[Actionchix] Logos

Val Henson val.henson at gmail.com
Wed Mar 29 18:10:22 EST 2006


On 3/28/06, Mary <mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org> wrote:
> Just a reminder to people: at the moment the tasks the actionchix list
> is working on are:
>
>  - moving the LinuxChix site to Plone
>  - updating the HTML of the site
>  - re-designing the site
>
> At the moment we're not really having a logo competition. The reason I
> raise this is that logos and logo ideas are starting to pour in, here
> and on grrltalk, and if we don't have some kind of process for choosing
> a logo or a set of logos then it's likely that that work will go to
> waste and six months from now people will be wondering what happened to
> their hard work and their beautiful logos.
>
> I do not feel competant to make a final decision on which logo we should
> use or even what process we should use to decide on one. Any ideas? Val,
> since you've actually commissioned work, and may not have expected
> reasonably fundamental opposition, I'm particularly interested in your
> comments on what we should do next.

I think that we should separate the question of "What LinuxChix logo
do I want to use?" and "What LinuxChix logo goes on the main web
site?"

The question of "What LinuxChix logo goes on the main web site?"
should be resolved as part of the existing web site design process. 
Part of the evaluation of web site design will be what logo they use. 
People with good logo ideas can post them to actionchix; consider it
part of the web site design discussion.  I think you are correct that
deeper discussion about stereotypes, etc. should move to grrltalk.

The question of "What LinuxChix logo do I want to use?" should be your
own decision.  I don't think LinuxChix-the-group should be involved in
any way.  I don't think we should have a collection of proposed logos
on the official site since that requires deciding which logos we are
willing to associate ourselves with.  Just using the lists to
communicate logos to each other seems fine to me.  If someone wants to
set up a web page collecting proposed logos, go right ahead.

The problem with the voting and collage systems is that we end up with
something that looks like it was designed by a committee - in other
words, muddled, unprofessional, and ugly.  Our first instinct is
towards collaboration and away from passing judgement, but then we end
up with what we have now: a none-too-pretty unprofessional looking web
site.  My manager at Intel was a little taken aback when he saw the
LInuxChix web site; I had to convince him that we were doing good work
despite appearances.  I think he's still dubious.

I strongly advocate folding logo selection into the current system of
web design, which you and Jen seem to have firmly under control. 
Under no circumstances should we resort to the "everybody wins"
solution we've used in the past.  Let's get ourselves a beautiful,
professional, coherent web site.

After the hosting discussion/argument, I am completely out of energy
to advocate for the tuxbot logo or anything else.  I love it, I'm
going to use it, I offer it free for use to anyone else who wants it. 
I expect other people with logo ideas to take the same approach.

-VAL


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