Re: GCC's branding strategy (Was: New GNU-GCC logotype)

[Bernardo Innocenti <bernie at develer dot com>]

Turbanov Vladislav Dmitrievich wrote:

> > The key point is that we don't need another funny logo that
> > *we* like.  Do we want more users?  Then we need something
> > as boring as Microsoft's logo for Developer Studio, perhaps
> > designed by psychologists or marketing experts.
>
>    Very good, mr Bernardo - U took it serious. That's what I want from all
> of U. Look at my reply to Aaron - it should clarify the present project
> condition.

I like the new gnu better than the old gnu :-)

But it still doesn't make me thing "this is a good compiler I should
use for my project".


>    Compiler and IT atmosphere is very strict and difficult to catch.
> However there is no need to ignore "*we* like" look. Both of them can be
> combined to make GCC developers "feel at home" and other users feel certain
> about GCC.

I agree with you that we can come up with a logo that both compiler
users and compiler developers may like.

IANAP (I Am Not A Psychologist), but I also agree with other
comments saying that we should shift the subject from "GNU" to
"multi-language and multi-platform (cross) compiler".

The Mozilla people did this: they gradually replaced the godzilla
head, an image that inspires terror and destruction, with a fox
(something smart) and a bird (something light, quick).

Even though Mozilla's new mascots are cute, they consciously
decided to move them in the background to make room for standard
icons that universally mean "internet browser" (a world) and
"e-mail" (a letter).

Their icons are very recognizable even to people who have no
previous experience with the Mozilla suite.


>    As a suggestion I would like to make U think about 2nd gcc.gnu.org
> version with a better design... I'm not familiar with web-page production,
> still can help with images for buttons, backrounds and headers.

IANAWD (I Am Not A Web Designer) too, but I'd like to suggest something
along the lines of KDE's web page (http://www.kde.org/).  The contents
of this page could probably resemble Apple's Xcode feature list, moving
most of the current information to subpages.

I like the concept of language-focused pages (http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
and http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/).  We should probably add similar pages
for C, C++ and ADA and put clearly visible links to these pages in the
front page.

No, I'm not qualified to redesign our main page.  IMHO, we should let
experienced web designers do it for us, like the Mozilla foundation did.

--
 // Bernardo Innocenti - Develer S.r.l., R&D dept.
\X/  http://www.develer.com/