Idea 1:

Idea 2:

Idea 3:

@areguera so I thought about this a bit too, and moved this discussion here. Seems like there is some limit with image uploads, likely for spam protection, so I made separate replies, which actually helps with commenting as you can comment directly on each idea.

The discussion got my own thoughts moving as well, and here is some food for though as a reply to your mail (in quotes below)

Nice work Tuomas :)

Just to be clear and not claim undue credit: while we have been working as a group in this, two
designers in the RH brand team did the actual designs in this pdf. 

The one braking the CentOS symbol may create visual confusion about the
CentOS brand. I my humble opinion, the CentOS symbol must not be broken
in pieces. However I am very much agree it needs to evolve into
something more simple, able to be reproduced in different visual
manifestations, with less colors to meet present needs.

I thought about this too and I think you are right, I am also hesitant to break the logo since the whole point of the chaos symbol is then lost. I think we have the challenge to revise the logo and brand to make it more modern, but that also loses some of the current familiarity and recognition it has. 
I know the logo font is another thing that has quite a bit of recognition, but it also looks a bit outdated.

I thought about this and loaded the logo into Inkscape, and came up with this:

I changed the name to all caps just to spark thoughts. I know CentOS is the "Community ENTerprise Operating System", but I would argue CentOS has gained a name over the years that also works well in bold, all caps style.

I also modernized the chaos symbol a bit, making the outer spikes a bit rounded, so it works better for stickers etc. Here is a closeup of the corner of it (it is not intended to be cut like this of course)

Just to be clear and not claim undue credit: while we have been working as a group in this, two
designers in the RH brand team did the actual designs in this pdf.

Is there any chance these persons join us here? Btw, is there any change you Toumas and these persons join the CentOS Artwork SIG? A brief description about them, and commitments they want to achieve would be a nice addition.

I think we have the challenge to revise the logo and brand to make it more modern, but that also loses some of the current familiarity and recognition it has.

The transformation should not be seen as a lost of something we are now but an evolution of what we are into something more accurate to our present. The graphic design transformation of both CentOS typography and CentOS symbol should follow this principle (in case you all agree).

Imagine a process where we create a gradient of graphic design alternatives, from similar to different, using as reference the brand we have now. Then iterate inside of it until we get something that makes us feel: yes! that's it.

The community involvement is very important and a fact that must be present in this transformation process. I would like to see as much feedback as possible, and make everyone feel part of what we are doing. This is important because, otherwise, the result wouldn't be as respected and beloved as it could be.

The CentOS brand is the visual representation of the CentOS Project. It should transmit the core of its existence. All the motivations that drove its initial creation. From chaos, to nowadays.

I would propose to create two separate worklines/projects:

1. The CentOS Symbol
2. The CentOS Typography

These worklines attend the graphic design of these elements separately and they are combined from time to time to see how they look together. We would iterate through this process until get something.

I also modernized the chaos symbol a bit, making the outer spikes a bit rounded, so it works better for stickers etc. Here is a closeup of the corner of it (it is not intended to be cut like this of course).

I like the result. Arrows look wider and squares smaller. It looks compact and strong. However, when it is combined with the typography, the typography looks stronger than the symbol and makes me feel there is no balance between them. When we see the combination of symbol and typography they should be visually balanced to provide a uniform visual impact.

While I really like option 3, I have several concerns with it. One is that we'll run out of colors pretty quick, and that would then be confusing. The second is that the direction of the arrows might signify ... something? What does a downward pointing arrow signify on the Linux 8 logo? Seems somehow negative in some unspecified way. And, the third has been mentioned already - that breaking up the logo will make it unclear that it has anything to do with the original logo, when seen out of context.

So far as the logo goes, we're all very attached to it, and it's difficult to work with in things like embroidery. It doesn't scale small very well, and it's complicated. But, yes, we need to approach it very cautiously.

Thanks so much for this work!

I think option 3 should have all arrows pointing to top right really, pointing backwards and down makes it feel strange.

One possibility is a single-color evolvement of the current arrow symbol and color it differently for different things.

So, special interest groups could use one color, the Linux distro related projects another, third color for stuff for events, people & community (Dojos etc). We have 4 colors currently in the logo, so that would leave one more for something important I likely forgot when writing this :-)

Yes, that definitely addresses my concerns with option 3. The remaining one is, will people make the connection with The CentOS Project when they see the arrows? Which may be fine, since they'll probably always be used in context.

Can somebody delete the previous comment, I forgot to crop the pictures, sorry.
I like underline in idea 2 combined with somekind of logo from Idea 3, but though that maybe dominant colour (for certain branch/project) could emerge from current logo, something like this (I am not very good at drawing):

@brokenkeyframe, noted that symbols over a color background have thicker lines than those over transparent background. Is that intentional?

well, sorry, it is the opposite what I meant :) ... symbols over transparent backgrounds look to have thicker lines than symbols over a plain color background.

Yes. it looks bit optically weird if all has same width. solid background compensates that, so without background thicker lines looks better. It's quite quick sketch, as someone said that want's to see rounded lines, and I loved an idea and thought will give a try to check how it looks. Also, suggested new colours look better on darker background, and green one on the light. Intention was to keep similarities, but make better readability of logo itself.

I mentioned the difference between lines because, besides the weird optical effect, it would be two different designs based on whether we use background or not. The symbol should be unique no matter where/how we use it. To avoid visual confusions. You can correct me, it is just what I've read about brands.

fair enough, but do we present here final designs or ideas?

Yes. This is the right channel to discuss design ideas. Final designs would be in the wiki, somewhere under https://wiki.centos.org/ArtWork/Brand/ space.

I thought so. I appreciate your input, and next sketch/idea will follow your suggestion symbol will be more developed.

Hm, I do like that monochrome centos symbol inside a colored circle, and the arrow symbol is constructed from rounded rectangles very beautifully! That is very nice, and also works well in embroidery and other kind of use - yet it has the familiarity with the current logo symbol.

I would argue though, that CentOS could be written as CENTOS or centos? All-caps (or all lowercase) CENTOS looks much cleaner and modern to my eye.

@brokenkeyframe also, I do like your new color palette thinking, but I think the teal-green is quite close to the blue, that could maybe be adjusted a bit?

But I do like the "solarized" idea a lot - a palette that equally well over either dark or light background.

Thank you for your contribution!

No objections to writing CENTOS rather than CentOS, but do keep the board in the loop before you go down that road very far, as they may have some strong feelings about that.

Two options - circle and rounded hexagon. The chaos element lines are little bit thiner and removed outlined version. Changed teal-green to be more like green. Added an option for "CENTOS" but I think CentOS is way much better, and personally myself, everywhere I use this name I write it as "CentOS" Colours are as an option for CentOS version, it can be Stream, or rolling release or "gnome" or "kde" desktops etc.

That color scheme is now better in terms of legibility over different backgrounds.

I like the circle for simplicity, since the "gons" are quite overloaded with all the Kubernetes heptagonal project logos, and hexagonal stickers.

What font is that by the way? Ideally we want to use an open source font, so that logo variants etc can be made without requiring any commercial fonts. (SIL open font license is a safe bet)

Hi @brokenkeyframe, great work!

The background color behind the symbol, would it be part of the symbol as brand or it is a contrasting test? Using the circle or any other figure behind the symbol seems to take force out of it.

For example, the following looks plain/clean/flexible/strong enough to be applied on different media with precision.

In the horizontal logo design, could you try to align the CentOS typography to symbol middle? It looks a bit low. Also, could you create variants of it with both original and suggested colors, including alternative texts like Stream, Linux, SIG, Docs, Dojo, etc.? Black would be the default color for both symbol and text when used in light backgrounds, and white when used on dark backgrounds.

About the typography, the one you chose looks modern and legible enough to me, can you name it. I also share the need of continue using CentOS. "C" in upper case, "ent" in lower case, and "OS" in upper case.

Thank you very much!

@areguera I get the point what you saying, but try to put outlines in the "task bar" and you won't be able see a thing just bunch of random pixels. On the other hand the shape - circle or hexagon will be more easier to identify even if you won't see the "chaos" element at all, brain will create it for you and even if it is not recognisable by eye, you will know what is there.

Same with current logo, it is recognisable, because there are 4 colours, that you clearly see even if element is bury or pixelated.

I can bring back colours to element, but it wont look "modern" as some of you stated previously. Good shout about fonts, will try to find open source alternatives.

P.S. I have few other ideas, will try to put them sometime today/tomorrow/next week.

Let's try all the variants. With and without background figures behind the symbol. Sizes to consider are 8x8, 16x16, 22x22, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 96x96, 256x256, 512x512. Even unrecognised outlines may mean something. Using the figure behind takes space to chaos symbol making it even smaller. It would be very helpful to expose the variants to contrast the visual arguments, and so decide.

Google Fonts site is pretty useful for finding open source fonts, since they all are openly licensed. You can also type in your own text in the preview box, and then once you find something you like, you can just download the files as zip.

This is pretty nice by the way, to have a proper brainstorming session here with good ideas!

@areguera very small sizes are nowadays less important though, with even mobile devices having high dpi screens. But I agree that different sizes need to work.

I think the circle around the symbol would make the icon look better when scaled small, as the circle will always look reasonably nice in small size, even though the arrows symbol might turn out into a blurry mess.

@tigert , remember that in CentOS distribution the centos-logos package requires icons in these small sizes (see /usr/share/icons directory). For the web, favicon is in 16x16 in regular desktop browsers but it may also be 24x24, even 32x32 and resizes properly when used (in address bar, history, bookmarks, etc.) In case of mobile devices haven't test.

I am also very glad to have this discussion openly.

Sorry but I don't think outline version works. I think circle around works way better.

Yes, technically we need the small bitmaps, but I would argue the smallest sizes are not that widely used anymore (or, if they are, we should work on the user interface, because those would be tiny and just too hard to see on todays screens)

I came up with two ideas, not really something to use but I wanted to share them because we are designing together. Just food for thought maybe, I don't like the fact that this loses the chaos symbol too much. I was just playing with those two rounded rectangles on top of each other.

@brokenkeyframe tried to replicate your design:

Tried corners a bit less rounded and give more space between lines inside the symbol to see how it looks when reduced:

Just for testing and foster more redesign ideas.

Thanks!

@tiger, @brokenkeyframe , a few more design variants using Exo 2 typography:

What would you consider a good way to share the SVG files we are creating? I am tented to request the creation of a dedicate git repository named centos-brand to record changes in CentOS brand redesign.

love the 3rd one! but still not convinced with outlined versions. I think 2nd works better as it is easier to recognise.

Obviously it’s a matter of taste but I prefer circle/other shape background + symbol. It will work better for stickers, embroidery and so on. + background+logo sticker you could put it on any laptop and hide windows/apple logo underneath it. And personally I think this could be very cool.

Consider that they are two different things. One introduces a new design element/shape to the symbol and other uses the symbol as is on a background of any shape/color you want for final presentation. Stickers fall in the last case, where you can certainly have the symbol/logo on any shape you want but that shape is external to the symbol/logo and is not be a condition to the symbol itself when we propagate it.

True. But what is also true that it brings a lot of confusion. how big circle can be? what colour it will be? you can make a brand book for sure with these rules but it over complicates quite a bit. if you make circle and symbol together, add brand colour- that’s it. done. I really like ubuntu approach here - orange circle + symbol done. everywhere it’s the same proportions, same colour and treated as a logo, not a background + symbol with millions variations.

The usage of a circle depends much in the content it holds. In the case of ubuntu circle of friends it fits nice and complements the symbol purpose. However in our case, the eight corners of chaos symbol pointing out and showing expansion, a circle around them looks like a contention barrier to that expansion. I don't feel we should contain the expansion message using a circle, or any other figure as an integral part of our design. That's just my feeling.

The brandbook is the tool to express how we use the symbol in every visual manifestation. I don't feel it is easier because we have a circle in the logo. It also requires the same normalization we would do without it. Probably in a different way, but it is certainly present.

The expansion of the project to SiG's, Stream, and being a platform for new things is important, and I think the expanding arrows symbol does reflect that.

On the other hand, a circle can also be dynamic and expansive, for example if someone dropped a rock into water and caused circular expanding waves.

That would actually be an interesting idea for a wallaper or some other design concept, concentric expanding waves.

What would you consider a good way to share the SVG files we are creating? I am tented to request the creation of a dedicate git repository named centos-brand to record changes in CentOS brand redesign.

I wonder if you can just attach files here? I am trying adding a SVG with the attach image button below the text field.

Edit: That works - the file is attached and you can download it, even though it does not render in my Chrome browser at least. But a quick and dirty way that works.

On the other hand, a circle can also be dynamic and expansive, for example if someone dropped a rock into water and caused circular expanding waves.
That would actually be an interesting idea for a wallaper or some other design concept, concentric expanding waves.

@tigert , indeed. It is a great source of inspiration to start conceptualizing CentOS 9 artwork.

In Firefox over default light theme:

In Firefox over a development dark theme (a good example of what @brokenkeyframe mentioned about using a static background color behind the symbol):

I would change the favicon background from transparent to a plain color (the same Firefox uses in its light theme), so it looks transparent in light theme, and visible in dark themes. Variants of light theme different to that one we used as favicon background may not look transparent. Ideas?

It looks to be a weakness the fact of being forced to change the logo color based on the background we use in order to make it visible.

great designs. It’s not a weakness to change something to adopt something that works. but as I said earlier with circle/other shape background comes lots of hassle free options. Imagine your circle blue with white symbol, and it will work on both dark and light themes. Just to mention lots of places use circle for a profile pictures (see attachment). Indeed of using name and logo, you could use just a logo and make it more visible. Overall I get the point that of your direction to use symbol without background and that meaning of expansion, but either you have to make it solid itself and bring back colours, either put a background that comes together as a piece to have a “everywhere works” solution.
That said, I like your design, I think it’s years ahead of what it is now, and would love to see it in upcoming builds, but personally if I had to choose one, I would live to have it with a circle of colour and white symbol on it.

Design concept for websites using the logo redesign on a dark background:

The website design concept is a project on its own: https://github.com/areguera/centos-style-websites

few more sketches

Thanks @areguera and @brokenkeyframe!

I agree the symbol on a colored background in a circular profile pic is pretty powerful, of course you lose the name in the logo, but on the other hand, it is much more recognizable and clear in the twitter app avatar on your phone for example, the current one is quite blurry.

Of course we need to figure out the "main" brand color to represent the project itself, in addition to the SIG / Stream / etc variants, if we go this route, but I must say I do like the simplicity of this train of thought.

@tigert , any particular reason to use grey instead of white on symbol lines?

@areguera Not really, I just wanted to see how a solid-color background with just a symbol would work in an avatar on twitter which has the circular shape built in.

The gray logo was just one of @brokenkeyframe 's ideas that I took a screenshot of.

I think a pure white version of the symbol with a solid background might also work.

This work is truly amazing, not just the designs themselves, but the process of open collaboration.

I was chatting with @tigert the other day about that process; since I'm going currently managing the CentOS Board side of the discussion, I'm looking to see how I can help keep us moving toward a decision.

We've got monthly Board meetings, and one plan would be to have a few design ideas presented by one or all of you on the Jan 2020 Board of Directors meeting.

If that's moving too quickly, we could use the earlier months (Jan, Feb 2020) to discuss idea variations here and among the Directors themselves; then schedule the designers presentation to the Board later.

Let me know what you all think; this might perhaps be a better discussion for the mailing list, we can take it up in the original thread there.

OK, now that we are back from holidays, lets see if anyone had even better ideas.

I think I will look through the designs, the discussions and will create a few concrete proposals that we can share with the CentOS governing board on their next meeting and see how this can move forward.

I'm very happy about this whole collaboration, and I will naturally share the proposals here before @quaid takes them further.

Edit: let me rewind a bit to the basics first before jumping into the final designs. Lets talk about the basic elements first.

So, second attempt, sorry about the possible spam of the earlier comment @brokenkeyframe and @areguera - lets see.

I do like the idea of a well defined circle logo, because there will be circle logos in all kinds of places like social media and stickers, so we might as well "own" the shape from the beginning and define the proportions, as @brokenkeyframe suggested. I also think it works well in embroidery etc, as you can possibly make the logo in one color only, or two if the arrow symbol and text are white, and the circle is one of the brand colors.

I do think the circle also draws more attention in the logo as it has visual weight.

I do like the round lettering to match the symbol shape (even the plain chaos symbol has a rounded basic appearance around the arrow tips) so I used the Montserrat font - but feel free to play with the lettering if you have good ideas. I do realize the look is very different from the more "square" look of the current CentOS logo font, but it does match nicely with the round symbol (and also the plain symbol has a round basic shape).

I also tried different weights and I seem to like "bold" more the longer I look at these:

Hey everyone, I support @tigert, and also think that circle works quite well in most cases. I think good option would be, to narrow selection to a few, and try to make few more variants out of them. Just a play with font, colour etc. and see where it will take us.

I really like this version from @areguera, except font. If it was all on me I would change that, as it still looks little bit outdated. But I think it is a matter of taste.
https://git.centos.org/centos/Artwork/issue/raw/files/a4e937accef9334e820b8aac826fb518f19821083b8b1a2d2a55ffc809de68f8-Screenshot_from_2019-11-30_14-25-09.png

I do like the round lettering to match the symbol shape (even the plain chaos symbol has a rounded basic appearance around the arrow tips) so I used the Montserrat font - but feel free to play with the lettering if you have good ideas. I do realize the look is very different from the more "square" look of the current CentOS logo font, but it does match nicely with the round symbol (and also the plain symbol has a round basic shape).
I also tried different weights and I seem to like "bold" more the longer I look at these:
<img alt="weights.png" src="/centos/Artwork/issue/raw/files/6adaaddfb214559532d911f378533bb18a4cb0e8f012ee3dd177ee4493bd38b4-weights.png" />

is it actual font? it looks bit spaced out, and it looks bit weird. Let's agree on one thing that do not change kerning, because it is a rule #1 in typography.

Steps forward

To get this into an actual proposal, I would like to craft maybe two or three fairly polished logo systems that we can show to the governing board. Ideally the board can just pick one and we can get things moving, we have people like @rbowen who are looking forward to have a new logo in use :-)

Font

Do you have other suggestions? Montserrat looked nice to me, but its just one font after all, something else might be also good. I do like the match of roundedness to the logo though.

Chaos Symbol

From the previous discussion I gather that we all seemed to like the "line art" one color version of the chaos symbol, and it probably maintains some familiarity with the old brand too which is not a bad thing. So I recreated it based on the sketches.

Color

The idea of the varying colors for each part of the community is interesting, but we will also need to have a good primary brand color. I wonder if we should have one strongest color and maybe the sub colors could be on a secondary element in the logo, like a line (or maybe a stroke in the circle, which might be a terrible idea though).

I am attaching the SVG file here too

I made it in Inkscape, and you need to have the Montserrat fonts installed to open it correctly of course, the texts are not converted to paths.

The design is off canvas, so opening it in a browser will not really work. Hopefully it is useful for collaboration though.

@tigert I also like rounded fonts, but nothing in particular at the moment, but will do some research on Monday.

Yeah. As this is an open source project, it is good to have all assets available with a free license, so anyone regardless of their money or job can contribute. This is why I usually look aroun in google fonts, as they host only openly licensed ones.

Thank you for your help, also thanks @areguera for your feedback. I will also think some more on Monday and see where this road takes us.

Now that I look at the spaced out kerning of the designs I did, you are absolutely right. It does look horrible. My only defense to this is that I probably had played with the super bold all caps variant on my earlier examples and left the kerning in place. Now that I look at this with default kerning, it does so much better.

@areguera - would you have a SVG of your rounded outline tip chaos symbol with the center dot @brokenkeyframe is referring to? Mine is probably not as accourate in details as yours, I know you pay a lot of attention to that.

I did some variations with fonts. My favourite is top right. But probably would swap symbol to one @areguera has made. It grown on me. I can make a colour versions and additional ones, but just on 1 or 2 variants, so someone has to make a decisions here.
If someone needs, SVG version is here.
https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZTc1BkZpUVDchC0RdkL4YEfuXfuB7TG5570

Hi,

@tigert here is attached the SVG file where I did most of the work. You all are welcome to refine the work there (and post your changes too ;).

The zoomed image of chaos symbol you posted looks perfect. It's well balanced. The dot in the center makes it stronger than when it isn't there. It is a starting point for all the chaos to begin. The dot I mean. The core. Where actions emerge.

I am still hesitant about closing the chaos symbol within an external shape. It distracts me from the whole symbol meaning itself. But that's just me, if the majority looks other thing I accept it. Probably bringing more eyes to this specific topic may help.

About the typography, no objections, just to consider it would be eventually used all over documentation headings as well as other places like stands headlines, clothes, etc. If it reads well there it may be a good candidate. In all cases we need an open license font like those google fonts provides. It allows us to use it online or locally if we prefer to. In first place I used Exo 2 because it resembles the old logotype Denmark font, and it is also in google font under a open license and ready to include on HTML files. It was also used in CentOS 6 installer rolling notes.

Best regards

I am still hesitant about closing the chaos symbol within an external shape. It distracts me from the whole symbol meaning itself. But that's just me, if the majority looks other thing I accept it. Probably bringing more eyes to this specific topic may help.

I think it boils down to this:

What I am thinking is that the logo will be inside some kind of frame or circle in many cases anyway, so we might just define it like that. While I like the non-circle version, I think the circled logo does make a bigger impact on smaller sizes like favicons and makes the avatar more visible.

What I argue here is to keep the symbol out any external shape in order to be free enough to put it in visual manifestations that impose a shape around it.

The example posted before looks acceptable (in either way) because the shape is not part of the symbol itself but part of the context and the correct contrast was used:

1. The symbol with purple lines over white background. This one gives the impression no circular shape is present because the page background and the symbol background are both the same.

2. The symbol with white lines on a purple background. This one does make visible the circular shape twitter imposes around that image because symbol background and page background are different.

However, when it comes to CentOS logo construction (the true nature of the symbol in its free form, without imposed visual boundaries), where it has the CentOS word aside, it doesn't look/feel the same.

It would be very convenient for CentOS logo visual recognition to conceive a symbol able to be applied in as many contexts as possible without visual affections because of external shapes (that may vary in form btw) or any other element. For example, we can use it alone with white lines on dark backgrounds (with or without external shapes), or with black lines over light backgrounds (again, with or without external shapes), as the context demands and fits best. But when we want to recognize the brand, and look the CentOS logo (composed of symbol and CentOS word) it doesn't have any shapes or distractions. It has to be shown in its true nature, as is. Clean. Basic. Strong.

Hmm.

The plain symbol is starting to grow on me. I think it works better with a stacked logo than the circle one. One option is that we define a circular variant of the logo for uses like avatars, stickers etc, so the circular version is consistent whenever it is used.

I think the free / circular logo is a decision we should do before we submit something to the board.

These are done with Montserrat:

I also tried some other fonts, but montserrat looks good to my eye. What I like is the new symbol, I don't feel super strong about fonts or the circle at the moment. Lets try to wrap this into something we can decide on.

And the file is here, though you will need to hunt for the fonts (all are from google fonts)

Looking again the symbol I proposed found it still needs refinement. There are visual inconsistency I want to fix. See in the following image how lines that make the internal 90 degree arrow doesn't align with the lines that make the external 45 degree arrow on both left and right sides of it. Such inconsistency make the symbol look broken instead of unified.

Montserrat looks good, specially the bold one, when put both symbol and font in a balanced weight distribution horizontally. For example, font with 24 pixels height, and symbol with 48 pixels height. A separation between them of three normal key strikes or so.

the last one looks really good. I would love to get copy of CentOS 9 with this branding :) thank you :))

Yeah, I agree. This looks very nice. The logo does look much better in these proportions. I must say I have enjoyed this collaborative process a lot.

We should think of colors next. Should we have a set or just one?

How would we do the stream / community / whatever sub-logos?

@areguera can you share the svg or is this different from the symbol I did? Your pointy corner looks slightly different than mine.

Here are some of the candidates with visual corrections:

provides the work in case you want to look and make changes on it.

@tigert in the previous image tried to replicate your chaos symbol design but I still have subtle differences. So to be accurate took your symbol design just as you posted and created the base logo composition based on it here:

I do like 2 and 4. I think 1 and 3 look a bit too much like the original. The smooth corners add a bit of modern touch which is nice.

I think 2 and 4 would probably both work, although 4 likely works nicely in a circle like a sticker for example.

Colors is a tricky one - I think we need a solid main brand color and then a few supplemental colors if we want to do the stream etc sub-logos with some kind of color coding.

I like the proposed palette from @brokenkeyframe in the sense that it works a bit like the "solarized" palette, which works over dark and light background. I do like more natural green, but that is just my personal preference, nothing I want to fight about - what matters more is that the colors fit together.

We should think of colors next. Should we have a set or just one?

@brokenkeyframe has already proposed a color set we can use to start with.

How would we do the stream / community / whatever sub-logos?

Using the base logo that identifies the CentOS Project, add alternative text to it for each component you want to connect to it. For example:

Colors is a tricky one - I think we need a solid main brand color and then a few supplemental colors if we want to do the stream etc sub-logos with some kind of color coding.

Colors are tricky indeed. They may mean different things for different cultures. Traditionally CentOS Linux has used blue color on backgrounds. The opposite color in the wheel of color for blue might be something between yellow and red. The contiguous colors would be green and purple.

Using the opposite color provides high contrast between CentOS Linux and CentOS Stream while using contiguous colors provide less contrast but the idea of being contiguous products. The specific case of purple may be perceive a neutral color. On one side we have Red (Hat) and in the other side Blue (CentOS Linux). Probably purple may be a good candidate for CentOS Stream. Just thinking out loud here.

I vote no 4. it has bit "softer" feel than 2 (my second choice) and I think it will look good in some cases combined with circle (ex. twitter profile pic). and if I have to top down all versions it will go 4, 2, 3, 1.

@areguera can you please share version 4, svg please? I will make something out of it :)

@brokenkeyframe If I recall correctly, that was from my file.

Here's a version I did, with both stroked and adjustable stroke on the chaos symbol.

The SVG file

First idea for sub-logos, to get started. Merely food for thought again :-)

I immediately think this is just too big of a mess with the dot and the sub project text and the logo itself. But I kind of like the colored dot in the symbol. Although conceptually that is a bit strange as the dot kind of represents the core of the project, not the things around it.

Less spread out, so it holds together better. I also made the circle slightly bigger.

@areguera can you please share version 4, svg please? I will make something out of it :)

@brokenkeyframe it is in the file centos-logo-redesign-2.svg previously posted. Note that you can change the pattern to control the symbol shape in this file. The pattern on the left has been cloned and duplicated to build the symbol on the right-side. The pattern in the fourth design is slightly different to that one provided by @tigert on its file (arrows head are a bit smaller in mine) but it was the intention to make it the same, so you probably want use the one provided by @tigert.

Adding color to CentOS base brand (chaos symbol + CentOS word) may make its propagation harder (and expensive). I would not use a multicolor base brand unless really necessary. Nor the base brand in one color for one product and the base brand in a different color for another product. It may be confusing about our visual identity as project. Instead, I would use the base brand, as is, plus alternative texts for each product we want to connect to the base brand.

I think you are right.

One possibility is to use the logo itself either as black or white depending on the background. So white logo on dark backgrounds and black on light.

We currently have blue as base color and yellow as accent, which works ok. I agree that a multicolor logo is expensive to reproduce on swag. White logo can be just one color printed on a solid color tshirt and it would look nice even as is.

I played with some ideas where the logo would be used. Hex stickers and some generic layouts.

I might be too stuck with the historical colors, it would be good to have a few fresh ideas to play with. These look a bit boring :-)

I don't see it boring but plain and simple which is a very convenient aspect for branding. It is sober enough to allow us to be creative in the context. The blue/yellow contrast looks good. I like the saturation you used to base our identity pattern. @brokenkeyframe what these colors make you feel?

Looking the alternative two-line text in context, it looks like the first line has much less space than the second one. It is probably because I was not considering the real text baseline but the descender line of text as bottom margin reference. Any suggestion/proposition on this?

@areguera colours are good, but probably yellow/electric green or blue/electric green would be my personal preference (from my previous colour suggestions) even if i have to sacrifice contrast :) But if this combination of colours used now(blue/yellow), probably it is better to keep that way for a legacy.

Regards line spacing i believe it will look more even if you subtract O and S from “Operating System” put a line there and shift it up. Although y and S might interfere or get blurred on smaller sizes. hopefully not. Need to check that.

p.s. I love blue and yellow circle ones!

@areguera colours are good, but probably yellow/electric green or blue/electric green would be my personal preference (from my previous colour suggestions) even if i have to sacrifice contrast :)

@brokenkeyframe can you prepare some examples with your color preferences? Probably using the same stickers/website model @tigert used, or another different, so we can visualize it.

As I mentioned before, yellow/blue works great, but for my personal preference I would go with something like that. I also tweaked a green just a bit and pushed towards electric. It looks little bit better with yellow and blue together to my eye.

Regards line spacing i believe it will look more even if you subtract O and S from “Operating System” put a line there and shift it up. Although y and S might interfere or get blurred on smaller sizes. hopefully not. Need to check that.

@brokenkeyframe would it be something like the following?

Yes! That's perfect @areguera!

I do believe your version is better for clarity. Also I do believe that portions between symbol and CentOS are perfect on their own, but when there is text underneath it shifts weight towards bottom left.

I just have another thought and did some variants with smaller font for "Community Enterprise Operating System" personally i'd go with 3rd option and it pushes everything back to centre.
Just to know, it's a quick mockup and I quickly aligned everything by hand to get an idea.

Montserrat on website titles:

Just having fun.

I think we have now settled on a logo that looks pretty solid to me.

I think we should propose this to the CentOS board so we can get commitment from them and move forward to the rest of the branding.

I think the proposal should have the logo, and basic brand colors, and few examples of how it would look in practice. We also need the sub-logos, because @rbowen needed the CentOS Stream logo for events.

@quaid, what would you suggest are the best practical steps to get this moving with the board? We will make a proposal PDF with examples how the logo would be in real life cases.

For the Stream etc logos, I like the proposals by @areguera and I'm happy to go with them.

I played with some color and examples below. I made the blue a more sky blue to kind of consciously avoid looking like the IBM blue, but I think it also looks nicer and makes this a bit different from the old blue CentOS has, giving it a lighter feel. But feel free to play with the colors too, so we can get a few examples maybe even? The logo itself works with any color combination, which is nice.

And the SVG is here

I think we have now settled on a logo that looks pretty solid to me.

I agree. The logo is ready for a test both in digital and industrial media.

@brokenkeyframe, what's your vote on this?

What do you think of a wiki page somewhere under https://wiki.centos.org/ArtWork/Brand to collect the normative about how to apply the logo on different visual manifestations? For example, the protection areas around the logo, the logo variants, the logo colors including pantone references, acceptable and non-acceptable usages, etc.)

@areguera yes, logo looks great to me. for the wiki page it would be great to have that, and put brand book in pdf, logo variants, usage, fonts etc.

Yeah.

I think we need board approval for the logo itself, especially since there's a trademark that needs to be updated accordingly. That proposal needs a sensible brand color defined to be a real proposal.

But we can work on the website font pairings and other related style guide stuff later, as that just supports the main brand.

We should update the brand guide wiki pages once we have approval. Let's do a separate page for now, and then just move the content to replace the current brand guide once we get an OK from the board.

I am going to work with @rbowen today to draft a blog post and message to the mailing list, so we can get some more visibility to this process. We did announce the work in the list (that's how @brokenkeyframe likely found out, which is awesome) and we have since gained nice design traction here. But I guess many people will be surprised to see what we've been up to since they missed the announcement or since forgot about it,, so a little explanatory blog post and a mail to the list should be useful, detailing the process and the design we are going to propose to the board.

So things got slower as many folks are in fosdem this weekend. I'll poke @rbowen but he is likely quite busy for a bunch of days.

I pinged Red Hat Legal about the trademark issues, but everyone was out of office. I will send a followup reminder.

I posted this, and also poked the mailing list, as most people likely have not been following this since we started here.

https://blog.centos.org/2020/01/updating-the-centos-logo-and-visual-style/

Late to the party, but here is a design I was playing with a while back.

err, png is probably better

Trying to resurrect an old good thread about logo redesign.
Today we went live (thanks to the awesome job done by @areguera) with new website design on https://www.centos.org ... but still with the old logo :)
I guess having board + legal answer on the proposed logos would be good to close this looooooooong ticket ? :D

The expression, "You are barking up the wrong tree," applies here. As I outline in the Board ticket on this topic, the responsibility is on the community members who want the logo to change to proactively have all the discussions with affected people. It's not enough to send an email to centos-devel and file a ticket, then sit back and when no one responds call it dead in the water.

My request is that @tigert @areguera @brokenkeyframe @rbowen define an open decision process to the community that includes:

• Time for feedback to be given, with a deadline.
• Time to iterate on the design based on feedback.
• Milestones on the schedule so people can know when to expect new designs, to give feedback, etc.
• Responses to all reasonable objections; "why change our brand?" is a legit objection.
• Clear answer for who is accountable for deciding the final design that is sent to the Board.
• Communication, communication, communication. During the process, there should be a weekly status update so that people don't forget that feedback deadlines are happening, a new set of designs is happening to watch or wait for, etc.

Once we have a final design candidate or candidates, then Rich is going to need to go back for Red Hat Brand and Legal input around the trademark, etc.

At that point, the Board should be rubber-stamping a decision that the community is already built consensus around.

This is my idea about Centos logo.

Any progress on this? It'd be great to have this for CentOS Stream 9...

No, no progress, because nobody is championing the change. We need someone (or a group of someones, such as the artwork SIG?) to champion the change, and work with the Board on a process to arrive at consensus. The Board is not going to drive this process. And while I would be glad to work with the Artwork SIG on this, it's not something that has, thus far, risen to the top of my priority list.

I like the work that has been done here, but actually making it happen, not to mention working with Red Hat Legal, is something that needs someone with the passion to see this happen.

Hi, I'm Mo the Fedora Design team lead. o/ I've worked as a designer in the Fedora community since 2004 or thereabouts :)

I came across this ticket when working on a project to update the default Fedora web server (apache, nginx, caddy, etc.) page that pops up since we had to replace the logo on it - the Fedora page was very circa 2002 so we updated the whole thing to be more modern-looking. I am assisting with updating the same for RHEL, as well. The httpd package maintainer suggested I take a look at CentOS too in case you needed an update for yours - it turns out not since @areguera already took care of refreshing it from the old design. But as I looked into that, this ticket came up in an email discussion with @tigert.

I would love to help with this effort. The open collaborative process in this ticket is really inspiring and I am loving what you came up with to iterate the logo and modernize it. (I also <3 the Montserrat font, it's a good choice. It also is maybe an improvement in terms of software freedom since I believe the old CentOS font - Denmark - is not open source like Montserrat is - Denmark appears to be free-as-in-beer and predates the SIL Open Font license.)

We just launched the new Fedora logo back with the release of Fedora 34, and I think there are some lessons learned, etc. that could maybe be helpful for this process?

One suggestion that might be interesting food for thought - we had some very strong emotions about updating the Fedora logo in the Fedora community, even with it being an iteration of the existing logo rather than something completely new. There is a lot of love for the previous Fedora logo, so one thing we've decided to do on the Fedora Design team is to keep the old Fedora logo around as the Fedora "classic" logo. In the distro itself, this meant keeping all of the packaged logo artwork in place with a _classic added to the filename so the files remain available to use for those who prefer the old logo. We also are working on an official "Fedora Classic" logo that embeds the old logo in a "Classic" swash that we will use for swag and various promotions moving forward; this is our ticket on that: https://pagure.io/design/issue/759

What would be the best way (what venue I guess... IRC? A board meeting? Here in this ticket? centos-devel?) to have an open discussion about this and find a way forward? I am very much willing to put my hat in the ring here and commit to championing this, but I am a relative outsider to the CentOS community these days so I don't want to step on any toes.

Hi, I'm Mo the Fedora Design team lead. o/ I've worked as a designer in the Fedora community since 2004 or thereabouts :)

Nice to see you here Mo.

I would love to help with this effort.

Please feel free to add your contributions. I am pretty sure every single pixel you share will improve what we already have.

We just launched the new Fedora logo back with the release of Fedora 34, and I think there are some lessons learned, etc. that could maybe be helpful for this process?

Absolutely! This issue needs all the help it can take. It certainly will help to create a strong brand, flexible enough to be applied on different visual manifestations with high precision and low distortion because of size, color or shape.

There is a lot of love for the previous Fedora logo, so one thing we've decided to do on the Fedora Design team is to keep the old Fedora logo around as the Fedora "classic" logo.

+1 It looks useful for CentOS as well.

What would be the best way (what venue I guess... IRC? A board meeting? Here in this ticket? centos-devel?) to have an open discussion about this and find a way forward?

I would suggest to use this issue as the main reference to share suggestions, comments and contributions about CentOS logo redesign.

I am very much willing to put my hat in the ring here and commit to championing this, but I am a relative outsider to the CentOS community these days so I don't want to step on any toes.

Thank you very much Mo. Feel yourself at home and go for it :)

@areguera Thanks for the warm welcome :)

These are some visuals / ideas that might help in thinking about this project?

First, I saw in some of the feedback about the change that maybe the changing of the original colors was too much change for those not convinced the logo should be updated? Do you and @tigert and @brokenkeyframe have strong opinions about the palette? Maybe this is too much change at once and keeping the current color palette would help moderate that. Thinking this way, I came up with these mockups but they can work with the new proposed palette as well I think:

Here is a CentOS classic mark that could be maintained moving forward, done in a similar style to one of the Fedora classic mockups (also disregard the 2006 lol that is leftover from the Fedora mockup I didnt update it):

Here is a social media in-context mockup... the idea I had here was even if the mark itself is going one color and the colors are being dropped, using a 4 color ring like this (inspired by @eminyaren 's square outline mockup with a similar treatment) could be a way to optionally maintain the colors when the platform (eg on screen) allows it, and the colors could be dropped for example in one-color printing applications.

Finally some modifications to the website design to see how they might look. I saw the discussion here about introducing an anchor color on top of the 4 color palette. I saw @tigert selected a sky blue. I am biased here but we recently updated Fedora's blue to a very, very similar sky blue and I think where Fedora and CentOS logos might appear side-by-side (pretty probable) it would cause a lack of differentation / contrast between the two, and maybe make them seem more associated than they are, so I shifted the blue to a darker blue (hope that was ok.) Anyhow the idea with this is for the dark blue to be the "anchor" color and the four other colors overlaid / extra.

I saw the discussion here about introducing an anchor color on top of the 4 color palette. I saw @tigert selected a sky blue. I am biased here but we recently updated Fedora's blue to a very, very similar sky blue and I think where Fedora and CentOS logos might appear side-by-side (pretty probable) it would cause a lack of differentation / contrast between the two, and maybe make them seem more associated than they are

Yes. That is an important point to keep in mind. I am ok with just a black/white design able to achieve the highest contrast possible in the highest number of different visual manifestations possible without affecting recognition or interfering with Fedora logo once both are put together. I think they both need to look good together making clear they are two different projects.

the idea I had here was even if the mark itself is going one color and the colors are being dropped, using a 4 color ring like this (inspired by @eminyaren 's square outline mockup with a similar treatment) could be a way to optionally maintain the colors when the platform (eg on screen) allows it

I am +1 on keeping the 4 colors somehow so to keep a visual connection with them. They provide a strong visual recognition value I wouldn't like to leave out of our visual identity as long as they don't affect the brand reproduction/recognition (main reason of getting them out of the symbol itself).

In the very specific case of twitter, it worries me a bit the possible confusion it may introduce to add a ring of colors around the symbol considering it is decoration element that is not present in the symbol itself. For example, people looking on twitter may expect something similar on websites, distribution and so on.

About the website, I like the layout you proposed Mo. Two big boxes for the distributions with a small description and a learn more button on them. Using colors to differentiate them seems a good option at first glance however it may also introduce differences we don't have in the distributions since both CentOS Stream and CentOS Linux are using the same tone. A change of tone to identify them may require a change of tone in wallpapers as well in order to retain a strong visual connection between them all. Said that, it is an option if there is agreement from others onto that direction (which seems to be temporal anyway considering we will be probably retiring the CentOS Linux box from the website homepage after its EOL). To start I would use semi-transparent boxes so to be consistent with their wallpapers, which is shared at the moment.

The bar for community links looks like a very good addition for the homepage.

I will be trying to implement your homepage layout proposal at https://www.dev.centos.org/ so to see how it looks live. Please, consider we cannot use the new symbol in that site yet but we can set the layout that will contain it and add it once approved.

I would like to talk more about the websites but not in this already quiet long issue :D, so probably a new issue for website redesign should be opened.

Thank you!

Best regards.

@areguera @tigert @brokenkeyframe Would you be comfortable if we presented this proposal to the CentOS board at next month's meeting? (Looks like it'll be Sep 15 or so?)

Confirmed: September 15th at 20:00 UTC

`date -d "2021-09-15 20:00 UTC"`

Yes. Probably we need to be a bit more specific about what "this proposal" means. For example, would it be necessary to have some sort of final slides for that presentation? In that case, what sort of information you'd recommend to have in it so to fit the presentation needs?

Best regards.

Some slides summarizing:

I would encourage you also to have something about the "CentOS Classic" logo/brand, and perhaps even create some of the missing assets for that which we currently lack. There is a desire, both from the Board, and from Red Hat Legal, to ensure continual use of the "retired" brand so that we don't lose the right to defend those marks. There's also always a desire from the community to hold on to a beloved former mark.

What you have put together above is great. The Board does tend to react better to "we propose this specific thing" than to "what are your opinions about X?"

Tried to keep the "CentOS Classic" brand simple as well, considering it is still a brand and it could be reproduced at some point of time. Here are some slides for "CentOS Classic":

Wouldn't the est. 2021 be est. 2004 instead?

The new logo variants look pretty awesome. :smile:

Here is the SVG updated for any correction necessary.

Thanks.

Wouldn't the est. 2021 be est. 2004 instead?

I am not sure about it. I would be glad to know the exact information so we can distribute the classic brand correctly. Since 2003 I am seeing the same CentOS Symbol identifying The CentOS Project, however, I haven't found any reference of any related trademark registration for that date or any further, before the one that took place at 2013.

Anyway, here it is est. 2004 slides:

Thank you!

Slide illustrating logo composition and its expansion:

Slides illustrating horizontal and vertical composition:

SVG updated:

Just noting what I noticed during the board meeting today. Visually it strikes me as a bit odd that 2 of the 3 corners in the vector/arrowhead are sharp (the internal ones), but the external corner is blunted. My eyes flagged it as inconsistent.

I am working on the symbol to illustrate your point and also provide some options that may satisfy the consistency need. Thanks for sharing your thoughts it here!

I think that looks pretty!

I am so glad you find it pretty, @jcpunk . I'll be updating the presentation with this new information and sharing it once completed, so we can have a new reference to base further revisions on.

Best regards.

Here is the final proposition (result and conclusion of this issue):

• https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTd3sPkYcbNshQykKxsw21wn3uLqTJm1-kAWJYXZVwps8qk-2modHJm_1anDbNg13A1jfcyE4vYjC5v/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

I updated the CentOS Symbol design based @jcpunk observations, added some examples in the "Why?" section to illustrate the visual inconsistencies we are trying to solve, added the CentOS Symbol step by step composition, and finally a link to artwork issues as reference for feedback.

The SVG file used to produce the images in this proposition is also available here:

I feel this issue should be closed now and move forward. We've provided the proposition requested two years ago when this issue was started. Next steps may include a second review from CentOS Board of directors, and in case of approval, request the brand owner's guidance to implement it according to all legal matters involved.

I would like to suggest also that subsequent actions related to CentOS Logo and CentOS Visual Identity Modernization (e.g., corrections, improvements, implementation) take place in new issues that use the proposal here as reference to base new changes on. I expect that happen eventually because constant review of CentOS visual identity is necessary to keep it relevant.

Best regards.