Bitcoin Forum

New icons, what do you think?  Better than the old one?

http://www.bitcoin.org/download/bitcoin16.4.png  http://www.bitcoin.org/download/bitcoin20.4.png  http://www.bitcoin.org/download/bitcoin32.5.png  http://www.bitcoin.org/download/bitcoin48.5.png

Full size 530x529 image for scaling down to custom sizes:
http://www.bitcoin.org/download/bitcoin530.png (http://www.bitcoin.org/download/bitcoin530.png)

The perspective shadow was too thick on the larger sizes.  I updated 32, 48 and the full size.

I release these images into the public domain (copyright-free).  I request that derivative works be made public domain.

Pretty...

I like them. Do they come in higher resolutions?

Yes, the original is 546x531 pixels.

It looks good at larger size too, but since the small icons are what you mostly always see, I wanted to judge it on those first.  I'll post larger sizes and full size a little later.

I still dislike the currency symbol ... But at least the logos look good and clean.

Excellent. This would be a good resource for those participating in the banner contest. Why unequal dimensions?

My only suggestion would be to make the coin's text stand out more. At tiny resolutions outlines tend to be come unworkable, so a better option may be to experiment with contrast. Making the text significantly darker than the rest of the coin would likely increase readability. Alternately, you could make the inner circle color darker, and the text lighter.

Good suggestion.  I made the B slightly lighter and the background slightly darker.  Very slightly.  The foreground is now exactly the same colour as the BC in the old one.

It's kind of OK if you can't easily read the B in the 16x16.  At that size, you just need to see that it's a coin.  It doesn't matter so much what's embossed on it, just that there be some detail there because it wouldn't look like a coin if it was a blank smooth circle.

It's slightly wider than tall because the dark perspective under it goes more to the right than down.

I finished and posted the 32x31 and 48x47 versions in the first message.  I like the 48 a lot.

How does everyone feel about the B symbol with the two lines through the outside?  Can we live with that as our logo?

Works for me...

How about an SVG version? That way we could automatically generate smaller and larger versions as needed, and storage in the Source Control Management is an option too.

I don't know how to do SVG, but I did the original very large, over 500 pixels across, so it can be scaled down.  I'll give the original when I'm finished.

I had to custom tweak each icon size so the vertical lines land square on their pixels, otherwise they're ugly blurry and inconsistent.  Such is the challenge of making icons.  The original will be good for scaling to custom sizes between 48 and 500 but not smaller.

When you use SVG or another vector-format, you don't have the problems you discribed when scaling the logo. Perhaps I'll give it a go in Illustrator.

We have the standard icon sizes, and the full size scales nicely to anything else.

I added the full size to the first post.

Thank you. I have updated my "Accept Bitcoin" buttons (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45.msg479#msg479) and banner (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45.msg547#msg547) (version twos) to use your new coin.

Here's a vector graphic (SVG). I'm no expert, so it may not be optimal, but it should work for the most part.

http://www.shalhoon.com/bitcoin.svg (http://www.shalhoon.com/bitcoin.svg)

(You may need to right-click and "Save As..." if your browser thinks it knows how to display it).

After some toying, this one seems a bit more crisp.

http://www.shalhoon.com/bitcoin2.svg (http://www.shalhoon.com/bitcoin2.svg)

I also made an SVG version. It's not as shiny as the original logo, though.

Is this the "official" logo? I understand how difficult it can be to make something truly professional when you don't have the skills (which I don't) or the software (which I also don't) so I'm not trying to be rude, but wouldn't it be better if we adopted something...better? I really am not trying to be mean...I really have struggled trying to figure out how to do the stuff that a lot of the artists on deviant do.

There is at least one other thread with a set of logos and badges that are really, really promising here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631.0 I promise I don't know this guy/gal (I didn't even check the username). Heck if someone else came up with another alternative that would be cool too. It seems important that we have a really nice logo with all the sizes, resolutions, and formats that might be needed.

Is there a reason we couldn't adopt something else before bitcoin gets too big and it's too late to change without hurting "brand" recognition? It seems silly to stick with something that is "ok" when we could have something great.

I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes to badly.

Satoshi created bitcoin so that is his preferred one hence it is the "official" one. The project is open source so if you can come up with something better people will adopt it. Thats the nature of things and of bitcoin itself.

What exactly is your issue with the "official" logo?

ArrowJ is right, image is everything, and its best left to the Pro's. (i.e. Not me.)

That said, the name "Bitcoin" is pretty uninspiring start for a Graphic Designer, IMO. (But that is a whole other discussion.)

Kudos to Bitboy on his contribution, this kind of simple smooth and sharp image instantly tells the viewer that we are in 2010.

Stop complaining. The current logo is just good enough.
It has all the properties a good logo should have.

PS.
After bitcoin goes mainstream, satoshi will be incredibly rich and he can afford some professional artist to polish it more ;)

PS2.
After some consideration, i think that the logo could be easily polished a little by adding some more 3D-effect to the coin borders, so it would actually look like a real coin. But the rest is 100% OK.

I don't personally have the skills, but again, I think http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631.0 is a great choice.


The most recent version isn't as bad as the original, but it is still not a crisp as could be desired, it doesn't scale well, has too many color shades, just has an overall "generic" look to it.


I'm not actually complaining...just voicing an alternative opinion related to the quality of the current logo that represents the bitcoin project to most of the outside world. I feel it has few of the aesthetic properties a good logo should have.

I don't see why this can't be discussed without being offensive (I'm trying not to attack anyone personally). I'm not saying anything about the qualities of the designer as a human being...he did after all come up with the cool idea of Bitcoin in the first place, but this does not mean his artwork should be the de facto face of the project IF the goal is to increase it's popularity. It seems to me that the better face we can put on the project the better. Is it bad to strive for fantastic?


I personally think less 3D is in order. It's ok for it to be "abstract" in that it doesn't look exactly like a coin...I would posit that it would be better if it doesn't try to look like a real coin...after all, we aren't dealing in real coins...we are dealing in BITcoins ;)

Oh sorry, was i offensive again ? That's weird, i didn't feel it at all.

You're right, actually the logo from my signature (designed by bitboy and improved by myself) may be better than the official one.
However i don't know if Satoshi will like the license (cc by-sa).

IMHO perhaps Satoshi should either ask the author or pay the author some BTC to release the works into public domain.

I'll be honest with you, I thought I had offended with the suggestion.

I hadn't thought of the license issue, but of course your right, whatever logo is used it should probably be public domain. IF the community decided to adopt Bitboy's logo I'd contribute 5 btc to "buy out" his license and turn it over to the public domain.

Can this sort of thing be settled with a vote or does it not work that way? I mean we can say it's open source and whatever people use will win, but you have to admit Satoshi's logo has a little bit of an advantage...nobody wants to offend the originator of the awesome idea...I don't want to anyhow...hope I haven't!

The licence should  be the same as the original logo imo because we know for sure that is the one satoshi supports.

Is that a requirement for an open source project though?

No, just for this open source project, i.e. Satoshi's Bitcoin client.

No its not...but you'd be more likely to get satoshi to support something we know he approves of!

Understood. I had a friend explain some of the ideology a little more clearly to me. Bottom line, I hope we can end up with a top notch professional logo for this project.

Haha, I agree. Maybe it should be a holo-coin.

I like icons that Satoshi published in the first post.

I'm happy if someone with artistic skill wants to contribute alternatives.  The icon/logo was meant to be good as an icon at the 16x16 and 20x20 pixel sizes.  I think it's the best program icon, but there's room for improvement at larger sizes for a graphic for use on websites.

It'll be a lot simpler if authors could make their graphics public domain.

Thanks for clearing up the issue on public domain . Now I can release the graphics I have done into public domain.

Somewhere I thought I had seen another thread that included ALL the new artwork / logos / icons / etc...   But I can't find it now.   Anyone know where it is?

Me too.
I'd like a svg version though so I can scale them :)

I made one a while ago, you can find it in this post: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64.msg7415#msg7415

Cool! oops I seem to have read over your post   ???

I'm new to Bitcoin but am very impressed already. Keep up the good work.

The new logo looks good and I'm happy to see an SVG version is available. I have a few questions on this by the way in order to save some trouble later on. Some other open source projects are struggling with ugly/old/incorrect logos that are circulating the web. It is very hard to get rid of them. See for example:
  https://wordpress.org/about/logos/ (https://wordpress.org/about/logos/)
  https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/media/logos/#firefox-common-mistakes (https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/media/logos/#firefox-common-mistakes)

As said earlier, SVG is important for scalability. Suppose the TIME, WIRED or whatever magazine or newspaper would like to do an article on Bitcoin, they would look for the SVG file and reuse it a lot. It would be unfortunate if an incorrect version of the logo got used.

Therefore I would like to request the following issues to be solved:

1) What is going to be the one and only source file for the logo? Is it going to be bitcoin.svg.zip? Is it 100% compatible with the original PNG?

2) Can the SVG be included in the source file repository?

3) Can someone replace the bitcoin.png with the (correct) bitcoin.svg on Wikipedia? At the moment 8 different articles are using this image, these need to be altered too. Wikipedia will automatically convert .SVG to .PNG when needed.

4) With e.g. Inkscape one can generate all the bitmaps via command line:
  inkscape bitcoin.svg  -h 16 -w 16 -e bitcoin-16.png
  inkscape bitcoin.svg  -h 20 -w 20 -e bitcoin-20.png
  inkscape bitcoin.svg  -h 32 -w 32 -e bitcoin-32.png
  inkscape bitcoin.svg  -h 48 -w 48 -e bitcoin-48.png
However, this should not be part of the make process but a shell script generate-logos.sh or something could be added to update the PNGs. That would mean the source code repository would hold SVG, PNGs and that script.

5) The whitespace in bitcoin.svg.zip has to be altered by the way. The original PNG is 530x526, so I would suggest to use 530x530 in the SVG to have as minimal as possible whitespace. Equally divide remaining whitespace in 2 pixels at the top and 2 pixels at the bottom.

6) As Bitcoin is gaining momentum, it should be extremely easy for people and media to find information on logo and artwork. They should not have to dive in the FAQ or forum (they will probably not and use Google images). Could a page called "Artwork" on logos, buttons and artwork be created on the main website and be listed in the main menu? This page could also provide the SVG logo and other artwork such as listed in http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631) (currently this link is listed under the page "Trade")

I really hope these issues can be addressed in order to have Bitcoin's logo portrait in the media as good as possible.

Regards,

Pander