the masters of typography) and so on.. it’s a evolving concept that comes from those who are part of it… so we are not using everyone that is part of it, but at least a small piece of developers that work full time and really like the platform as baseline for our research. It’s not a stage to show off photoshop skill. Less is more.
Cheers and BR
Marcelo
July 1st, 2008 at 9:30 am“Hi Wazd”
hello Marcelo :)
“sorry dude if you want to insinuate that we are not worried about this”
July 1st, 2008 at 11:32 amAh, I really got misunderstood :) I’m not insinuating you of course cause I’m not an equal to whole INdT at all :D I wrote my comment to point others that read your blog (and thats a huge number of readers :) and have less design skills that you or me to take the right way of making a logo :) Your and mine post was good explanation to others, what they are really expected to do, to put their thoughts in their logos, not their knowledge of sites with free fonts :)
Critics is the main moving engine in developing whatever, but don’t take it close to your heart :)
With very best regards, Andrew Zhilin
Hi Andrew :)
Sorry for my english-stupidness :) I completly misunderstood you indeed. Actually to be honest I first thought what you really mean, but after the first comment I was expecting some more punches in the face :)
So sorry for the comment dude is really the opposite, and I undersign also what you said, that we should move more to an idea (even if the name is weak for that) than just using free fake not well done fonts.
I was the whole day here in manaus with the manaus team, and I am quite happy with the evolutions in design and in the concept behind them… one of my favorite logos is coming online :)
mainly I think 2 things are building our concepts rigth now :
Continuous improvement, Continuous Evolutions
and
Build together.
:)
Let’s see how the Nokia exec is going to punch us again.
Marcelo
July 1st, 2008 at 5:13 pm