New icon/logo

[ArrowJ]

...The project is open source so if you can come up with something better people will adopt it...

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

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

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.

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

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?

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 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

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

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...

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.

[ArrowJ]

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!

[Anonymous]

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.

[ArrowJ]

Is that a requirement for an open source project though?

[ribuck]

Is that a requirement for an open source project though?

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

[Anonymous]

Is that a requirement for an open source project though?

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

[ArrowJ]

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.

[FreeMoney]

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

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

[LZ]

I like icons that Satoshi published in the first post.

[satoshi]

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.

[bitboy]

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.

[Bruce Wagner]

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?

[wumpus]

I like icons that Satoshi published in the first post.

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

[tcatm]

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

[wumpus]

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   

[Pander]

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://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 (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