Re: GNOME Logo Branding Guidelines Concerns

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On 10/25/06, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-10-25 at 18:04 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
> [snip]
> > I disagree with you that we need to have plain black to protect the
> > brand - I think there's more value in allowing good variations of the
> > foot to develop.
>
> I'm not saying it needs to be black. I am saying that having a globe or
> flag as a fill for the foot is probably distorting it too much. Other
> colors are definitely OK - though we probably want to recommend our
> brand colors. I suspect a gradient is probably OK too. But I'm not a
> lawyer or designer, so I'm happy as long as we do whatever we do with
> open eyes, and as long as our guidelines are clear.

(IANALY)

On variety/colors:
The legal key is that the design be clearly related to the Foot;
that's really all that matters, once we've established the existence
of the basic mark, and assuming we continue to use something very
close to it for the 'primary' logo in the software and the web page.
(We wouldn't want to make a habit of using a variation of it as 'the'
primary logo in the about box, or in the header of the web page, for
example, but irregularly using something like the old pumpkin foot
would not likely be a problem.)

We could of course decide as a matter of branding/marketing policy
that we don't want variations, but I'd scream bloody fucking murder
about that as a policy choice, for reasons Dave has already made
fairly clear. :)

On (r) and (tm):

Dave, I'd prefer we stay away from the (R) and (TM)- they're not
legally mandatory, and I feel that they are unnecessarily off-putting
and formalizing. (Which is why they get used so much- because for some
reason people think it is a good idea to formalize and alienate people
from their logos, a policy I think we should refuse to do.)

[For reference, take a look at apple.com and see how many (r)s or
(tm)s you can find- they are the most image/brand obsessed company on
earth, and yet they have wisely chosen to forgo the (r) and (tm)- they
know that those are off-putting, and that they can fully control their
logo and wordmarks without the use of (r) and (tm).]

Luis