Re: [libreoffice-design] ligatures in the logo

Hi all,

just short...

Christoph Noack schrieb:
> Hi Nik, hi Rob, Jaron, Johannes, Bernhard, ... :-)
>
> Am Montag, den 07.03.2011, 04:34 +1100 schrieb Nik:
> > [...]
> > I'm not trying to be nasty, but this typeface looks genuinely unfinished.
> > I think we would do ourselves a huge favour by locating a better font
> > for the next version of the logo.
> > What do you think? change or stay? and if change, do you or your
> > colleagues know of any good open-source fonts?
>
> You are right Nik, the font is indeed unfinished (e.g. the Unicode
> coverage)- and development won't continue as far as I know. But in the
> given situation some months ago, the font had some real advantages ...
> for example: having a modern but neutral look.
>
> [...]
>
> I've used the font comparison that had been done by the OOo Artwork Team
> [2]. And since Bernhard had substantial impact in creating the
> comparison, I'd like to ask him for his experience whether there is
> something better. Bernhard?

*If* the font had been finalized, it had been chosen for the OOo logo 
accompanying font too.

But due to it's shortcomings (especially lack of certain characters and 
symbols) we chose the M+ P1 font
(http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/mplus-outline-fonts/design/index-en.html#prop) 
for text to be presented in combination with the (proprietary) logo.

What I personally really like to see in the font are round dots at every 
place: "i", "!", ":", "ü" and so on.

We searched hard for a high quality open source font (as with the given 
OOo logo the need was even higher than here), but didn't find a better one.

It is already more than 6 weeks ago that Hillar Liiv worked on improving 
the Vegur font:
<http://go.mail-archive.com/GIYXUCWv2x5lf5V72hEpf01Upm4=>

I'm quite ashamed, that I didn't reply to him ...
> > I know ... It's very late to be talking about such things, but
> > discussion in this vein might make for a better future logo.

I think it's a two-step approach:

First improve the existing logo by nearly invisible changes leading to 
an improved overall impression.

Then work on the community branding for a new logo (with new font, if we 
find one).
> I think we slowly start to target topics related to a community branding
> - not only applying tiny improvements concerning the current one. What
> are your thoughts here? Thinking about some major improvements is fine,
> but the timing is important as well ...

+1
> Personally, I think that some improvements by Johannes should make it
> into the current logo for (maybe?) the minor release of LibreOffice.

I could even imagine the next available micro release...

> And
> from what I can see, there is consensus that most of the tiny
> improvements (like you said Nik - and also to me: except the
> f-i-connection) greatly improve the general visual impression.

So perhaps with the bent f-bow, but with space between f-bar and i?

As far as I remember, the few poll comments tended towards the present 
logo rather than towards the logo with ligature.

It's not easy to define likes and dislikes for the tiny modifications, 
if the main difference is the stroke between "f" and "i"...

But even if we agree on improving the distances between the single 
characters (kerning) only, the necessarily modified distances between
"f", "f" and "i" might cause some kind of ligature...

Perhaps we should step back again (I don't like this direction very 
much, but if it leads to consensus, it's worthwhile) and improve kerning 
first.

When we got our optimum version (broader as today or smaller as Nik 
proposed), we should add ligatures on this pre-final version.

Does this sound reasonable to you Joey (as foreman in this topic) and 
all the others?

Best regards

Bernhard
> Cheers,
> Christoph
>
> [1]
> http://luxate.blogspot.com/2010/10/fontastic-how-libreoffice-got-its-font.html
>
> [2]
> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/index.php?title=Branding_Initiative/branding_guidelines_draft&oldid=181144#Fonts


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