Re: Logos proposal

[Ben Barrowes]

On Tuesday 08 June 2010 11:56:04 Søren Hauberg wrote:
> tir, 08 06 2010 kl. 13:17 +0200, skrev Fotios Kasolis:
> > I would like to make a "proper" (in my opinion it should also be os
> > independent) logo. I post work up to this point to get a direction (so
> > that then we can re-discuss).
>
> I would love to have an official logo, so thanks for looking into it.
>
> One thing to keep in mind is that Octave is often perceived as a copy of
> Matlab even if it is sooooo much more (I consider Matlab an unstable
> low-quality copy of Octave...). So, I think we need to avoid having a
> logo that is too similar to the Matlab logo. In other words: be careful
> not to just show a mesh of some kind.
>
> Regarding your suggestions, then I think the yellow and red parts are
> visually a bit too agressive; they seem demand all the attention. I
> would probably stay with the blue colours.
>
> The first of your suggestions ("appIcon") has some text in the top
> (spelling "Octave" using math symbols). I like that idea of having text
> there, though I think the actual choice of text is a bit too clever. I
> would go for something that looks more "hand-written". Here's my reason:
>
> If you go to
>
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/about.html
>
> you will see the following text:
>
>         "
>         Just about everyone thinks that the name Octave has something to
>         do with music, but it is actually the name of one of the
>         author's former professors who wrote a famous textbook on
>         chemical reaction engineering, and who was also well known for
>         his ability to do quick "back of the envelope" calculations. We
>         hope that this software will make it possible for many people to
>         do more ambitious computations just as easily.
>         "
>
> I think it would be a nice reference to the origin of the name "Octave"
> if the logo actually included something that looks a bit like "back of
> the envelope" calculations.
>
> Anyway, those where just a few thoughts...
>
> Søren

I like the idea of some text to identify octave in the logo though the text 
could perhaps be absent 
in some forms of the logo. Also the handwritten idea is intriguing. What about 
using some 
(handwritten?) greek to identify octave? There are several choices, it could be 
phonetic: alpha chi 
tau iota beta, or more literal in spelling to start with an o: omicron kappa 
tau alpha beta, or use 
the Greek work for a music octave: omicron kappa tau alpha(accent) beta alpha.

bb