On Sun, 30 Apr 2000 08:46:58 -0700, Ken wrote:
>Rune wrote:
>
>> Firstly, there are many cases where you would want a low resolution of the
>> logo, for example for in icon, which is just 32*32 pixels, or on those tiny
>> banners you put on websites (POV-Ray 3 NOW!).
>
>Don't confuse a logo competition with an icon competition. They are not
>the same thing and have two totally different intended purposes.

I think that a logo for a program should be usable as an icon for this
program. It should also be usable on glossy brochures, web pages,
printed documentation, letterheads on faxes, and (in the special case
of povray as an image-producing software) as a "watermark" on generated
images.

To be suitable for all these purposes, it needs to obey several
constraints:

1) It needs to be at least recognizable at VERY low resolutions to be
   used as an icon.
   The low resolution version of the logo may be only part of the full
   logo (for example, it may be missing the text "pov-ray" for all the
   O-with-V logo variations).

2) It needs to be recognizable in black and white - documentation will 
   often be printed on a black-and-white printer, and an unrecognizable 
   black blob on the title page won't look good. The resolution
   requirements for the bw version are probably a little less stringent,
   but you can't completely ignore them (think of faxes or watermarks on
   pictures).

3) It needs to look good at high resolution and in color. 

From this follow a number of "shoulds":

1) The logo should consist of rather large, smooth features, which can
    be scaled to almost any resolution.

2) If colors are used, they should really be part of the logo, but not 
   be necessary to recognize it.
   
   Logo 6 is a good example: There is a reason for the cube to be red,
   green and blue (reference to the RGB color space), and the logo would
   always have the top green and the left side blue when represented in
   color. Even when wou see only a very tiny red/green/blue cube where
   the letters POV on top aren't recognizable, you would immediately
   think "POV-Ray". If the cube is cyan/magenta/yellow, you wouldn't.
   OTOH, the logo is still recognizable in bw.

   In contrast, the golden color of logo 2 doesn't seem to me part of
   the logo. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be silver or
   neon-green.

Actually, I think these two points hold even in the absence of technical
constraints. People recognize simple shapes easier than complex shapes,
and they also tend to recognize the same shape with no colors, or the
same colors with a slightly different shape.

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Nicht an Tueren mangelt es,
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | sondern an der Einrichtung (aka Content).
| |   | hjp### [at] wsracat      |    -- Ale### [at] univieacat
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       zum Thema Portale in at.linux

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