<ffj### [at] club-internetfr> wrote:

> I may be wrong, but I think that the logo is meant to be displayed
> (as a banner or anything else) for the homepage and the icon to
> start POV (in window$ case).

A version of a logo could (and probably would) be reduced in size and 
quality to be used as a desktop icon for the povray application, but 
that's _not_ what the primary purpose of a logo is.  Logos are for 
advertising, and you hardly need to advertise a product to someone who 
has already downloaded it, uncompressed it, and installed it on their 
hard drive.

That's one of the problems with this whole "competition" - there is one 
camp of people who want the name "povray" (however you decide to spell 
it) in the logo itself.  They don't seem to realise that when you crunch 
an image down to 32x32 pixels, letters are nothing more than a blur.

That leaves you with two options:  Either you drop the name from the 
logo, or you simply stylise the name and forget about any cool sort of 
image to go along with it.  You can't fit both in 32x32.

Regardless, given that we're not a company with product to sell to 
consumers, the _only_ use we have for a logo at all is to recruit others 
into the povray community.  And the only _feasible_ way of doing that is 
by including the logo on the final art.

Now, we all know how pedantic we are about our own works, and none of us 
want to put some silly little logo onto our traces if it's going to 
stand out like a sore thumb and spoil the whole thing.  That's why it's 
pointless talking about colour schemes - blue, pink, rainbow, who cares 
- none of them will ever blend in with anyone's trace, and hence the 
logo will never get included.

Banners for websites are completely different to logos.  Banners can be 
huge (compared to logos), you've got plenty of space for images and 
text, and even animations, if you want.

And that's the _main_ problem with this whole "competition" - there 
seems to be a pervasive and narrow mindset that we must only have _one_ 
logo which should be used for _everything_.

As far as I'm concerned, that's just plain silly.  You don't use hammers 
to bash in screws, you don't race four-wheel drives in Formula 1, and 
you don't start fires by rubbing sticks together - you should use the 
right tools for the right job.

That means if we want a banner that can be displayed on web pages, then 
we design the best banner we can; if we want an icon for the povray 
application, then we design the best icon we can, and if we want a 
watermark/imprint to go on people's finished traces, then we design the 
best watermark/imprint we can.  A single logo can and will _NEVER_ do 
all three tasks well.

And if all this time is being spent on designing a logo that, regardless 
of how good it is, will only ever do a mediocre job at everything, then 
what's the point?

The right tools for the right job - that's all I'm saying.

Henry.

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