[OpenID] Proposed logo redesign ...

[ydnar]

Making a logo or any iconography work well with only 256 pixels is a  
special challenge. At that size, simply scaling down the existing  
logo (or a reasonably square portion of it) is insufficient. The  
designer has to analyze the existing artwork and determine what are  
the most important shapes & concepts that must be preserved. Small  
details that work well at larger sizes might become muddy blobs of  
antialiased pixels when resampled. The per-pixel information density  
of an icon at 16x16 is exponentially higher than a print, or even  
reasonably full-sized banner for the web.

If you’ve read about the process Hyatt went through to make the  
Firefox logo work at small(er) sizes, this should ring familiar. At  
16x16, it was reduced to an orange ball that conveyed only a passing  
resemblance to a fox wrapped around a globe. The important bits are  
the overall shape (a circle) and the C-shaped hook the orange fox  
makes around a blue globe.

The important concepts of the current logo are the upright bar  
signifiying an “I” and the 270-degree curve below it evoking the  
lowercase “d” and symbolizing the open/holistic nature of OpenID. The  
parallelogram shape of the I and the arrowhead terminal of the curve  
are secondary. The colors (orange/gray) are also less important than  
the overall shape.

When reducing the symbol to smaller resolutions, the following steps  
should be taken:

* Eliminate unnecessary serifs/shapes.
* Increase the contrast by either degrading to a simple monochrome  
shape or using a darker gray that will stand up to being reduced to a  
single-pixel width.
* Potentially knock out the shape: How does it look on a orange  
square, with the shape in negative (white) space? This would resemble  
the standard RSS/feed icon that Mozilla & Microsoft have adopted. Not  
a bad thing to latch the OpenID cart to, potentially.

Anyway, I appreciate the votes of confidence in the original design. :)

Randy



On Dec 1, 2006, at 2:49 AM, Dmitry Shechtman wrote:

> +1
>
>> Am I alone in thinking that the current logo actually does make a
>> great favicon and looks really nice in the form field? If anything,
>> IMO, it works better at smaller sizes.
>
> Josh
>
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