The NetBSD project has chosen their new logo. High-res version available too.
New NetBSD Logo Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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What did the old logo look like?
I like the new logo BTW
Have a look:
http://netbsd.org/gallery/logos.html#old-logo
The new one is much better.
Hot!! Though the old one is kool as well.
The old logo was a B&W sketch of multiple “daemons” climbing over what appeared to be somewhat of a hardware graveyard and planting a flag a la the famous American Iwo Jima statue (http://www.iwojima.com/). It was too complicated, some people found the image to be in poor taste (the demons or Iwo Jima – take your pick), and it just wasn’t “logo” friendly. The new logo appears to be just the simple flag which is much more tasteful and marketable in my not-so-humble opinion. As a new NetBSD user myself, I’m glad to see that the finishing touches on the 2.0 release are just as well polished as the marketing.
i miss the spike thing on the top of the flag…
it looked sexy
old logo IMO was _way_ better. they didnt even update the website colors for the new logo. it just looks like they are color blind. the people who thought the last logo was in poor taste were probably the same people who thought the USD $1 bill was a conspiracy when you folded it and saw the trade towers on fire…lame. oh well. i still love the netbsd project…cant wait for 2.0
I thought the $20 was a conspiracy
Most good programmers can’t design good graphics or design a very very very pretty website (is is that just me?)
I like the new logo but it is a pity it replaces the old one. Old logo is so cool and retro. I think it reflects NetBSD’s lean and mean spirit well too. It is something that appeals to the sort of people who could be interested in NetBSD.
Well, the new logo is nice and simple and establishes an identity – well, one that isn’t the outdated and unnecesserally complicated identity of the old logo. It follows nicely the SuSE, Red Hat, Apple, Ubuntu, etc. logos. Simple, distinct, clean, bold. . . It makes NetBSD look a lot more professional.
i dont think the old one was very professional. on netbsd cd’s was that logo printed on it? also you have to realize most logos are simple in design and not that detailed.
Thanks for the link!!! I lost (laugh control) it when I saw the toaster logo.
PS: I would make a bad judge of the logo contest. I love all of the logo’s.
Nice work! Very slick, and good colour scheme.
looks to me as if someone has no taste… the new one is AWFUL
I think it looks pretty good, but it doesn’t have any real “character”, could be just about anything if you change the text.
However, it’s alot better then the old “logo”, which in it self was a good/fun image, but an awful logo.
This new one is actually something you could print on a shirt/clothing and wear, too
Hopefully they’ll do something about the rest of netbsd.org to match the new stylish logo.
Ah well, it’s all subjective anyway.
Even if you don’t like the style of the new logo you can’t dispute the fact that it’s simpler and more versatile than the old one.
Eh..I don’t really like it either. They should have stuck closer to something more daemon related (like a pitchfork or a devil’s tail…something). It’s a BSD, after all. The flag, while more marketable and cleaner than the old design, doesn’t really say anything.
I have noticed since way back then that OSes groups are “terrible” at making logos, and even names. Although I agree that this new one can now qualify as a logo while old one is…what’s THAT?
However, the new one still doesn’t cut it because when you make a logo, you will want to consider it on black or white over a black or white background. E.g. if you color this logo as all white on a black background, the Net won’t be distinct from BSD and the flag from the pole. And a professional logo would only count one (1) color. Look at HP, Compaq, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Nokia…etc.
No, you have to go back to the drawing paper.
I think that the new color is great. It is still doesn’t scale perfectly on 32×32, but overall is a much more modern and simpler logo than the old one (simple is good).
yes simple is good, but the new logo lacks the character of netbsd…they should at least stick some old computers in there
someone mentioned its more marketable..but when did netbsd become a marketing image?
Take freebsd for example, a red daemon with horns this cant be very professional but they don’t change to something lame! If people think the old netbsd logo was offensive for reasons stated in earlier posts, what makes people think a red demon is not offensive to some people too?!
Call me old fashioned, but I am glad that other bsd’s don’t abandon their logo for a few opinions that it is offensive or for the greatness of “professionalism”.
FWIW, we have the new logo also in black-on-white, white-on-black, regular color and inverse color (orange, gray on black), and the possibility of using the logo in these limited color schemes has been an important consideration in the selection process. We’ll likely make the other versions available, soon.
quite beautiful. i don’t use netbsd though
Clean, simple, tasteful. I definitely like it!
…it’s just plain bland. The old one was much better.
Let’s see the runner’s up?
Or are the netbsd-logo-core-engineering-release team too worried about criticism of their choice of logo?
I like the new logo because of its simplicity but the old logo represented the spirit of NetBSD by showing its UNIX roots and its portability to many platforms. If a new logo was to be created it should represent the characteristics of NetBSD not found with other operating systems…
Does anyone know how that flag/banner thing became associated with NetBSD in the first place? Is it supposed to symbolize something?
As logos go, I think the new logo is quite good. It’s simple and elegant and associates NetBSD with a recognizable banner image. Perhaps it’s not important what a logo image symbolizes. I also like Debian’s spiral logo although I’ve got no idea what it symbolizes. Now spiral symbolizes Debian and banner symbolizes NetBSD. Maybe it’s just that simple.
Here’s a page with some more logos,
http://netbsd.org/gallery/logos.html
I personally prefer http://netbsd.org/images/logos/jiang/netbsd-logo2-small.jpg
over the new logo…
As a Graphic Designer, I agree with the last poster.
I think they should have kept the demons and flag but simplified or stylized it.
The new logo seems what someone came up with in his dinner time, it looks a half hearted attempt
Is it possible to see any of the other suggestions somewhere? Or will they be kept under wraps?
>h..I don’t really like it either. They should have stuck
>closer to something more daemon related (like a pitchfork or
>a devil’s tail…something)
A logo is not the same as a mascot.
That is definetly an improvement. The old logo was way to detailed and “drawing” like to actually be a logo(it was cool though).
Simple logos are easier to remember. This logo is much more effective than the “busy” logo previously.
I like old logo. It was more complicated, and I like complicated structures. New logo is so simple and sooooo boooooooring…
I like the new logo. It’s more appealing and less of a turn off. The prior logo with the little devil(s) just bothered me too much, so I never considered getting NetBSD.
Yes, I know NetBSD is good, but the little devil just turned me away. I plan on trying out NetBSD in the near future.
Really nice one! I’m glad I didn’t submit the koala I painted. NetBSD rocks!
The old logo was much better
They’ve gone the ‘simple’ route that companmies always seem to go with thier logos. oh well.
i miss the spike thing on the top of the flag…
it looked sexy
i figured you cox.net boys liked that.
i kind of like the new logo. i like minimalist music, so why not minimalist logos.
it.
This is a very weak attempt at a logo, and definitely does not seem to have any connection to NetBSD hertitage or work. It’s a simple waving flag, hardly an inspiring image and far from unique. It looks more like a graphic pulled from a Word flyer template and hardly a professional image that would be the face of a respected long standing opensource project. I really hope the NetBSD orginization will reconsider and open another competition. I suspect that there were not many entries originally, and that after seeing this design that others will be inspired to create something far more worthwhile and suitable.
>> It was too complicated, some people found the image to be in poor taste (the demons or Iwo Jima – take your pick), and it just wasn’t “logo” friendly. <<
As a former Marine (88-94), I find nothing offensive about it and salute the creativity of its artist. We are, after all, labelled ‘Devil Dogs’.
The new logo is just as good. It retains the “ghost” of the original while presenting a marketable image.
Troy
I think that the best logo for NetBSD would be a stylish toaster. People would smile when they see it.
Just a reminder to everyone who keeps mentioning how they should have kept the daemon flag, or a daemon, or a pitchfork or anything like that: It was their intent to get away from everything daemon related. They did not want to have to deal with the religious crowd who might misinterpret the whole daemon thing. Aside from that I think they also wanted to differenciate themselves from FreeBSD.
The big problem with “busy” logos (detail and colour) is that they are harder and more expensive to print. If most of their business is conducted online, it really doesn’t matter.
As for the daemon bit: well the staking claim with a flag bit reminds me of colonialism, the religious missionaries who followed them, and the general abuse of human dignity/rights by both of them. How can I use an operating system which uses such symbols?
On a more serious note: NetBSD is a project of limited interest. The people who migrate towards it do so because it fits a particular need, and it is doubtful that they would let a little daemon get in the way of their decision.
As for the new logo: it is too impersonal. It could represent anything, and hardly represents anything at the same time. It’s not so much that the logo looks ugly (it looks fine to me). It is just that it is pointless. It says nothing.
The new logo is too plain and bland, along with EVERY BSD variant SHOULD have the daemon incorporated into their logo.
Also the old logo was more indicative of the portability of netbsd.
All “alternative” OSes suffer from a serious lack of hardware support. It would be great if all OS vendors could agree on a common driver standard. That would really add choice to the OS world. Of course MS will not hurt it’s semi-monopoly, Linux/BSD hackers will never write stable binary driver APIs, etc. etc. So this will never happen
Graphic art:
Does not really look like someone spent all day on it.
Origniality:
I’d be expecting a call from a French’s Mustard lawyer anytime.
Color harmony:
My 74 is grey and orange too but carries it off much better.
Usability:
The first question one should ask for any logo in this category is , “How will it look in a single color on a black t-shirt as show shwag at Interop?”. I mean, would you stampede like a Who concert to get one? I’d have to say, “No”.
At least, there’s no stupid mascots. Thanks for that. I’ve always thought Linux, Freebsd or Darwin weren’t not serious with their logos.
Logo
Anonymous @ .dialip.mich.net writes
The new logo is too plain and bland, along with EVERY BSD variant SHOULD have the daemon incorporated into their logo.
They’re following OpenBSD, which ditched the daemon for a blowfish a few years back.
Also the old logo was more indicative of the portability of netbsd.
The old logo always looked to me like “NetBSD: We run on old junk”. True, and a good reason to run NetBSD, but not really the best way to encourage the use of the OS on, well, new junk.
Does not really look like someone spent all day on it.
It’s probably the deciding between that and hundreds of other possibilities that took the time (and the creation of those hundreds of others!) You’d be surprised at the amount of thought and effort that can go into what looks like very simple design decisions by a corporation.
It would be nice if they posted their contest images somewhere. I like the new logo, but it would be fun to see what other choices there were.
–Jeff Boulier
Can you imagine boxes with the new logo printed on them?
It could sell …
Bruno
line.
form.
texture.
colour.
light.
pattern.
space.
ryhtm. balance. variety. unity.
which company did the winning “new media designer” work for? even some of the efforts on the famous linux penuin gallery are better: http://lwn.net/Gallery/
The new logo looks ok and professional (though I might have preferred something a bit more personal and easy to remember and adverstise – though a colored flag is certainly very neutral what was one of the goals).
However, now the new logo, its colors and style don’t match with the dull and mediocre looking oldstyle NetBSD website at all… I hope they are planning to update the website looks soon too to match the professional quality of the new logo. For example, use the logo colors (orange, grey, black and white) and maybe also the idea of the flag elsewhere in visual design too. E.g. change the light purple background color of the side columns to light orange, links to something reddish (like dark orange) etc. Just my 2 cents…
At first I didn’t like the new logo, but then I changed my mind.. but there’s still missing something, like a mascot. Is the deamon still present? What about a new mascot along the new logo? Or something like that.
-[DkS]-
AFAIK all BSDs have a common mascot, the little Beastie demon/daemon.
First of all, I like it. Mainly due to it’s simplicity… Don’t like the colours, but the design is nice and simple.
Flags: Flags were often used as a symbol of unity. Ranging from great battles 1000’s of years ago, were flags were used to show whos side you were on, and as a rally point for soldiers. Modern day, flags, banners, and colours** are used to still show unity, but on a larger scale, eg what country you belong to, etc. IMO the flag in NetBSD symbolises that all the platforms are unified by a single OS, NetBSD.
Daemons: Anyone who has spent some time looking at old religions, know that daemons are simple underlings and the workers for the greater entities. They are neither good or bad, they just follow orders given by their masters. The whole christinity thing of the middle ages, gave rise to the notion that daemons were the doing of the devil, which is simply untrue. The term daemon in BSD lang, refers the former, and NOT the latter. Daemons are simple servants to the greater entity. (That would be you the user).
** Military unit flags and banners are called colours, due to historical reasons.
For the same reasons as everyone else. I think it’s too plain, the colors are boring, and it’s not indicative of NetBSD’s heritage and strengths. It’s just too bland for me. Maybe if the BSD daemon were wearing a little pith helmet and holding the flag, then it’d be cool. Honestly, at this point in time, who’s offended by a daemon? by an image of something related to war? And are those offended going to be the people using it?
“oslogonews?
..isn’t it os news as well?
Very nice and professional.
I’ve seen a lot of stuff posted (here and on Slashdot) regarding the NetBSD logo and figured I’d throw in my 2 cents to hopefully clear some things up.
I’m *NOT* part of the NetBSD foundation, so I can’t speak for them. I am also *NOT* the designer of the final logo – so please don’t presume that I ‘speak for’ either of these entities. I *AM* one of the 6 finalists in the logo contest and also have designed logos professionally as part of my graphic design background, so I feel that I have some authority to speak about this topic in general (and, having participated, can shed some light on the process itself).
1)
Don’t confuse logo/mascot/’related imagery’
The old NetBSD ‘logo’ was really awful from a *logo* point of view.
Personal feelings about the imagery aside, from a purely technical point of view, it was a bad logo because it could not be reproduced at small sizes without losing parts of the image. A logo is also something you shouldn’t need to look at (like a painting) in order to understand what is going on. It should be something you should be able to see quickly and latch onto as a placeholder – something simple that your mind’s eye can reference to help you identify something quickly later.
Think of street signs. They need to convey information quickly as you are zooming by in your car. Thats why they are generally not wordy and have very simple pictures to illustrate concepts (as opposed to a photo of cars merging – they simply have converging arrows). Logos are much the same. When not presented as ‘NetBSD chooses new logo’ where everyone talks about it … in general logos are just something that are there – that you don’t think about, but recognize quickly. No, nobody unfamiliar with NetBSD is going to see this logo and know that NetBSD runs on your toaster. But the logo can be expected to train you what the product does. What does a bitten piece of fruit have to do with computers? (but once you know it, it is instantly recognized)
As far as the daemons go … I don’t believe they are gone. My understanding is that the daemon is a mascot that can still represent the BSD family. Much like ‘Tux’ represents Linux in general … but Redhat, SUSE, etc. have a specific logo to indentify themselves.
2)
“Can we see the other submissions?”
Speaking as another submitter … no. Not unless I want to let you see it. I didn’t mind throwing some pro-bono work to the NetBSD team for their logo (as it was a way of me supporting them) – but since they are not using it, the image is still mine. I may choose to incorporate elements of it into another design work (or I may not) for someone else.
If I were to show it now, it might get ‘picked up’ by someone else and then I’d no longer be able to apply it to my own projects and still be unique.
So, long story short, you’ll only get to see the other submissions if the submitters choose to independently show them to you. The NetBSD group made it clear to artists that rights to all submissions (other than the final one) will remain with the submitter.
3)
Thoughts about the logo contest in general.
In general, picking a logo through a contest is not a great way to go (though I have to admit, I don’t have a better solution for this particular scenario.)
Background of the process:
I submitted my design. After a *lengthy* wait
– I received notice that I was one of the 6 finalists. There was a request to make one modification to my original design and re-send the modification by (some date) for final judging.
I made the modification as asked … but in this setup, this is where things are a little funny. When designing for a typical client – there is more communication about what they like, what they don’t like, etc.
Here, it was a simple ‘please remove this item …’
I did remove the item, but didn’t change anything else as I didn’t know why what I was doing was requested. So I may have altered my submission slightly to accomodate the change better … but in this case I didn’t because I didn’t have any feel for what the ‘client’ liked or disliked other than a simple one line statement.
Though, I don’t know how they could have really done it differently, since they couldn’t communicate between artists about what might have been good or bad in other concepts, since those designs were not able to be shared across artists. It’s not the ideal way of doing logo design … but as I said, I’m not sure how they could have done it differently (and still protect artist rights like they did).
—
That said, there is no ‘sour grapes’ on my part for not choosing my logo. I like how the final design took ‘flavor’ from the original image and re-used it. I did much the same in my design, but instead used a little bit of daemon flavor to carry over into my design.
I think the design does have a slightly ‘unfinished’ feel that I also felt I had in my final work, I think as a result of the nature of the selection process (and not going through 1 more round of refinement). For example: the flagpole feels unnaturally cutoff by the words as opposed to being occluded by a shape more tied to the letterforms.
I’ve put a quick mockup of what I mean at http://digitalimprint.com/images/nbsd2.gif
The left image is the current logo image – the right a quick modification to show a more natural occulusion of the flagpole by the letterforms.
As I said though, I think this is more an indication of the problems with this style of choosing a logo rather than anything else. Most logo designs I’ve ever been involved with have had 3 rounds (sometimes more).
First round to determine the rough likes/dislikes of the customer.
Second round to incorporate those ideas into a new set of images.
Third round to clean up and finalize the images from the previous round based on more focused feedback.
This contest seemed to only have the first two – and since each artist was isolated, there was no way of consolodating multiple likes/dislikes/etc.
Though, as I said … I’m at a loss to figure any way for them to have done differently.
—
In the end … it doesn’t matter what they picked, as art is subjective and there will always be someone who loves it and someone who hates it.
For what they were out to achieve, I think they’ve done it, and have something they can use which portrays them in a professional manner and not with a feel of ‘garage programmers with duct tape’.
Good job NetBSD and good job Grant Bissett on your winning design.
In point number (1) where I said:
But the logo CAN be expected to train you what the product does.
I meant to say
… CAN’T be expected to train you …
One of the reasons why previous logo was scrapped was that it had religious tint, but the new one is a complete rip of the Hindu religious saffron flag !! The saffron flag was used by Marathas and Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj while fighting against Muslims in 15th century. Even today it is official flag of “Shiv Sena” a regional political party in Maharasharta state of India. The flag is belived to be a holy symbol of hindu religion.
In the previous logo the triforcated pointed part on top of the stick of the flag is infact called “Trishul” in Sanskrit. It too is religiously related to Hinduism.
Take a look at these,
official site of Shiv Sena : http://www.shivsena.org/feature.htm
Other hindu symbols and flags : http://groups.msn.com/Hinducommunity/hinduampindia.msnw