Here's Brand New's take on our old-is-new Boing Boing logo, which I spent all of 15 minutes thinking about and drawing back in 1999.
Committed Boing Boing readers will quickly point out that the After logo is actually an old logo, and they would be right. It was designed by Boing Boing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder and was used from 1999 until 2007, when it was replaced by another pixelated wordmark designed by pixel-happy eBoy, and helped establish a look that would ooze into other Boing Boing ventures like Boing Boing Gadgets and Boing Boing Video. All of it, a kind of crude visual attitude — the pixelated equivalent of a zine no less. This past October, Boing Boing redesigned its web site, to a mixed review worth 285 comments, and brought back Mark’s old logo, which I always preferred to the eBoy one. Gone too, for now at least, is Jackhammer Jill, who had stood by the logo for a long time.Brand New is taking a poll on which version of our logo is the best. So far "Both Suck, Actually" is winning by a factor of 2-to-1. If you have a better idea for a logo, link to your design in the comments. I'm not saying we are going to change it again, but I'm curious to see what others come up with.
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Never underestimate the level of petty hatred of random internet users when it comes to change. Even the most progressive site visitor cries crocodile tears when they perceive even a slight change.
I like the logo. It reminds me at once of early woodcuts, OCR fonts, and my old CGA games on the 8088 PC. It's not overly 'pixelly', just very square, like the contributors on Boing Boing :) ... There is room in this world for simple, simple design.
Yo, the newer, denser logo is a lot less legible than the old one. Please add more negative space - the blocky letters are much too close and too similar to each other. If I wasn't so familiar with the shape and color of the boingboing logo, I might actually struggle to read the words. And how much harder is it to read for someone with uncorrected vision problems? Shouldn't I be able to read the boingboing logo without my glasses?
Just promise me that you won't try mimicking that Khanate disaster, haha.
Not a logo thing, but I'm still wondering who Cory Doctorow David Pescovitz is in the masthead. Did they combine, morph together, etc.? Since they're two people, y'all need a comma after Cory's name, even if "Doctorow" is at the end of the line. Not a big deal, but a tad amateurish: use a comma!
Now thicker, and with more meat!
Make the logo bigger!
what do you care what we care? You do what you want anyways....why pretend?
I didn't even notice the difference. To me it's always been some red letters at the top of every page, I had no idea it could ever be the subject of a debate.
People should be spending all that energy being mad about something that matters.
I say kern it, Mark! http://www.understandingmaya.com/blog/?p=192
Before - for many reasons, but mostly because the letter hight and whitespace actually convey a hopping or jumping action. I have posted an overlay to show what I mean.
Also, the before conforms to a smaller grid of pixels 7x45 if I'm not mistaken. The after would take twice that.
I agree with gabrielm, I always thought the boingboing logo looked like it did because it was "bouncy."
esoteric design anyone?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44288568@N03/sets/72157622604213705/
had to have a little play
Lighter version has more "boing"!
The only thing I really noticed was that JACKHAMMER JILL WAS MISSING!
and was sad.
I'll get used to all the other changes, but request the reinstatement of Jackhammer Jill! It doesn't seem the same with out her... less jiggly, less fun.
Here is my quick and take on a boingboing logo. I wanted to keep everything the same height, make things a little more square so that it would flow into the navigation bar--
If it's not loved, maybe it will inspire someone to do something better.
-Ry
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryan_rafferty/4073887932/
typo: *quick and messy :P
I'm OK with either logo really, but I do have one request - bring back Jackhammer Jill!
I second the motion for Jackhammer Jill... and the post-redesigned logo. It makes me sad like the time WIRED rounded out their pixels.
http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/nomenluni/bblogoidea.jpg
And here's some of the experiments from early in the redesign process:
http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/nomenluni/logoelements.png
I like that a lot, Rob!
Remember how we had the zine logo for a week at relaunch? The very first issue actually had a different one -- here's the line art filled out, as tested in the new design.
http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab357/nomenluni/bb_logo_issue1.png
Stupidly, I can't even find the original line art now. But it was similar to this: http://www.boingboing.net/ff33-01.jpg
Cheers!
They're both so awful that they're awesome. 'Before' is so busy, busy, busy that they look less like letters and more like the buildings and houses bouncing up and down to the music in a Betty Boop cartoon. 'After' substitutes this busy-ness for a more unified scan across the letters, but there is such density between them that each character seems to jumps out at you as you scan it - it's as if someone had arranged all those Betty Boop buildings into an iTunes coverflow. Amazing that they both create so much moton!
Ultimately I'm gonna say 'Before' for print and merch, 'After' for use on screens.
What the Boing Boing logo is clearly lacking is a Pretty Steampunk Unicorn Playing a Ukulele.
Or perhaps it should be a Pretty Unicorn Playing a Steampunk Ukulele.
Oh and that Unicorn should be wearing a Creative Commons EFF Mashup T-shirt.
I'd draw the thing but I can't draw (I just tried and it looks more like a horse-man with rabbit ears holding a shot-gun with a chimney coming from his back [Actually that description makes my drawing sound kind of cool, which it most certainly isn't]).
If someone with some drawing talent can draw this rad creature it'd be 'teh radness' as some say around these parts.
I'd rather see you concentrate on making a mobile device friendly version of the site that would fit on an iPhone type display.
Also, rework your page loading to be more efficient. It takes ages for the page to load as it hits a lot of external ad sites and what not. The downside is that the right hand column showing recent posts and recent comments shows up very last.
LOVE the old/new logo! don't change it! it's so fun/chunky/iconic
Old, bring back Jill.
aoxomoxoa
This thread is fantastic. I love the different logo designs. @Pixelshifter, your "esoteric" design drives me wild. Sigil-as-logo! Right up my alley.
I'd like to hear the Don Draper spiel on how the new logo is an improvement. There's so little difference you guys may as well have saved the money and not done anything at all.
Not a logo thing, but I can't figure out where else to bring this up:
1 - I can't post a little photo on my profile. I get this crazy error msg:
Error writing upload to '/var/www/boing-cgi/mt/mt-static/support/uploads/dino.jpg': Opening local file '/var/www/boing-cgi/mt/mt-static/support/uploads/dino.jpg' failed: No such file or directory
Since NO ONE ELSE has a little photo, I think this is problem larger than me.
2 - Since the update, I've been getting some crazy line overlap problems with the first few lines of a page - so I get all of the following in ONE LINE overlapping each other at the top of this page:
Share
Mark Frauenfelder
POSTED AT 1:18 PM November 3, 2009
Art and Design
You can imagine that it's tough to read. I use OSX 10.5.8 and Firefox2 (I upgraded to 3 and it was a pita so for now I remain with 2).
Sorry to put this here, but there's no "tech problems" address I can find, and when I tried to email directly to a moderator that didn't work either.
Jonathan
the FiatRN
Brand New dis
I second "before" (and also Jackhammer Jill). I guess the before logo actually would fit quite nicely with the red bar in the top of the page (aligned at the bottom and the top but for the "i" and "b").
well, I couldn't resist... the old-is-new idea made me think of an old font we don't see much of lately...
http://i33.tinypic.com/nzlyfs.png
they're both good - it would be six and a half to choose between them.
many comments about jill - not sure how well that would work, but might be good if done well enough
Here's a very different take (that would probably go over better at Brand New:
http://futuraprime.net/experiments/boing_boing_logo/
Both logos irritate my eyes so I don't care. Still don't like the new font, everything's too big. I probably won't be coming here much anymore. Too bad!
Go back to the homepage and scroll down, geniuses. She's at the top of the masthead. She even bounces if you mouse over her.
I like this redesigned logo. Not sure what was going on with the spiky logo that was there for a while.
I generally like the rest of the redesign except for how the articles get reduced near the bottom. It's as if it was designed only to be viewed best by people who visit the site daily. It also makes it hard to know when I've caught up, as I don't immediately recognise the articles I've seen before when in their reduced form.