hey folks, quick update to say you’ve probably noticed our new community icons.
these icons were lovingly crafted by @UrLogicFails@beehaw.org, who posted them a couple of days ago over in Creative. we took notice of them and obviously–because they’re our community icons now–really, really liked them.
thanks to his generosity in working things out with us, we’re pleased to announce we can use his icons under a Creative Commons license for the site! until further notice they’ll be our site icons, with credit to him on our sidebars. we’ll also be adding attribution to the community sidebars over the rest of day as time permits.
we’re also pleased to report that, thanks to your generosity, we’ve been able to reasonably compensate him for all 33 of the icons he’s made for the community! the agreed to rate is $5 per icon, for a total of $165 that’s been paid out to him as of today. this expense has been reflected on our Open Collective. (we’ve also agreed to, as possible, commission him for any future community icons until further notice, which will be subject to that same rate.)
hopefully you enjoy the new icons, and please thank UrLogicFails for the work here! thanks for using the site again folks!
The new icons look really good, but unfortunately they are not really fulfilling their full purpose. The purpose of an icon is primarily to make it easier to distinguish between different communities in this case. The most noticeable features of these icons are the outer shape and the colour scheme, this makes it easy to distinguish between Beehaw communities and non Beehaw communities (so far so good). But it almost makes it harder to separate between the different Beehaw communities, since that information only resides within the inner symbol of the icon and that is far less prominent than the color and the outer shape. Unfortunately, we tend to think things with symmetry looks better, which makes a good looking icon theme and a usable icon theme a bit orthogonal.
So, while I really like the look of the icons (and how they tie in to the Bee theme of the site), I’m not a fan of the usability aspect of them.
I agree to your points. Having every icon be the same colors (black and yellow) really makes it hard to distinguish the different communities at a glance. For instance, the Open Source Initiative keyhole logo/icon used as the logo for the Free and Open Source Software community is usually green, and having it be black on yellow background is actually in direct contradiction to the OSI Logo Usage Guidelines section 2.1 – “Never Stray from the Color Palette”, where an example of a yellow/red icon is present. So there are also such considerations that has to be taken. Also
So either way that icon has to be changed to be in compliance with the usage guidelines (@alyaza, @Gaywallet and @UrLogicFails ), since I believe the Beehaw-community does not want to infringe on such a point. I am also then not sure if @UrLogicFails can release the icon under a license as is done here, since the keyhole logo is trademarked (see the OSI Trademark Guidelines). See for instance how !opensource@lemmy.ml has solved this. They use the icon with the ® symbol as well as attributing the OSI in the sidebar:
I think the color palette of the community icons shouldn’t be restricted to only black and yellow, that makes everything “scream” as that is usually a color combination used to express a warning or announcement. I’m no graphic designer by trade, but I think colors should be used as a distinguishing feature between the instances commmunities, and less dramatic colors, so to speak. Having the icons have a hexagon shape should be enough to recognize them as Beehaw-communities, even if they have different color schemes.
Ok completely unrelated. I always use the proper ™ or ® in whatever context it is required whether I’m writing for work or otherwise, even if I have absolutely no stake in the game at all, not working for any of the companies either. Because if I don’t then they can lose their trademark.
For example. Suppose I am responding to a post about motor oils in a
RedditBeehaw post, and I mention a fully synthetic motor oil like Mobil 1™. I use their trademark, but I don’t use it, endorse it, nor work for Mobil™.Do I need to do this or is this just an obsessive compulsion of mine? Do other people do this? What’s the “right” level of mentioning trademarks without making it seem like I’m a corporate shill?
As far as I know, it’s not really true that those marks have to be included to protect a trademark. Definitely there’s no expectation that individuals should be using them in normal communications. Unless you actually work for the company and are told to include a mark on company branding, it’s really not something to ever worry about.
Thanks, I think I have some obsessive compulsions that I need to… try to control lol