Re: GNOME Logo & Typeface

[David Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

On Apr 22, 2005, at 1:37 AM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> David Neary wrote:
> > The font is Trebuchet MS, ironically enough.
>
> It's been almost two years exactly since the negotiations to get a 
> font that everyone can share and build on -- the Bitstream Vera fonts. 
> http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ says the last revision of something in 
> regard to that page was on April 16, 2003.

It seems that the GNOME trademark includes the foot, and the text GNOME 
in that typeface. I am unsure what the implications of changing the 
trademark are now. I imagine, given the amount of time we have spent on 
things like that in the past couple of years, that the effort would be 
considerable.

> Trebuchet MS is only available at zero cost, it would not qualify as 
> free software.  This alone should have disqualified its use to 
> represent an official GNU Project work.

The idea of a font is that it won't change over time. I don't know the 
terms of distribution of Trebuchet, though.

> The logo's look would change if the GNOME logo switched fonts, however 
> I think it was a bad idea to base a GNU Project's logo on a non-free 
> font in the first place.  It should be considerably embarassing that 
> the GNU Project can't "eat its own dog food", as the saying goes, when 
> it comes to making a logo.

It's not simply a question of the look changing (although this is a 
consideration). There is the secondary issue of the entire branding of 
the GNOME project (websites, documents, trademarks) changing alongside 
it. It would effectively swamp the project's administrative volunteers 
for a year, perhaps more. Such an effort would require careful thought.

> It will be even more embarassing if those who want vector versions of 
> the logo have to resort to creating it, which will require using the 
> non-free font.

The font is freely available (at least financially) as a scalable font. 
There are copies of the logo available in postscript and svg (although 
it's unclear what the terms of distribution are right now, this is on 
the list of things to change).

Cheers,
Dave.

--
David Neary
Lyon, France
dneary free fr