Decentralizing SaidIt

submitted by JasonCarswell from infogalactic.com

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[–]JasonCarswell[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (20 children)

/u/magnora7 /u/d3rr

https://infogalactic.com/info/File:Saidit.net_2019_Logo_Revision_Variants.svg

https://infogalactic.com/info/File:Saidit.net_2019_Logo_Revision_Variants_Part_One.svg

So here's a bunch of variations. From the top down...

First row left has an extended "D". First row right is inversed and I forgot to extend the "D".

Second row is without the bubble outline. I prefer this "tail" shape to the one above, but it does not conform to the angles of the text nor the curve of the "S".

The first two rows have my experimental "S". I like that it's different and is echoed in the shape of the tail of the bubble - but I am not thrilled with it. I suspect that it could be improved if my font were bolder like in my sketch. The two existing fonts IMHO are too thin and too bold, leaving me lots of room between those extremes to play with. Another note about the "S" is that it might go nicely in a bubble, alone without the "I" and exclamation mark, like in the examples lower to the right.

The first and second row "tails" are in the center, coming from the left but could potentially come from any direction, including from above. All the bubble have the same rounded corners but can be increased decreased, or a different bubble shape all together could be made. For example, I like pill shapes. It could be a subtle/subliminal red pill reference should we choose to pursue that course.

The first and second rows are very similar but you can see what a difference an outline can make. I'm not expecting you to really choose between having an outline or not, so much as bringing to your attention that we may land upon branding options including several versions, all valid, but within usage guidelines for different purposes.

I'm not thrilled about the "dot net", but it works better when small. Needs work.

Third row left, features and extended "D". The bubble has a straight "tail" and the angle of the tail "cuts" through the "I" and the "D". The bubble overlaps the fourth row. There is potential for interesting tiling.

Fourth row left, inverses the overlapping example above, but with the truncated "D". Personally, I like that "D" best because it echoes the "tail" as well as with the "I" and the "A" creates a downward negative space triangle, though granted I already addressed the dominant "A" of the current logo to minimize any pyramid-like imagery (especially with the bottom 45 degree angles on the "A"). Further, SaidIt doesn't downvote so the negative space downward arrow is not as topically relevant. Also, it is not a wide 45 degree "A" so the downward triangle is lop sided. Still I like the truncated "D" for one final reason - it slices the word equally in half - like a fair dialectic, yet not still remains a whole word unit. I aligned the point of the tail above to hit a mark lined up to the "I" and "D" not letting the bubbles overlap. Now I see it would have made more sense to tile it better so the "slice" were continuous.

The straight "tail" is almost too mathematically sterile, without humanity. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm a robot.

Fourth row right, all forward slash angles were changed to back slash angles. There are pros and cons that speak for themselves. It's a little jarring compared to what we're familiar with. It's also unusual in type as most calligraphy hold the ink nib at a forward-slash-like angle. The "S" has a different character as does the "D" and the slice. I don't know what to think about it.

Third row right, are two variations on an icon. I don't like either - yet. I don't like the "I" in either and the exclamation point is stupid for several reasons. SaidIt not YelledIt. The dot net had a purpose of clarifying the address. And it just clutters it up. I also made the icon bubble smaller so it feels more crowded. Whether you go for the upper or lower "S" I think it may actually work well alone.

Aside from tiling the SaidIt bubble much much more (like for a bold banner or subtle background) I don't recommend doing the overlapping bubble thing too much. There are ways it could be fun, though. For example, if "SaidIt" text only had an empty bubble, perhaps in different proportions, coming from it. This image is black and white so colours may be used to avoid the masonic checkerboard tiling - unless you wish to embrace that - assuming you even like the tiling idea. Tiling is just a bonus whimsical design idea.

Also, I just noticed they are all lopsided. All have less space beside the "S" than the "dot net". Duh.

So that's my own initial self criticism.

I thought I'd pitch it by you to see what you thought before I do a dozen more variations on these variations. Don't be afraid to tell me what you don't like, even if it's all of them. If you can't tell me why you don't like them, that too is okay, but the more you share with me the better I can deliver something we all like.

I'd rather you don't use any of these designs as they are not final and have issues. Feel free to post it for a survey and/or copy paste any of my words you like. Or don't and keep it between us for now. It's up to you.

P.S. I have some new ideas I didn't mention.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (19 children)

Nice, looks good. I like the bottom-right one the most. It has the best bubble shape and the best letter shapes.

D3rr was saying some people were questioning him about the A looking like a pyramid... so I guess we'd like to move away from that. Your A is a good shape, but maybe you could add a partial horizontal bar in the middle of the A to make it resemble more closely a traditional A and look even less like a pyramid.

I like the "D" of the top-left one the most, could you incorporate that in to the bottom-right one?

Then the .net is a little fuzzy, needs higher res or more sharpness when it's in the logo.

Other than that, looks pretty good. If you want to come back with a revision of that bottom-right one, we'll experiment with mockups of it integrated in to the site and see how it looks. /u/d3rr do you agree?

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (18 children)

Yep!

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (17 children)

Cool! My only concern as far as integrating it in to the page is that the logo might be too tall to fit, but we can mess with that later

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (15 children)

/u/magnora7 /u/d3rr

File page: https://infogalactic.com/info/File:Saidit.net_2019_Logo_Revision_Variants_Part_Two.svg

SVG file may display large in browser and may be scalable depending on your browser's capabilities: https://infogalactic.com/w/images/0/0a/Saidit.net_2019_Logo_Revision_Variants_Part_Two.svg

All these images will always be in a gallery on this page or linked from here (eventually on a new dedicated gallery page) : https://infogalactic.com/info/SaidIt

So all of the stuff on the left is old stuff with some tweaks to better illustrate some ideas that may or may not be relevant to the font design.

Down the middle are three columns. Variants on different "S" icons, taken to an extreme clipping at the bottom. The mid-mid column is the "dot net" from heaviest to lightest at the bottom (I just realized I hadn't considered lowercase). The mid-right is just inversed colours and reflected bubbles. None of these bubbles are different.

On the right are several more subtly different "S" as well as all the letters. Also the the "tail" moves around, in part defined by alignments with parts of the text, diagonally and vertically, and in part for variety if you have a preference. At the bottom is an ovoid, my favourite shape. I've done lots of work with that shape, and even based most of my 2001-2010 website on it. It might also make for nice red pill or black pill design.

I need a break because I've been looking and tweaking angles so much I can't tell what's good and what's not anymore - or if it even matters.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

Thanks for so so many demos Carswell!

I've circled the one I think is best: https://i.imgur.com/lpjzhFd.png

I also modified it slightly to add a partial-crossbar on the A like we talked about. With my modification, I really like the way this one looks. /u/d3rr do you agree?

However I like the lighter ".net" of the very lowest and rightmost bubble on the page. The thicker fonts are just too fuzzy to easily read. So let's swap that out for the lighter one. I've also circled this in red.

I'd say we just pick this one, with those two modifications (half-bar across A, lighter .net font) and make an inverted colors version of that, and then stop trying alternatives.

Then we can try it out on the dev server to see how it look and fits in to the html and CSS. (d3rr, I just restarted the dev server last night and now it's working again after some sort of hardware failure).

Then we can modify more if necessary to get everything to come together. Then we can put it on the main server if it looks good.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

Agreed. I like your A it reminds me of Arch Linux. The D is nice and easily recognizable.

I agree with the lighter .net part unless it is supposed to look like an exclamation point, like SaidIt! in which case bigger and darker might be better.

Also maybe the community wants to vote on switching logos, it could be fun.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Thanks! Glad you like my A. I think the .net is supposed to look like an exclamation point. I just want to make sure the .net is easily readable. Either way is probably fine.

We could get it down to 2 or 3 options, then bring it to the community to vote, sure why not. Maybe we could try a couple different colors.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

/u/magnora7 /u/d3rr (I do this because only the person getting replied to receives notice. Corbett's site has an option to notify you for just responses, for all new comments on that post, or none, and maybe another. On Wikipedia you can get notified when any page on your watchlist changes. I'd like a default switch to change to be notified about all conversations I've participated on.)

Anyway. There's no wrong answer and backtracking is certainly an option. I say this because you've chosen the older style "S", which ties back to the current logo.

Also, the bubble tail on your selection is not on the right pointing to the right, but it is aligned to slice through the "I" and "D", and sort of asthetically reflects the "A".

I like your "A". I know I thought of it a couple times, but by the end I needed sleep. I'm kicking myself for not including it or some other variants like it.

Along the right column - the top two are the thickest "dot net", then the next two are the next thickest, again 2 of the third, and the last four examples are the thinnest bottom "dot net" which is shrunk down to 20%. I have one more thing I'll try for the "dot net" I think might improve it.

Thus far all of these designs are precise mathematical designs that all snap to a grid. I like the precision and math and all that crap so I often start there and will diverge when necessary. This case doesn't seem to require that. I mention this for posterity and future designers or coders that may wonder.

There are ways to increase or decrease the boldness or skinniness of the font. This would affect the mathematical "purity" which means it technically gets more complicated for anyone trying to replicated it but ultimately means nothing in pursuit of an aesthetic goal which should really be the only concern. I bring this up so you don't think I've neglected it, but also why I like this font width. Further the simplistic consistency is easily applied to other aspects. For example the bubble outline is a one unit width too. I will do variants on the bubble to show what I mean more.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'd like a default switch to change to be notified about all conversations I've participated on.

Duuude bravo, that's totally a missing reddit feature. So I guess this means if you are person A and person B replies to you, and then person C replies to person B, you want a notificiation? Aka all comments that are a child of your comment should notify you if you opt-in to it.

I like one up from the bottom right, and 3 up from the bottom right, I guess the boring less styled ones. And the one magnora likes.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Alright, sounds great. Glad you like my "A". Looking forward to the bubble and .net variants

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Bottom right. I didn't see that coming. Then again I didn't know what you might prefer. I understand it though. The "S" is less aggressive, yet retains its points.

"A" crossbar is easy. I suppose I could have done more variations with more letters. I figured narrowing the dominant width of the "pyramid A" and removing the base for just a chevron "A" was enough not to be a pyramid, but I think you're correct to remove all doubt, not matter how remote - especially when it's so easy to.

I had some other fun ideas about the "A" that I was debating springing on you. Instead I'll tell you and you can tell me if you want to see a version. 1) Imagine the "A" on its side, like it's been knocked over, one side on the ground one foot in the air. 1a) Without the crossbar. 1b) With a crossbar. 2) Same as 1 but with the top section "beheaded" with a small top triangle removed from the rest of the "A" triangle. 2a) The "head" is flipped overlapping the feet of "I" and "D". 2b) The "head" is a pile of rubble at the feet of "I" and "D". 2c) The "head" is a pile of rubble resting on the bottom outline of the speech bubble. All of this is fun, perhaps good for banners about toppling power or for T-shirts - but I don't recommend it for a standard logo.

The top-left "D" is extended but the angles are different. I'll present several versions.

There is no res for a SVG but I take your meaning on the .net . And on reflection the exclamation point is not the point, though a clever device, the important part is that it says .net . It definitely needs tuning.

Being a SVG scalable vector graphic you can make it any size without compromising quality.