Re: Cultural Issue with the Foot Logo

["Hylke Bons" <hylkebons gmail com>]

It's quite funny to see how GNOME HIG advises to avoid body parts, but
the actual GNOME logo is a foot(print).
Do people in Thailand give the same reaction if the logo was a shoe? :)
If not http://tango.freedesktop.org/favicon.ico could be an option.

Hylke

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Theppitak Karoonboonyanan
<thep linux thai net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have thought about this issue for a while whether it
> should be raised or not, as the logo has been in use
> for a long time. And I'm not sure if it's ever discussed
> anywhere about the cultural issue with the GNOME's
> foot logo, which may obstruct GNOME promotion in
> some way.
>
> In Thai culture, and I'm pretty sure also in the nearby
> regions, showing foot is considered rude, as it's the
> lowest part of the body. And a variation of the word
> 'foot' in Thai is used for scolding, in the tone close to
> "f**k" or "b*tch" in English.
>
> I have had hard times introducing GNOME to Thai people
> who never know about it before, and their reactions
> are awkward when seeing the foot logo. I have to
> explain that it's a footprint, not the foot itself. But that
> doesn't help much, as footprint also indicates treading
> with a foot.
>
> Some people simply refuse GNOME with the reason
> that it's impolite.
>
> That sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable to
> promote GNOME to new users as-is, or with
> distributions that try to keep upstream look-and-feels
> like Debian. But with Ubuntu or Fedora, where the
> main menu logo is replaced with something else,
> that's more OK. Just avoid letting them see the animated
> foot on Epiphany or Nautilus, until they are familiar with
> GNOME enough.
>
> I don't know if this is an issue for other cultures.
> Just want to raise it for awareness on an obstacle.
>
> Should there be an alternative logo for GNOME?
> For example, using a gnome head instead is OK.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Theppitak Karoonboonyanan
> http://linux.thai.net/~thep/
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