Poll: New Logo for KDE.org

The KDE Web Team has set up a public poll to determine the new logo for KDE.org. The poll is open for two weeks, starting September 28th, 2003. Please be sure to test the logos with different styles before voting.

As frequent readers of this site might remember, the KDE Web Team asked for submissions for a new website logo some time ago. A major requirement was that all source materials of the logo should be available, so that it is possible to create custom logos for the kde.org sub-domains in the same style.

From the 34 submissions received by the KDE Web Team, four logos were selected for this vote. The source for the old logo has been made available as a result of the submission request and is among the four picked logos. Icons for the subsections of kde.org have also been submitted and are open for a vote.

The KDE.org website allows visitors to select their prefered colour style in the preferences, so please test the logos with different styles before you vote on the logo you prefer. There will be a second vote on the default color style afterwards.

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Comments

by Anonymous (not verified)

Olaf's logo is nice. I would vote for it but I'm bothered by the "KDE -" hanging at the top left of the logo. It looks bizarre and out of place, a blemish on an otherwise nice and colorful logo.

What to do, what to do.

by Anonymous (not verified)

> What to do, what to do.

Replace "KDE" with "The" and everything is fine. I think this is a poll about artwork and not the variable text around it (see women.kde.org and accessiblity.kde.org examples).

by Alex (not verified)

My favorites are:

1. Luciash's logo with Ralf's icons
her eit jsut seems like it is too light and doesen't provide enough contrast ot the rest of the website, the logo should be something the visitors remember.
2. Sebastian's logo with Ralf's icons
Sebastian's logo is very good, the biggest problem IMO is that the icons don't fit the logo well.
3. Ralfs's logo with Ralf's icons
My beef with this one is that it seems a bit too overloaded and the part that says "The KDE Desktop Enviroment" is way toos trong inr egard to contrast. The other problem is that at the right of the logo it immidieately stops and doesen't blend in smoothly with the white color.

I will proabbly go with Sebastian's logo and ralf's icons. Hovever, I like ralf's logo better, jsut not the background for his icons.
Also, while I want Konqueror to appear on KDE.ORG, I don't think he should eb in the header, but rather next to the "Conquer your Desktop!" text.

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Just to muddle the waters some more, here's what root66's beta concept for the frontpage was. In other words, more art on the page than just the logo (or icons). Note that we have the source to the flying Konqi. :-)

One step at a time though. Once we get the logo settled maybe we can add more art.

by poephoofd (not verified)

drool, that's much better than the current page(s)! :)

And Crystal icons fit much better within the page than those icons from this Ralf guy.

by poephoofd (not verified)

+100 points

by Otter (not verified)

Sorry -- I'm not so into it. Like the default KDE color schemes, it's too many light pastel colors for my taste, which makes it tough to read.

by Alex (not verified)

The way Konqui is placed next to "Conquer your desktop!" is absolutely perfect and that area is exactly like I wanted it.

by Teemu Rytilahti (not verified)

This looks reaallly nice! I'd like vote for this :)

by James O (not verified)

That's really nice. Although I do think that Dr Konqi is one of the least professional looking parts of KDE. Everything looks great until I log out, when a toy dinosaur pops up.

by Guss (not verified)

Everybody is so uptight about "proffesional look" - take for example: Mandrake dropped the pretty pinguins in 8 only to put them back due to popular demand in 9.

When I showed my girlfriend what Linux can do for her, the major attraction was Konqi, of course. if it wasn't for the fact that we had trouble with her detachable harddrive, she'd be running KDE mostly because of the cuteness of Konqi.

by Mikkel Schubert (not verified)

Very nice. :D

by surver (not verified)

The referenced website (kdedevelopers.org) is broken because it doesn't allow access with enabled Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) as defined in RFC 3168 :(

Would it be possible to fix this?

by Ian Reinhart Geiser (not verified)

yes yes its known.
no, no it wont be fixed any time soon.
just disable ecn for now, since no-one supports it anyway.

sorry
-ian reinhart geiser

by Inorog (not verified)

Hierarchical voting mandatory. Why the heck does everybody offers eliminatory polls?

by Sleepless (not verified)

Why the mix? Extreme example:
500 Votes - Logo A
500 Votes - Logo A with Icons
503 Votes - Logo B
000 Votes - Logo B with Icons

Logo B wins?

by anon (not verified)

Indeed. A fair poll should have "none of the above" as an option as well.

by Vincent (not verified)

I think none of the logos is really nice. They all look too childish and look alike. I would vote for more submissions before voting.

by Olaf Jan Schmidt (not verified)

I disagree.

You had plenty of time for submitting your own artwork.
Why haven't you used this time?

by arcade (not verified)

Not everyone is an artist, but one is still entitled to think that the current choices suck.

Personally I liked Olaf's (yours?) artwork. However, I fully understand that some people want to vote for more submissions.

by mart (not verified)

in my opinion the logo is very good as is (or sebastian logo which is very similar) and also the style of the webpage is beautiful as is

by Tackat (not verified)

The very first problem I realize is that there are many similar variations of the crystal logo. On the other hand there is "Ralf's logo with Ralf's icons" which looks very different (imho too geeky mixed with the overattempted emphasis on coolness - don't forget that this is meant to be a somewhat corporate website).
While most people might like the crystal version best there might be a poll result like this:

- Sebastian's logo: 18%
- Olaf's logo: 19%
- Sebastian's with Ralf's icons: 16%
- Ralf's logo with Ralf's icons: 20%
- Other: ...

So while most people would prefer the crystal logo over Ralf's logo "Ralf's logo with Ralf's icons" would have won in this case.

I remember that a similar thing once happened on LinuxWorld when people were allowed to vote for the best desktop. IIRC they had the choice between Ximian Gnome, Gnome and KDE. Gnome might have won if it would have entered the contest with a single entry (both entries added to each other would have resulted in a close win for Gnome). But due to the fact that the votes were distributed on two entries we had luck and KDE won in the end.

Among the listed entries I think that Olaf's logo looks best.
But imho root66's beta concept looks even better:
- it doesn't place the konqi (which always looks a little bit childish) in the header but in a very elegant way beneath instead
- the contrasts and colors are best

Tackat

by poephoofd (not verified)

..and most important: it doesn't look like a piece of programmers art.

(like some of the logos in this poll)

by jmk (not verified)

> But due to the fact that the votes were distributed on two entries we had luck and KDE won in the end.

And I didn't event get to vote!

Why where they showing old releases of 3.1 BTW? Why not HEAD?

by anon (not verified)

The organizers of this poll should *really* take note of the above post!

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

What is needed is to use "approval voting" where you are allowed to vote for more than one -- vote for all of the ones that you like. You count the votes the same way.

More complicated is "rank voting" where you can rank them in order. Picking the winner is more complicated with this method. The general consensus is that assigning points to rank voting doesn't work. So a computer needs to determine the winner with multiple elimination rounds -- the "musical chairs" method.

--
JRT

by OI (not verified)

Please listen to Tackat, the pro artist.
Lusiach's logo is beautiful.
But you can hardly distinguish it from the white background.
Olafs icons are easy to look at and somewhat playful.

by Marc J. Driftmeyer (not verified)

Let's just say none of these would pass Apple's Human Interface or NeXT Interface Design requirements.

Sebastian and Luciash should join ideas and combine their strengths, respectively. Both the K's are oversized and take away from the gear-like Sun emblem. Neither convey a sense of Desktop Environment.

Are we conquering as in Victory, symbolically? Or are we symbolizing the overtaking of one's Desktop metaphorically within the X11 environment? Ever thought of conquering X with K in a sort of 3-D effect on the icon?

Oh I don't know project an X drop shadow extending behind the K that projects with Lighting effects to symbolize the K conquering X11?

Ralph's icons are nice to signify site sections. I would change the blue theme and/or make a series of table header color options that contrast with those icons and say add some color diversity. For example, the KDE Family could have different colors for each of the 3 persons being symbolically represented.

Hotspot conveys Thermal expansion not contraction (ice).

Develop is too 1 dimensional. The limiting size of the icons don't give one much room to add enrichment.

Do they have to be square in dimensions? Our monitors aren't square. Give it a ratio traditional to most monitor settings for example.

by will (not verified)

The logos are also flawed in two other respects. First, because of the "gear" theme which speaks to technologically minded people. Most users haven't got a fascination for technology and will find this style cold and alienating. A style should convey "human" values. The developers doesn't take this a point like this seriously because they have no intention of communicating with the user in the first place, they make this for themselves. Secondly because the K superimposed on a gear is simply unelegant - a logo should ideally just be a simple form.

by Jeff Johnson (not verified)

I wouldn't associate a gear with technology. At least not more than a wheel or a hammer or a flint stone...

by Electronic Eric (not verified)

That's an interesting set of observations. While agree with you about the need for more touchy-feeliness in KDE in general, and especially on the homepage, I think your point that a logo should be simple form is a stronger imperative. To my mind, the gear is actually a pretty good starting point - it is a simple and universally recognized symbol, and stands for work and (industrial) strength and basic elements that are needed to make things happen. The more we can get people to think of KDE when they see gears, the more brand association we've achieved. That leads me to think that we should gradually diminish the size of the K associated with the gear so that the gear becomes the true KDE brand.

To address the question of touchy-feeliness, the curve in Luciash's logo had a much more organic feel. The page as it stands is built on squares, to the point of being blocky. A couple rounded corners and a logo with a watery wave would go a long way towards that. A combination of the sun-gear (perhaps with the K de-emphasized a little bit) and the wave shape of Luciash's logo, and some rounding of the inset boxes would go a long way to make the KDE homepage warmer.

by Xanadu (not verified)

I really like the female Konqi. I honestly don't know Olaf is, but, he/she/it did a great job on that one.

As far as teh KDE logo goes, please, can we get away from blue? OK, OK. I don't have any better ideas at the momment, but the whole blue thing has to go. I'm color blind and all, but, the constant blue theme is just nasty.

This is just my opinion. Any artists that have developed graphics for KDE *PLEASE* don't take any offence, but damn...

by Anonymous (not verified)

> I really like the female Konqi. I honestly don't know Olaf is, but, he/she/it did a great job on that one.

The Katie drawing is old (did you ever visit http://women.kde.org?) and is done by Agnieszka Czajkowska.

by gerd (not verified)

The logo of KDe is fine. there are other graphics in KDE, like in the Game package that have to be improved. I don't understand this. KDE's current logo is perfect.

by OI (not verified)

You can not seriously mean to choose this one.
Do you know how much you stress your eyes with
that little contrast?

Clearly. Olof's icons are better. Easier to look at,
think about people with eye-defects! They won't even
be able to recognice Luciash's logo from the background!

by Dominic (not verified)

Go Olaf! Konqui is really an advantage for KDE. It's original and I don't know nobody who don't like it when I show KDE to other people. It adds a touch of humanism in a very technical thing (a desktop environment is a technical thing for the majority of users).

by anon (not verified)

I always thought the KDE.org 1.x website was the cleanest out of the three:

the KDE webpage four and a half years ago, right when kde 1.1 was released : http://web.archive.org/web/19990423162622/http://www.kde.org/index.html

by Somekool (not verified)

I know this is off-topic.

Anybody know whats happen to apps.kde.com ?

Is he in vacation ?

by Anonymous (not verified)

It's back with new applications.

by patrick_darcy (not verified)

dont know if he will be the header but the flying konqi
is the best.

by jace (not verified)

He made an awesome image program, styles, and a website ;)

But, i can't seem to see a trace fo him any more.

by Michael Wright (not verified)

Root66's design is the best I have seen so far

by somekool (not verified)

i dont see Root66 anywhere on kde.org/testing.php

by André Somers (not verified)

Read the rest of the thread here and you'll find it. Tip: CTRL-F lets you search for text on a website...

by mwg (not verified)

Yeah, that design is nice. One big fundemental problem though; KDE is free software, not Open Source.

by Anton Velev (not verified)

I would suggest to remove the crocodile (or may be I should call it krokodile) aka konqui - may be it's a dinosaur or mozilla monster whatever but it affects the reputation of kde. Gears as a symbol of kde are good enough btw.

As for the designs ralf's design looks best from the listed options however i would suggest to remove the black area it looks inconsistent.

In a conclusion I must say that kde needs a "image" for the new release to impress people (as you already did very well with aqua like keramik interface) and of course a reputation of a enterprise environment and professional desktop.

I hope this helps.

by J.A. (not verified)

"I would suggest to remove the crocodile (or may be I should call it krokodile) aka konqui - may be it's a dinosaur or mozilla monster whatever but it affects the reputation of kde. Gears as a symbol of kde are good enough btw."

I've got mixed feelings about this. The pinguin hasn't hurt linux at all.
J.A.

by Brenda (not verified)

i like this game sssssssooooooo much

by Anonymous (not verified)

Konqui is a dragon!