Mark Boulton Design

It’s hard for me to express since I am not a designer and not a native speaker of English, but I miss some edges in the design, since I like Drupal’s rough edges.

I like seeing the progression through the sketches as the idea develops - a great insight.

The stubby rounded look is great, but to me the the stem of the ‘r’ is looking a bit skinny next to the adjacent rounded forms. Could just be an illusion though, as the ‘l’ somehow looks okay.

Glad to see all lowercase letters, seems the right approach to me. It’s friendly, open, down to earth etc.

The ‘dru’ part looks a bit more loose then the more compact ‘pal’. That’s because of the space below the ‘r’ and within the ‘u’ of course. The ‘u’ looks a bit wide though.

The 3 circles start to wobble a bit if I look too long at esp. the white on blue version. I think that’s because of the ‘fatter’ parts, where the ascenders and descenders break out of the round shape. It’ll probably be too gimmicky, but maybe the 3 circles could give the whole a bit more rhythm when placed off-center a bit? (Yep, way too gimmicky…

So: needs kerning and a bit more personality, but definately the right direction.

I love it, reminds me of Playmobil in a nice way, and is indeed friendly and playful while keeping a serious and powerful note.

I’d very much like to see a change in the actual logo too, I don’t like the aggressive look of the little blue guy. I’d prefer it to be a bit more playful too, just like the one you’ve drawn in the corner of the last paper: looking upwards with somewhat smaller eyes and a wider smile. I’m imagining the logo as a realistic, blue, shiny drop in 3d with a little happy face in front of it

I like it, although I feel it’s too basic. To me it doesn’t feel very drupalish. For instance it might as well say “wordpress”, “joomla” or “elgg” (I’m not kidding, go check elgg.net). So I’m OK with it, but I’m not overly thrilled.

I also wonder what the thought is behind lowercassing the letter D? For instance there’s “WordPress” and “Joomla!”, what’s the idea of deliberately writing “drupal” instead of “Drupal”? Although I just noticed that the Acquia wordmark is also full lowercase.

ok, I have to agree with the comment about the “r” seeming a little thin… it does.

With that said, I really do like where you’re heading on this, I also like the colors, but I want to revisit the “r u” concept you had going that you ditched.  I personally really like it, and it gives me immediately the impression of hands holding each other for support, which I really like.  Also, my one word from the previous post was “empowering” which again I think that goes a ways towards portraying.  “Our community empowers you to learn, our product empowers you to build. —Drupal”

I just wanted to spit those 2 cents out before the idea was completely abandoned because I think it was a really good one.

I love the start of this! Thank you for not incorporating the drop into the wordmark. I don’t think it needs to be there.

+1 for revisiting the ru ligature. I really liked that as an idea for exactly the same reasons that eclipsegc mentioned. It might feel a bit tacky, which is why you dropped the idea, but I have a feeling you may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater (I agree the hat on the “a” in the same logo was a bit ... well ... worth dropping)? I wonder why you have the notch the on the “r” but not the on the “p”? To me the “p” ends up feeling too familiar… like I’ve seen it in 100 fonts before. (Although that may just be because it’s an upside down and inverted “d”?)

in fact, I liked the idea so much I toyed with it a little bit for myself.  tried to mock it up the same way you did the original work.  let me know what you think (if you still hate it)

http://kris.e-webindustries.com/files/managed/drupallogo.jpg

A few more comments as well:

I know what the word is, but sometimes playing with the letters can run you into problems (xtrinsic had two half Cs as the X for a while… no one could figure out what the word was). The trick is getting the R and U to still read as R and U. the U looks a bit like a J. One idea would be to put the tails back on the R and U, but as you mentioned in IRC, eclipsegc, that would make it look less like hands. I also wondered about flattening out the U a bit so that it’s closer in shape to the bottom of the “a.” This would make it wider though (or make the upturns more aggressive).

I personally continue to love this idea though. Please continue playing in this direction!

In spite of your custom letterforms (and the sketching process behind it), I find the end result looking very generic and basically just like a thin Bauhaus… it doesn’t feel unique and distinctive at all.

What I don’t see mentioned at all is the current wordmark: how does it not meet your stated goals, and what do you want to do differently?

You bring up Drupal’s ‘core values’, but at the end of the day, it is entirely subjective how those map to letters, and a lot of it comes down to taste. Without more grounding, this blog post could be summarized as “we want to change the old one because we don’t like it”.

Good start! As others have said, I think it needs a little something to make it more than just a geometric wordmark. Maybe bring back in the drop shape from your sketches, perhaps as part of the ‘d’.

But one thing that jumps out at me immediately - which I reckon definitely needs fixing - is the join on any ascender/descender which meets a curve, e.g. right side of the ‘d’, inside right on the ‘r’, both outer sides of the ‘u’, etc.. There’s a sort of bump there, a soft corner, which begs to be smoothed out.

In reference to the sketch you have at --> http://www.markboultondesign.com/images/uploads/wordmark_sketch3.jpg…

I like the symbol thing you have going with the A, with the point at the top and at the bottom right.

I just think the logo needs to stand out more then just having normal letters even if stylized.

Other wise, It looks good, and I’m looking forward to the final product.

Thanks.

Umm… why do we want to change the wordmark at all? I think the current one is perfectly fine. As Steven pointed out, the wordmark /does/ look very generic. I can also recognize similarities with the acquia logo. Is that incidental? In addition to that, I find the “TM” sign next to the Drupal logo very offensive. I am aware of the fact that Drupal is a trademark, but Drupal is still an open source project.

The font used has striking similarities with http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/haiku/sinn/regular/, just the r is custom-built. However, I don’t think the r fits in with the rest of the characters. All of the other characters can be drawn in one line, only the custom-built r can’t.

In addition to that, the blue background really reminds me of the twitter logo. Twitter’s logo even uses similar letter forms.

The lack of top serifs on the “P” and the “A” makes things look uneven.

Here’s my go. This is a thickened up version of Walkway Rounded with a custom “R”.

http://blamcast.net/files/drupalmark4.png

Well, I disagree with the r being not wide enough - it breaks the geometry and that is sorely needed with so many round shapes.
The logo constantly reminded me of something, here it is: http://www.ebricks.nl/images/assortiment/duplo_logo.jpg

What is funny: If you look at the logo longer, especially the white and blue one, the circles in the middle of the round shapes appear to be moving and not to be in equal height.

I would argue that broken geometry is something you want to avoid in a logo. The letters need harmony. Unless there’s a specific reason to accentuate the “r”, it should echo the characteristics of the other letters.

Very interesting post!

The rhythm of the circle through the letters d/p/a remind me of the adidas logo, but the exclusion of the letter stems (d on the bottom and a/p on top) make for a rounder, web-2.0 friendly feel.

http://img.1yz.cn/bencham_shanghai/1/img/adidas_logo_black_-_transparent_v2.GIF

back in the late ‘80s i worked at a place that used the bauhaus typeface for everything and i got kind of sick of it.. this looks a lot like that. if it’s supposed to look disco-retro, i don’t think it’s quite there yet.

i don’t think an o-like “a” is good to use on an unfamiliar word that can easily be misspelled. at first glance this looks more like “drupol” than “drupal”.

Nice try Mark! But overall this wordmark does not stand out from the crowd. Also there is definitely a retro look to this (I agree with markb comment). Is it possible to start a new version from scratch?

Furthermore, please the baby blue color. It’s overused. Or rather, confine it’s use to the minimum. Why not make the letters in baby blue on a white or colored background?

As for the type, you may consider slanting a few degrees the whole wordmark to the right, giving it some motion.

I can’t help but feeling the sketch looks “dated”.  That’s simply my initial gut reaction to the digital sketch - and I’m not sure why my gut is telling me that. 
Entirely a raw emotional reaction.  I wish I could provide more constructive feedback, but hopefully it will somehow help the process.

andre

Does that mean FF Max is going away?

I like the direction you are going, my only problem is that it looks too much like the Acquia type.

Like it. u is slightly too wide, perhaps only a few %.

I really like the work that you have done, but the initial design reminds me enormously of this <dyson.co.uk>, which is a very big brand in the UK and I think elsewhere as well. Many may not consider this an issue - but I think it is worth noting.

It’s both brave and generous of you to show your work in progress, Mark. Everyone’s a critic! I admire your thick skin.

To be honest, I’m not seeing much of a spark here. As several people have commented, this just looks like the word “drupal” in Bauhaus or any of several Bauhaus imitators. It’s dated and generic.

It looks kind of lazy, even - not only is the typeface recognizable, but it’s also so geometric that it lacks a sense of human agency. Tell several designers to write “drupal” in a visually consistent manner using perfect circles for the curves, and they’d all pretty much come up with these same letterforms.

I think I’ve seen too many all-lowercase, rounded, web two oh (boy, do I hate that word) logos. I can understand why some of us here are afraid it would be too generic and interchangeable, at the moment there’s no very distinctive detail (yes, the “r"). But hey, it’s a first draft!

We (Drupalers) have to keep in mind a wordmark will always be used in a context, surrounded by colours, text, shapes. It’s just a part of a whole. It may seem overly simplistic alone, but may be great in real world uses.

It also immediately reminded me of the Duplo logo. Maybe because the name’s shapes are close. Or because I was a Lego kid

Hmm....I have to agree that I find the wordmark pretty generic.  There’s nothing new or exciting about it.  I’ve seen the same a thousand other times.  The word may be “drupal” but it there’s nothing for or inviting about the wordmark. 

It’s just blah.

You have an emotional investment in this.  Please understand that others do also.  When we say we think it looks generic, you should take a step back and think about it.  People have a strong reaction to the Drupalicon. It’s unique.  Whimsical. 

Your wordmark is just blah.  It could be from any company.  So, it doesn’t say Drupal or remark on the open source community and the personalities of the people within the group. 

Bottomline:  the wordmark is soulless and commercial.

I’d like to re-post the question as to why the D has been lower-cased. Is this because it looks better with the font or is this some kind of metaphor, something intentional that comes with the re-branding?

I like it as a starting point, but it is a bit regular/boring.  I’m missing something.

In our documentation, we insist that the word ‘Drupal’ is written with a capital ‘D’ rather than with a lower-case ‘d’.  It is ‘Drupal’, not ‘drupal’.  This logo seems to be in violation with our own rules.  Of course, we can change the rules but it feels sloppy to write ‘drupal’ in documentation.  I’m afraid that this logo would encourage more people to write ‘drupal’ instead of ‘Drupal’.

Personally, I like it when there is some icon to go with the name.  The W-icon really makes the WordPress logo a lot stronger: see http://wordpress.org/about/logos/ and compare http://s.wordpress.org/about/images/logos/wplogo-stacked-rgb.png with http://s.wordpress.org/about/images/logos/wplogoblue-textonly-rgb.png.

Small detail—the ‘u’ seems too wide.

I suspect it’s back to the drawing board - rather looks too much like the Dyson wordmark currently?

Props to you Mark for opening up your process a bit. It’s inevitable that you’ll get a lot of criticism. And not all of it informed or particularly thoughtful.

I agree with gterez that the drupalicon is overly aggressive and I would love to see it re-imagined. I would love to see it go away, to be quite honest. But given the feelings of the community it’s probably a political impossibility.

Personally, I like it when there is some icon to go with the name.  The W-icon really makes the WordPress logo a lot stronger

and

Generally, I’d agree. But, when you already have an icon (Druplicon), I’m not sure introducing another icon as well would be a good thing

Agree on that too, but IMO there is no need for introducing a new logo. Wouldn’t it be our nice duplicon and just melt it together with the wordmark?

@mark: Good luck. I’m not a designer, but all I know: Design by community is not too effective

My first thought - huge danish roof-product company icopal. Check it out http://www.icopal.dk/ The resemblance is striking - although I’m perfectly sure it’s a coincidence.

I think it’s a great start, though as you say, it needs work.
I like the 2012 Olympics logo too, I could understand why people reacted to it the way they did, but I could also see it was a great logo.

I think you’re mad to do this design in public =) but if you can filter the good stuff from hot air and those that just protest because of change...good luck!

@ wim mostrey
a lower case d balances the p better – dp vs Dp

I’m completely in awe of this openness of designing, I’m just not sure how much of it will be useful (signal to noise ratio).

I think it’s great Mark. The r looks a little odd if I stare at it too long, and I might have liked the ru combo you had in the sketches, but overall it’s a huge improvement and I’m glad the silly drop icon isn’t part of the typography.

Drupal is a proper noun and should be capitalized, otherwise it makes the wordmark look sloppy and the person who made it lazy if then we insist it is written as D everywhere else. I had the thought before having even seen Wim or Dries comments.

Mark, thanks for including the community in this process. That inevitably draws out criticism, and it can also help to make the best dang product in the end. My praise: I love the simplicity, and the wordmark has a welcoming feel to it. My criticism: much as Dries and others have stated, mainly that it really should not be lower-cased. It would cause an unmanageable mess in documentation and forum/blog posts. Also, I would probably miss the angularity of the current wordmark, but would soon forget about that.

I am sorry, I did not follow the redesign. Just a quick question: why are we changing the wordmark?
I like the old one much more than this..

I like it - simple and clean. Won’t offend anyone. It’s pro

I have to agree with the above commenters who ask what’s wrong with the current version - are we going to be throwing away existing recognition?  I think the biggestest needs we have are:
1) information architecture (i.e. how can I findand navigate to what I’m looking for)
2) visual consistency and inter-connection within the site and across *.drupal.or

I’d agree with the above posters that a capital D is important, and I like’s John’s version better:  http://blamcast.net/files/drupalmark4.png

Also, if you’re convinced that the lettering needs to change, I like the idea (though not yet the implementation) in your original sketches and picked up by Kris of modifying the r + u to imply some inter-connectedness.  I’d compare it to the Ubuntu logo - though that’s really separate from the lettering.

I really apreciate your openess on this.
The current Drupalicon is way to aggressive. It is just a scary mask kind of thing. It really needs to be redesigned.

I like the lowercase D version. The balance is just great (was it by accident when the brand drupal was invented).
The new design is to web 2.0 for my taste. It just does not stand out but maybe together with a redesigned drupalicon it can work.

I’m in agreement with a lot of the criticism posted above… it just feels bland/generic, as if I’ve seen it on a dozen other (web 2.0) sites.  (It does remind me of the twitter and Acquia logos as pointed out above, but even before I read those comments!) I also agree w/ Dries re: the capitalization.

(Also, not sure if anyone has pointed it out or not, but in the community we generally refer to drupal.org as d.o instead of d.org.  Makes no different to me, tho.  : )

Spent a little bit more time with the wordmark.  This is all super rough, I’m sure any implementation I create Mark could do MUCH better with, I’m just trying to toss out a couple more ideas along the same lines.

I attempted to make the “r u” combo look more like hands and still read as “Drupal”.  I did uppercase and lowercase version since that seems an issue here.  My uppercase D is very sloppy, but I think it gets the point across and still reads fine.  I hope my attempts are taken as constructive crit Mark, I really don’t want to come off as trying to do your job, I just really liked one of your concepts and wanted to see it developed a little more.  I think you’re doing a bang up job, I know art in the open is HARD, so keep it up, and nice work.

http://kris.e-webindustries.com/files/managed/drupallogo2.jpg

I’m really not a proof, but as I’m very proud of being part of Drupal Community and actively giving my contribution too, i will give my two cent on that Logo:
1. It’s not dynamic - Drupal is!
2. There are a lot of fonts that looks like that.
3. I’m sure under our Community members they will be absolutely
very good Graphic Designer that would support Drupal.org and
provide us with some more proposal.

Kind Regards

I still really like the idea of a ligature between the RU. I don’t think this is quite right yet though. (I don’t think the shaking helps with the legibility, although I completely understand the sentiment you were trying to evoke.) I’m also intrigued by the idea of opening up the D. I’d like to see it shorter and fatter though (and reducing the L in proportion).

There was some discussion in the IRC channel about this as well. Before people spill in and reject the idea outright I do want to say that this idea has merit and should be explored! Thanks for your ideas @EclipseGc!!

Just because others write their logo name in lowercase, it doesn’t mean we have to. A lot of people /do/ care about “Drupal” being uppercase.

Mark. You clearly have balls of steel.
Drupal and their users will validate your decisions in time. Akin to the future tastes of future sports fans in 2012 (which I also think will turn out just fine

It is generous to allow the wider community question your ideas.

I hope you and your team find the constructive criticism you were hoping for amongst the settling dust.

I agree with G Snyder that it’s very brave of you to expose yourself to thousands of, in fact, aesthetic amateurs, each with their own set of opinions, during this process. I hope you don’t take these comments too seriously frankly.

Personally I’d buy this with only small modifications to the letter shapes. Not that I think that you shouldn’t try out some more ideas, but it’s definitely a good candidate! I’m excited about seeing examples of this and other versions used in different contexts.

Re: lowercase, ‘xerox’ is a bad example because it lacks both ascenders and descenders. It looks a lot more uppercase in isolation than ‘drupal’. Whether lowercase works depends entirely on the word and letters chosen.

However, I find it a bit condescending that you are shrugging off e.g. the 2012 Olympics case as a case of ‘the unwashed masses’ not understanding how ‘refined’ and ‘well designed’ the logo is and that the designers will be vindicated. Whether you like or dislike the logo, you cannot deny that it completely clashes with the common trend of Olympic logos. This is why people associate it with 80s children’s shows and make comments about ‘lisa simpson giving a blowjob’: it does not feel right at first glance, hence they look closer to find things to fault it with. There will always be people who complain, but the backlash against the 2012 logo was too big and noticeable to just shrug off as taste. The old adage of ‘all press is good press’ doesn’t fly for something that people are supposed to identify with.

This applies as much to the residents of London as it does to the contributors of Drupal: if people are complaining about this wordmark’s Bauhausyness, it’s most likely because it feels wrong or inappropriate to them. At the end of the day, a designer’s intent is trumped completely by the viewer’s own context.

With that said, I’m still curious to hear why you want to completely throw out the current Drupal wordmark. I’m biased in this department (I was the one who picked it), but I went for FF Max exactly because it is a decent, professionally designed face which subtly has elements of curvyness (e.g. the tail on the ‘l’) and little irregular flares to break the mold (e.g. the tips of the ‘u’). At the time, it also followed some of the trends in type – the face shares the overused Dax’s anti-serifness – while not being overused (like e.g., DIN was a couple years back).

You say you want to go beyond an off-the-shelf typeface, but then show a sample of extremely generic geometric letters which are basically just circles and rectangles combined: this has been done before. It sounds a bit like “not invented here” syndrome.

For all the rationalizing you have given your design, it would be nice to see the rationalization between why you feel it needs to be changed in the first place, and why it shouldn’t just be updated rather than reinvented.

I see this has been asked already- Listen to the community, we speaks for what we are dedicating our time to.

I think you are failing to grasp that this preliminary design not supporting the overall feel of drupal. We do not fear change. We just want the change to represent how we feel drupal should be represented!

I think mark probably “GETS” it just fine, what I think the community is missing at this point is that this is seriously rough still.  Just because it’s a digital mockup doesn’t mean that we need to get all up in arms.  We have opinions, cool, we’d like some justification… also cool (and completely understandable).  We aren’t entitled to it yet, this isn’t even approaching final.  If he hadn’t digitally “finished off” a design would we be reacting so?  I kind of doubt it.  Imagine if you only had his drawing to go off, what would your feedback be then?  Let’s cut the dude some slack, I’m just amazed to see stuff this early in the process.

I think most people, even Steven would agree, that changing the wordmark is not an extremely bad thing. However, the current proposal (I realize that it’s just a draft) is no improvement in my opinion. It uses a lowercase D, even though an uppercase D wouldn’t even look bad (see http://img.skitch.com/20080915-mkceqqnd4hpywy275wy17g6c5y.png). You claim that FF Max looks dated, but the Bauhaus style is as well, at least to me. FF Max has a lot of similarities with Dax, but it’s still a bit different. I think evolving the FF Max wordmark might instead of revolutionizing it is a better approach in this case.

For admitting it’s rough, and still in the beginning stages, he sure is taking the input very defensively and seems unwilling to take in any critique.

I hope he doesn’t treat his clients like this :/

@Mark, I don’t mean to beat you up, but I don’t really think it’s appropriate to post WIP and not be supportive and receptive of feedback, good or bad! This is your responsibility as a designer. Whether you actually try what people suggest is totally another thing, I know peoples suggestions can be ridiculous or totally off sometimes!

We pretty much ARE your clients We are the community, we are using the product, we are contributing and we are building it and keeping the project going! It does matter what we think, and how we are represented is very important to the future of Drupal both for contributors and for users.

The redesign project is first and foremost about defining and crafting the Drupal brand, as Mark discussed during his Drupalcon Szeged presentation. The Drupal brand needs to be articulated and communicated in a cohesive program that encompasses our wordmark, Web site design, and any public-facing collateral that we do.
The RFP perhaps was not completely clear to all (I was specifically targeting designers so I may have slipped into designer-speak), but branding is implied in a couple of the required deliverables: .eps of logo/mark in CMYK and brand style guideline documentation.

As Mark explained in his first post, the current wordmark was evaluated against the brand values (Community, Inclusive, Friendly, Approachable, Ease-of-use, Simplicity, Powerful, Flexible, Extensible, Scalable, Variable, Dynamic). On a practical level it needs to look just as good blown up on a billboard as it does teeny tiny and at resolutions from 72 dpi to 600+. It needs to work well with a complimentary type family scale so that it can be used throughout the UI. It needs to be able to work well with sub-brands. It needs to tell the Drupal story.

We can, and must, do better.

Are we there yet? No, obviously. This is a rough draft, a first attempt.

I do hope that folks can put this work-in-progress into perspective. In the interests of engaging the community, I asked Mark to be transparent about his process. Perhaps we would have been better served by waiting until it was a little more refined. I accept responsibility for it and very much appreciate Mark’s willingness to post it.

The goal of releasing in progress versions was to expose a usually very discrete, behind-the-scenes process.  The idea was that the community would benefit from seeing the iterative process first hand. That’s just how we do things in Drupal.
I don’t know that the idea behind it was bad, but based on some of the feedback we’re hearing, the wordmark draft is being taken out of context (e.g. folks are responding as if it is as a final proposal and without consideration for its various uses and relationship to the interface design yet to come). Too much, too soon, I fear.

At the end of the day, this is not design by committee. We’re going to take the feedback, identifying trends and legitimate concerns expressed there in and continue to refine. What we’re clearly hearing is that the Drupal community wants a wordmark that’s distinctive, and doesn’t look like a typical “Web 2.0” wordmark that could easily be swapped out for any random other word. That’s doable no worries.

This has been a valuable (if slightly bruising) effort. Thanks!

The type face is huge in branding, and is what distinguishes a brand.  The first thing I thought of when I saw that type face for the new Drupal logo was the dyson logo.  http://www.dyson.com

With that said, I think the current FF Max font defines the Drupal brand, and the font has character, in my opinion.  I would also suggest just refining the current word mark, and not completely changing it.

I appreciate the simplicity of it, and I think it would work well in different contexts.  It’s probably just an optical illusion, but I keep feeling like the “dru” is floating a little higher than the “pal”.

Unfortunately, using an upper-case D with the Bauhaus style lettering makes the wordmark look even more dated.

Mark, thank you for exposing your creative process to this level of public scrutiny. There is obviously a lot of emotion attached to the branding of Drupal. We may seem overly-protective, but are open to discussing the reasons for change.

Hi Mark,

I think your initial designs are excellent and I’d take them over the existing logo any day of the week, and twice on a Sunday!  If you refine them further, then great, but don’t be afraid to stick with your initial concepts and ideas as I think you’re on the right track.

I find it shocking that so many people are saying ‘why change?’ and ‘what’s wrong with the existing logo?’ You only have to go to drupal.org to see how dated and amateurish that logo and website design looks today.  For anyone who doesn’t realise this and is asking the above questions, I’d throw their comments straight into the bin as they’re not worth the paper they’re not written on!

Of the negative criticisms, I’ve yet to find one from someone who has a well designed website!  I know you don’t have to be a good web designer or designer to have an opinion on what looks good, but I’d respect opinions more from people who have a proven track record in what they’re talking about. I’m a keen photographer and I respect the opinion of other photographers a hell of a lot more than the average person who doesn’t even know the basics of photography!

As they say, opinions are like ars*holes, everyone has one and many of them stink!

I think you’ve got a political battle on your hands here from a community who should be concerning themselves more about the functionality of their product than what font is used in the logo!  I suspect there’s some resentment here because it isn’t being designed within the community, so I hope the people who commissioned you can see past this and don’t start to panic - the community will still be there whatever the damn logo and website design is, as it’s the product that matters. But the new branding will ensure drupal also attracts a whole new audience and puts it on a level (or better) playing field to other CMS’s when it comes to first impressions.

I think the biggest job you’ve got here is managing the feedback - I hate design by committee but understand why those who commissioned you might have requested this. I’m not sure if open forums/comments are the best way of dealing with this but I have no experience of design by committee on such a scale as this so I can’t tell you what does and doesn’t work best. But I’d certainly consider getting people to email in their ideas (or via a contact form) in order to manage the feedback without whipping up so much of a frenzy?

Anyway, good luck with it and like Jamie says above (he took the words right out of my mouth), you have balls of steel for agreeing to go ahead like this!

Ste

It seems everyone is a little on edge in this thread… and for sure it is hard for us outsiders to grasp how this sketch might evolve. But specific features of the wordmark that Mark has mentioned (e.g. the roundedness, the modular letter shapes) seem quite deliberate, and people have raised specific objections to them. The reply that ‘it’s just a sketch’ doesn’t help because, by that logic, all we’re supposed to do is sit here and look and not comment on anything. The only way to review this is to look at it as it is now, point out what works and what doesn’t, and go from there.

When I brought up the 2012 Olympics logo, I was replying specifically to this:

As I mentioned in the post, the 2012 Olympics logo was overwhelmingly disliked when it was announced a while ago. But, and I’ll put money on this, that when the time comes to see the logo in context, it will shine.

It very much projects an image of the ‘Artiste’ standing his ground in the face of public opposition, using taste as the only validation, when in fact legitimate concerns are being raised.

I’ll be the first to admit Drupal’s branding and style needs a lot of work, but I also think it is silly to approach this like a design job in a vacuum. Mark’s comment that this “isn’t about fixing what is broken” seems completely off base, because to me, that is exactly what this is about.

Drupal has gotten where it is today by incremental improvement: looking at what was done before, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and then addressing that. This is a lot harder than just starting from scratch, but ultimately ends up with a more balanced and refined product IMO.

Furthermore, the problems faced in an open source community are quite different from traditional branding jobs. For example, a company like Xerox might get away with unusual wordmark capitalization, because it is easy for them to enforce strict style guidelines. Whereas I’m sure that a lowercase wordmark will just cause more people to type ‘drupal’ instead of ‘Drupal’, because ‘I do as I see’ is very much the rule for community behaviour. When you’re designing the Drupal.org theme, a main concern should be how all the user-generated content will fit: everything from overly long headlines, to gigantic screenshots, to URLs-as-forum-subjects, etc. You may produce the prettiest design possible, but non-designers will only care about getting their message out, regardless of how it looks.

With all that said, I find it a bit worrisome that you’re so taken aback by the response in this thread. This is exactly what anyone who designs in an open source community goes through, and should be entirely expected. Dealing with all that feedback is not an easy job, and it requires a thick skin, but it will ultimately result in a better design.

I’m not particularly fond of it at first blush.  I read a number of the comments, and then reconsidered the wordmark, something is still off for me.  If i could pinpoint one thing with this logo (if we accept the modular letter shapes) than the r is the odd-man out, it is too narrow, and should follow the form of the other letters, similarly the u is an more of an upper case u because it has no tail, adding a tail to it would make it also follow the form of the other letters more closely. If you ad the tail to the u, then the next question would be should the d have a tail to, and then similarly should the p and the r have the little nub on the top side....

My initial thoughts:

http://flickr.com/photos/zacky/2860674951/

I like it!