Logo Contest

[Robert Watson]

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, Joshua Tinnin wrote:

> > For entertainment value, I should scan in the anonymous letter I
> > received from someone in Kansas a few years ago.  It compared the
> > Beastie to using Osama Bin Laden as the FreeBSD logo, and was CC'd to
> > my company and research sponsors. It's a classic :-).  Of course, it
> > wasn't appreciated at work because this was a bit after the anthrax
> > scare, and anonymous mailed envelopes weren't real popular.
> 
> Really? Well, OK, but I kinda wish that was made a little more clear,
> before I got worked up about it anyway ;) 

Yeah, the announcement was prematurely leaked, and was clearly not ready
for the world to see yet :-).  You'll notice that it was still in the
editing stage, and hadn't yet been spell-checked.

> I still don't see the need to do this. Why does the website have to be
> changed in order that people can display "supporting FreeBSD"? How does
> Duke University react to such complaints? They've had their mascot
> longer, as has Underwood Deviled Ham (in fact their devil is the oldest
> food trademark still in use in the US, first registered in 1870), and
> yet they continue to use them. I dunno, I think longevity of brand
> recognition is more important than these sorts of issues. Beastie has
> been around for a decade and a half, and FreeBSD would lose that if the
> brand changed. What's next, are people going to start making unices
> without any reference to "daemons" at all, in order not to possibly
> offend a few people? 

I don't know how other organizations handle it, but you'll notice that
most of the BSD-related organizations have at some point opted for a
non-daemon logo.  Even BSDI, which was spun off from the original BSD
development at Berkeley, went with lizards for cover art, CD art, etc. All
that said, the relationship between FreeBSD and the Beastie is clearly
strong, and not going away.  What we're looking for is a clean and
professional logo that can be used with or without the Beastie in a
variety of situations -- be it book covers, white papers, stationary
headers, etc.  Ideally something that can be rendered for a variety of
print mediums, including black and white, two-tone, something that uses
pantone colors, renders well using vector graphics, and so on.  Even the
best attempts at a vector daemon (apologies to Poul-Henning) look a little
less than sleek. :-) 

Robert N M Watson