[Geany-devel] About a new application icon.

[Emanuel Palm]

Hey guys!

I guess I'm not entirely adapted to how things are done in the open source
world. I made a pull request at github, when I should have sent you all an
e-mail here first. So, here is the text I wrote there with a couple of
adjustments:

*So, I've been exploring Geany a bit for a little while now, and I must say
I enjoy the IDE quite a lot. It took me, however, a couple of tries before
I finally gave it a real chance. The reason, to be very frank, is because
the application icon gave me the impression that the program has a
made-at-home-hack rather than a substantial IDE suited for all kinds of
programming situations, which I discovered it is. So, I took the liberty of
making a new Geany icon in Inkscape, made a fork and sent a pull request.*

*The idea of this pull request is not necessarily for the community to
merge it with no second thoughts, which I don't believe is going to happen.
Rather, I would like to start a discussion on the role of the application
icon. If, after the discussion, people are happy to use the icon, I'll
gladly let the community use it at leisure. If this discussion leads to the
community switching to another icon, then at least the community saw the
validity of my point. If this leads to the original icon not being
replaced, then at least there was a consideration being made.*

*So, as a discussion starter, I'm here listing the roles and priorities I
believe the application icon should fulfill:*

*1. To single out the application from the crowd.*

*The lamp and the name 'Geany' fulfill this role very well. I guess its
some kind of pun referring to rubbing the magic lamp and using the genie
popping out to fulfill your programming ambitions. Its a simple and
distinguishable symbol.*

*2. To communicate the ambition that has been, and is being put into the
software.*

*I don't believe there is any one programmer who wants to use software that
is dying or lacks a community or company continually backing it up. By
labeling a piece of software with an icon/logo which looks solid,
professional, and artistic communicates that there is enthusiasm behind it.
Take the Mozilla Firefox logo, as a noticeable example. Its elegant,
artistic and simple.*

*As of today most professional looking icons/logos are based on simple
curves and/or shapes to make them explicit and harmonious. They use few,
but carefully chosen, colors. The Geany icon as of today fulfills the color
requirement, but lacks elegance in it's shapes and lines. My suggestion as
a substitute reuses the colors of the original icon, with some slight
adjustments, but strips down the lamp into more basic shapes and lines.*

*3. To communicate the purpose of the application.*

*The Geany icon of today fulfills this purpose very poorly, but so does a
lot of other icons as well. Look at some examples with, in my opinion, well
designed logos: Google Chrome (a ball with colors?), NetBeans (a cube?),
FileZilla (a stamp?). The role of the icon/logo is only relevant as long as
the user has no knowledge of the application, which is why I put it as the
third priority/role.*

So, that's what I wrote. And in order to be able to have something to talk
about, I've added the .svg files I've made as an attachment. The first
version already got shot down by elextr, so there is a second version here
too. Somehow the second one makes me think of Disney, but I guess that's no
problem. I'm not sure about the colors and the brackets visible in the
second version, and should there be a disc in the background? All
suggestions are helpful.

If you are interested to have that much of a party, it would be fun if
people started to fire up Inkscape themselves and fiddle with what I made,
or conjure up things on their own.

Regards,
Emanuel Palm
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