Introduction

I have been using KDE...err Plasma as my sole environment for much of this year, before that I only used elementary's Pantheon and before that Xfce and Gnome 2, I never liked Unity or Gnome Shell, so as far as a Plasma user goes I'm new to it, still, I wouldn't go back to either of those but for curiosity purposes, I like Plasma so much because it's so much less intrusive, and it doesn't get in the way of doing stuff, even when it's usually called out for its excess of eye-candy and ûber-configuration skills, some call it features others call it bloat. I like to call them options.

So as far as a description of what Plasma is, it's an environment that offers a lot of options, and there's a lot of them. And I'm ok with that, I very much love that I can change the arrangement of the widgets in applications windows, or their icons, or remove them, or whatever I want. Plasma then needs to portray that it's an environment that empowers the user, that's ever changing, and that it can adapt itself to the users workflow and not the other way around. It's an environment that really sets you free, a word often not properly used.

KDE = Plasma

While I've been a user of Plasma for so very little I've known it existed from way back, like 5 years ago, through all this time I've always referred to it as KDE, and this seems to be the case for most people, there isn't a differentiation between the two. KDE is the name of the company(?) that holds the trademarks and of the community, while Plasma is the name for the actual environment, but does Plasma have an identity of it's own at all then?.

The Cashew seems to be what represents Plasma outside of the KDE umbrella, I never knew what that yellow blob with other colored smaller blobs meant, at least now I know, but does it represent Plasma?, does it say Plasma?, it's more likely that people say that it represents KDE, so instead of separating the two, they should be joined as a whole, take advantage of that, leave the Plasma name for internal talks. I know it as KDE, it was presented to me as KDE, the users know it as KDE, the world knows it as KDE, let it be KDE.

Simply, get rid of the Cashew and unify the KDE and Plasma logo.

KDE != Plasma

Then there's the counterpart of that, should Plasma have it's own identity?. As above the Cashew is as much as a logo for it goes, but then again, no one knows what it means, by no one I mean users who don't know the background of it.

So then Plasma needs to distance itself from just using that, and claim an own name, and most importantly, an identity. In the end, Plasma is a result of KDE and as such it needs a proper brand. The Cashew then has to go as it's linked more with KDE than with the environment and like I said so many times now, no one knows what it means... or is.

In both cases, one thing is clear: No more Cashew.

#justdesignthings

Move on. A phrase that we should stick as the KDE motto, ever changing, ever evolving, ever moving forward, but, is it really?.

About 5 years is how much I know KDE and Plasma and very little has changed since then, visually speaking. The software part has indeed moved on, but not how this software is presented. The shiny, very shiny logo I saw was great... back then, the realistic icons and grey theme with blue accents were something I never seen before and were great too.

Strictly speaking about the logos, or just logo, because other than the KDE logo the only other representative logo is the Cashew and so far it's on in its way out. The KDE logo has some very distinct features:

It's blue, really blue

It's shiny, very, very shiny

Lots of shadows and lights

A big white K fused with a gear

From Wikipedia:

On 24 November 2009 the KDE Marketing Team announced a rebranding of the KDE project components, motivated by the perceived shift from building a desktop environment to a wider ranging project around a community of "people who create software".

Given that, the focus (no more than 5 years later) is to make Plasma an environment for the users, while keeping the KDE brand only to refer to the company(?) and the community, both logos however are that old, but at the same time the "K" logo is the ultimate representation of the project. So the logo, the new logo, has to take into consideration that, it needs to be modernized, but keeping the idea that gave birth to the original. Logos get old, but ideas don't.

The original motivation though was "people who create software" truth is the focus should be shifted now to "people who wants to use software", it must be inviting and not just technical, the logo was created from a technical perspective.

Probably that's why it has a gear in it.

A unified logo

A single logo must point out then the legacy of KDE and portray the importance of its community along with the display of its main feature: Plasma.

While I was doing the icons for the new theme I thought of doing a quick logo for KDE:



This is based off the logo I saw on the VDG blog, but with different spacing, size of the elements and a different "K".

The logo above is solely for KDE, as Jens later told me that the plan is to separate KDE from Plasma. The main differences from this logo from the current KDE logo:

It's not excessively blue

The Web 2.0 look is gone

It's based on an already great design, it has been only improved on the spacing and the "K" and it visibly incorporates better the different aspects of KDE, as a group, as a community, as the basis for several software, it's modern look, its features, etc

Since the current KDE logo is heavily based on the Oxygen look, this follows the new flat-like-subtle-modern look of the new icons.

Therefore the Plasma logo should take takeoff from the design in this new logo.

Plasma consists of 3 main editions/versions/presets/flavors: Desktop, Notebook and Active. Each for different purposes as their name suggest. Then we have the slew of options each one of the editions/versions/presets/flavors have, then, we have that each of these editions/versions/presets/flavors share common components, themes, icons, wallpapers, fonts, so, do we need 3 logos for each of them, or one to rule them all?.

Each of the editions/versions/presets/flavors too need to be modernized, as is the logo that represents all 3 of them. So here's my take on a new Plasma logo following are the features of it:

It's a departure of the Cashew

It follows the new style

It gives a new meaning for the elements, parting from the technical to the practical, the 3 circles comprises the 3 flavors of Plasma

An arrow, moving forward

The Plasma environment, moving on.

Conclusion

It's been 5-6 years since the last face-lift was done to KDE and Plasma, the recent effort to modernize everything in it should also consider that others are indeed changing, and changes are for the better. This is a part of what I think KDE should implement, other than the icons I'm doing (which you can try at the Nitrux GitHub repository). Plasma is improving under the hood but over it, it still looks like it did so long ago.

It's time to let that go.

A *very* nice write-up.

* First comment is regarding the cashew replacement.

To be honest, I have no idea why we ever used the cashew for the control menu. From my pov, it is a normal UI element that shows a slew of options, it is nothing special and nothing that requires branding. (Just imagine all applications showing their logos instead of the Settings menu item).

As I see it, it should either show the activity icon (the same as it shows the activity name), or a simple menu icon - something like this:



* As for the new plasma logo, wherever it is going to be actually shown, it looks nice and actually represents a letter P (I wanted to complain about the alignment before realizing this )

* The last one, a new KDE logo.

I need to reiterate - the K-with-a-gear is a legally registered logo of KDE.

The shiny-blue-with-shadows-background is just the oxygen style applied to it, it is not a part of the logo.

I really see changing the base of the logo (even if it is only replacing the gear with bubbles) as highly problematic, and not only for the legal stuff. It is a logo that everybody is accustomed to - a rather wide audience ranging from all the kde developers, to all the users. I don't think that a few of us here have the right to change it without a green light from the community which I don't know how we could get.

ivan wrote:A *very* nice write-up.

* First comment is regarding the cashew replacement.

To be honest, I have no idea why we ever used the cashew for the control menu. From my pov, it is a normal UI element that shows a slew of options, it is nothing special and nothing that requires branding. (Just imagine all applications showing their logos instead of the Settings menu item).

I agree that it should've never been used for it, part of the reason why I never knew what it was until yesterday. The logo though is not just to replace it, but to serve as a logo for Plasma, which is primarily what the Cashew does outside of its practical use.

ivan wrote:As I see it, it should either show the activity icon (the same as it shows the activity name), or a simple menu icon - something like this:

I added an icon for settings in the new theme, it's more like sliders than the hamburger menu.

ivan wrote:* As for the new plasma logo, wherever it is going to be actually shown, it looks nice and actually represents a letter P (I wanted to complain about the alignment before realizing this )

Yeah, it's all about the perception

ivan wrote:The last one, a new KDE logo.

I need to reiterate - the K-with-a-gear is a legally registered logo of KDE.

The shiny-blue-with-shadows-background is just the oxygen style applied to it, it is not a part of the logo.

I really see changing the base of the logo (even if it is only replacing the gear with bubbles) as highly problematic, and not only for the legal stuff. It is a logo that everybody is accustomed to - a rather wide audience ranging from all the kde developers, to all the users. I don't think that a few of us here have the right to change it without a green light from the community which I don't know how we could get.

Well I'm no trademark specialized lawyer but I believe KDE can register this logo as well and keep both, I mean, various commercial companies do change their logo every so often without a problem, they retain the rights to the old and the new ones.

Re-branding is also not that much of a problem if the people who's in charge of it know what they're doing. *cough**cough*

Changing the logo from the K+gear to a new one will benefit KDE, leaving behind the current perception people have of KDE..err Plasma, new logo=new start, it get's no more simple than that.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Well I'm no trademark specialized lawyer but I believe KDE can register this logo as well and keep both, I mean, various commercial companies do change their logo every so often without a problem, they retain the rights to the old and the new ones.

I'm not a lawyer, but AFAIK one needs to use a trademark. If one doesn't use a trademark it becomes void. Thus if we change the logo the old one times out in future. There is a small time overlap (trademark is registered for a few years) in which we could have both.

Changing trademark is not as simple as one may think. It's definately expensive and our official trademark is still "K Desktop Environment" and the e.V. is still the "K Desktop Environment e.V." (changing the name of an e.V. is also more difficult than one would think).

Apart from that I agree with what Ivan wrote: changing the trademark would require a consensus from the community and I assume a vote from the e.V. I expect that you will have a hard time changing away from the gear. It's something people associate with KDE, we are called "gearheads", etc. etc. I doubt that there would be a majority for such a change.

> I added an icon for settings in the new theme, it's more like sliders than

Neat. Was talking more in general terms of what type of icon should represent the control menu than an actual visualization. Need to check out the new icons.

> the hamburger menu.

Heh, the "hamburger menu"

Ah, yeah - we definitely don't need to change the name of the eV. We had problems getting SSL certificates for a while when the eV was changing it's registered office and that took months to sort out.

Well no one said change the name of the e.V. but anyways I'm guessing German trademark laws are different then. If the problem is that the current K logo is trademarked by the e.V. can't this trademark be passed to a more core part of it so that the e.V. still holds the rights to it, while the rest uses a new logo?. For example, let the e.V. keep the current logo "K and gear" but that the new logo serves as a logo for the community and the logo for the umbrella that is KDE for the rest f the applications.

I'm all for designing a more modern logo, but before we do that, I think we'd have to ask the community
a) What they associate with our current logo
b) Whether that's what they want to associate that with a new logo as well

If, for example, the community associates "engineering-driven" with the current logo and that value is important enough for them to have it represented in a future logo as well, then replacing the gear with colorful dots probably won't cut it. Then we'd have to design a more modern logo which still signifies "engineering-driven".
If instead "Elegance" has become more important to KDE by now, your suggestion represents it better than the current logo.

colomar wrote:I'm all for designing a more modern logo, but before we do that, I think we'd have to ask the community
a) What they associate with our current logo
b) Whether that's what they want to associate that with a new logo as well

If, for example, the community associates "engineering-driven" with the current logo and that value is important enough for them to have it represented in a future logo as well, then replacing the gear with colorful dots probably won't cut it. Then we'd have to design a more modern logo which still signifies "engineering-driven".
If instead "Elegance" has become more important to KDE by now, your suggestion represents it better than the current logo.

I think then that the answer is pretty obvious isn't it. Half a decade has passed since the last face-lift, in a community driven by developers the visual part is obviously not of anyone's concern as much as the technical part is even when there's glaring issues with it.

Uri_Herrera wrote:I think then that the answer is pretty obvious isn't it. Half a decade has passed since the last face-lift, in a community driven by developers the visual part is obviously not of anyone's concern as much as the technical part is even when there's glaring issues with it.

I'm not sure how to interpret what you just wrote. Do you mean "KDE GUIs are often badly designed, so obviously KDE doesn't care about visual stuff, therefore they won't care about the logo"? If so, then I can tell you from my experience that they do. They don't care if what they have becomes "outdated" but they become attached to it, so when you come up with something new, they start to care a lot. I don't think people would mind a face-lift too much (though you'd probably get at least some very vocal nay-sayers even on that), but your suggestion changes the whole symbolism of the logo.

Okay, we can of course just present the new logo as an idea to the community. We could be lucky and the majority of the community loves it because you intuitively struck a chord with them. But if we're not, we have to prepare for an enormous ****. If you don't fear a lot of hatred coming your way (I don't say it necessarily will, but we simply cannot predict the community's reaction to a logo that was designed without input from them), then I won't keep you from trying it out, of course. Just in case the majority of the community rejects the design completely, we have to come up with something else.

I hope you're not taking this as an attack on your logo design as such. I don't dislike it at all. I've just seen too many very strong emotional reactions from KDE to things which one would think they wouldn't care about too much to assume they wouldn't care about a radical logo change.

colomar wrote:

Uri_Herrera wrote:I think then that the answer is pretty obvious isn't it. Half a decade has passed since the last face-lift, in a community driven by developers the visual part is obviously not of anyone's concern as much as the technical part is even when there's glaring issues with it.

I'm not sure how to interpret what you just wrote. Do you mean "KDE GUIs are often badly designed, so obviously KDE doesn't care about visual stuff, therefore they won't care about the logo"? If so, then I can tell you from my experience that they do. They don't care if what they have becomes "outdated" but they become attached to it, so when you come up with something new, they start to care a lot. I don't think people would mind a face-lift too much (though you'd probably get at least some very vocal nay-sayers even on that), but your suggestion changes the whole symbolism of the logo.

Okay, we can of course just present the new logo as an idea to the community. We could be lucky and the majority of the community loves it because you intuitively struck a chord with them. But if we're not, we have to prepare for an enormous ****. If you don't fear a lot of hatred coming your way (I don't say it necessarily will, but we simply cannot predict the community's reaction to a logo that was designed without input from them), then I won't keep you from trying it out, of course. Just in case the majority of the community rejects the design completely, we have to come up with something else.

I hope you're not taking this as an attack on your logo design as such. I don't dislike it at all. I've just seen too many very strong emotional reactions from KDE to things which one would think they wouldn't care about too much to assume they wouldn't care about a radical logo change.

If they won't accept changes then what's the point of even arguing with them. I can't help if they don't want to be helped.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to chime in here with a simple idea. First, let me say that I agree with the points from both sides here. KDE really does need a refresh, but on the other hand I can agree that it shouldn't be a strikingly different one, no matter how amazing the new design looks, and Uri, your design is beautiful! I had a very simple idea. A trend that I've noticed with modern design is the use of more angled shapes. My idea, and I apoligize for the lack of mockup here, is to simply replace the round gear with more of a squared one, like this: http://decidedlyodd.com/cw/cs285/ov-40-80-1.jpg
and maybe use a slightly lighter weight font for the K, like what Uri has done.

Uri_Herrera wrote:If they won't accept changes then what's the point of even arguing with them. I can't help if they don't want to be helped.

I never said they don't accept changes. They might just not like changes (especially a change of the fundamental symbol in their logo) being imposed on them without having a say. Imagine coming to a company out of the blue and saying "This is your new logo from now on" without having talked to them first. Chances are, they're not happy about it. It's no different with a community.

I still don't understand why do you tie a logo with the design.

**off topic

Yes, the oxygen icons are old. And even dated, they look good, better than most icon sets I've tested.

The comments at the following reddit post, which has a nice flaimbait title, are a proof that like with anything else in the world, there are people who adore oxygen and those who hate it (and all shades of gray in-between)
http://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/25 ... xygen_the/

**back on topic

The gear is a part of KDE logo a long before anyone in the current kde community were in it (apart from people like David Faure). You can see the first icon at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... DE_1.1.jpg

Personally, I would not mind changing the logo a bit, but I'd like more a stylistic improvement of the current one than recreating it.

Like gnome did back in the day
From: To:

Anyhow, the logo does not matter that much, most distributions ship their own logos on the start menu.

Ok lets focus our attention on the Plasma logo.

This is where the effort is needed - let KDE handle their own affairs for now and if they want a revamp lets do that then.

The reasoning why we need a Plasma logo separate from KDE is because we need to communicate the split between the two, essentially that KDE is the community - Plasma is the desktop made by this community. As such we need to think about how this is communicated and the chosen path is "New Logo" and "New Marketing Language". As all this was in the 11th hour from day one (making this 23:59:59 for now) it is waaaaaay to late to debate the issue of whether it should be changed at all. We where told that this was a goal with Plasma Next and since no one has protested or claimed otherwise I am going to that battle field, win or lose.

So lets focus on the Plasma logo and the marketing language for Plasma.

Practically - I am all for Uri's Plasma Logo suggestion. (I'd like to see the "balls" do a more rounded curve personally to create the sensation of a circle in combination with the arrow (which "folded" feature I adore btw). I think if we leave the KDE logo for now - that would work even better. Let them have the old logo, we focus on the new and the communication of "the split" is more effective. In the future this subject will get raised again and then we can talk more about it. For now this is whats needed.

(and before someone says the "its not a split" I know... we all know... its just that KDE=Plasma is so ingrained and a part of it that doing anything less than pretending "its a split" would result in complete nonsense and a blow in the air. No one is trying to actually force the two a part just remove the KDE from the Plasma communication for now and focus on Plasma)