I think very few people like the "Cashew" (btw: It was never supposed to be a cashew, it was just that Aaron happened to call it a cashew in a blog post at some point and the name stuck, even though Aaron himself tried to prevent it from sticking) or identifies themselves with it, so I don't expect much - if any - resistance against a change of that (plus, Plasma Next is new anyway).
I like the "folded" version of Uri's suggestion, too!
If - as Jens suggested - we'd make the curve of the colored dots more round, though, we'd lose the similarity to a P, which I'd find a pity.

Hahaha fair enough - I am nothing if not flexible, humble and a quiet flower of a man. If the goal is a P, then P it shall be.

> I am all for Uri's Plasma Logo suggestion
+1

I posted it in the devel list (only its awaiting approval because I was a thicko and attached the image to it instead of linking to it *facepalm me unconscious*) lets just give them a day. I'll argue the aesthetics of it with tooth and nail and we can get this ball rolling and sorted. Great work Uri.

Just curious, where would this logo show up on the desktop? In the toolbox menu? In the login manager? In the start menu?

As far as I know, the other desktops (GNOME Shell, XFCE, etc.) use the same logo for their desktop as the project. Will people recognize this new logo as what they know as "KDE"?

Personally I think it'll be really hard to make people refer to the desktop as "Plasma", the connection to the "KDE" name is simply too strong. GNOME seems to do better in this regard with their GNOME Shell, likely because "Shell" actually describes what it is.

As for the KDE vs Plasma thing - I've simply been given the marching orders and intend to do the best with them. If "Plasma" is to be premiated above KDE as a description of the Shell I will try to make it happen. I'm not saying its a relevant debate BUT its a debate that should have been had 6-12 months ago and by this time we simply have to do our best with the choices made.

And one of the best ways I think to mark it up as Plasma is to remove the KDE branding from the shell - that means:

0) New marketing language
1) New Shell Logo to be used in marketing
2) Remove the Cashew (this is merely to avoid a split)
3) Better launcher icon.

The last bit is the critical one and one that we really need to delve into - and since I am strapped for time right now I'll just write down the options as I see it.

1) Text - this is already done by the Gnome team so perhaps it should be avoided. Although it is a fairly classy move to simply replace it with "Applications" or "Launcher" or whatever similar you can find. The issues are of course that we might be copying gnome which isn't an issue per say but you know how Reddit can be
Second, its not as simple as it might appear and we know from experience that KDE community have a fascination with naming things in a rather odd way or if nothing else a rather "precise" way. So where a good text like "Applications" or windows "Start" would be nice - the chance is fairly high that someone will go "But thats not what it is!" and try his or her darndest to make it more "precise" ending in texts like "Software and Files, Launcher and Manager" (handily abbreviated into "SFLM" no doubt) or just describe the widget "Homerun Kicker", "Takeoff" etc.

2) New icons for "Takeoff", "Homerun" etc...
There are some that I would love to suggest from for example Uri's Flattr theme - that I tend to use instead of the normal K+cogwheel. Now digging into it there is NO need for branding in that aspect. All that icon needs to convey is "Here be stuff" there is one icon (for something else I cant remember which) which is a round dark circle with four differently colored blocks (in different shades of blue) in it - the issue with that one is that when you swap color theme the blocks can look out of place, yet at the same time having no color at all would be tricky.
The trick is also that such an icon SHOULD be allowed to take up more room than the others to signal that it is more relevant - I'm thinking of the Start menu in windows here or LxDE's launcher button) - which is horribly complex as people tend to shift the size of the panels a lot.

Anyway its a tricky issue...

I see. To use an analogy from the corporate world, it would basically be similar to what Microsoft did with their rebranding?

Microsoft logo:


Windows logo/icon:


In that case I think promoting a new Plasma logo while keeping the KDE logo for the community sounds great, and it's likely less controversial than replacing the beloved KDE logo.

I think ideally the Plasma logo should look similar to the KDE logo, much like what Microsoft did (see above). After all, the desktop is probably the best place to promote KDE. This would be the case if both of Uri's suggestions were accepted, but unfortunately the connection between the proposed Plasma logo and the old KDE logo is weak. I do like how ">" signifies "Next" and that there is no clear letter in it (personally I think a letter-less logo would be more minimalistic), but there's a hint of a P. (Also, does anyone else see a smiley in the logo? A ":>" with three eyes (alien?). )

I would love to propose some design that is more similar to the current KDE logo, but unfortunately I'm out of ideas. A cogwheel without the "K" is boring. Another idea I had was a cogwheel-looking sun (or sun-looking cogwheel?), where the cogwheel would show the connection to KDE and the sun = plasma (furthermore, people often associate a sun with positive things, e.g. good weather). Unfortunately I couldn't come up with a design that looks minimalistic and elegant.

Well thats the tricky bit see - we are to cut Plasma's connection to KDE down a tad since a common misconception is that they are one and the same.

And its one of those situations where half-measures simply wont cut it I'm afraid. So instead of sticking to closely to the KDE logo we need to cut loose a bit. Since KDE and Plasma are so heavily intertwined its not like the connection will be missed but this way the difference will be at least pronounced.

It was one of the first marching orders I got while starting this so I think we should stick to it...

Hans wrote:Just curious, where would this logo show up on the desktop? In the toolbox menu? In the login manager? In the start menu?

In my opinion there shouldn't be any logo of this sorts on the desktop, or the toolbox, or the login manager, simply because just as it's now, it doesn't make sense to have this logo mean configuration in the desktop, perhaps use it a start logo to replace the K logo in Kickoff, Lancelot, etc.

Hans wrote:As far as I know, the other desktops (GNOME Shell, XFCE, etc.) use the same logo for their desktop as the project. Will people recognize this new logo as what they know as "KDE"?

Gnome Shell since it's inception has never used the Gnome logo for a start menu, that was Gnome 2. Mate however does use it, Cinnamon uses a gray symbolic Linux Mint logo in its start menu, XFCE and LXDE use their logos as their start menu logos, but given these two are meant for legacy machines they use legacy UIs. This isn't 2002 however to have a start menu at all, much less a logo and a start menu together.

An application launcher on the other hand is a much more modern approach, Gnome Shell uses a symbolic icon for it, a grid of small squares.

Hans wrote:Personally I think it'll be really hard to make people refer to the desktop as "Plasma", the connection to the "KDE" name is simply too strong. GNOME seems to do better in this regard with their GNOME Shell, likely because "Shell" actually describes what it is.

But the complete name for Plasma is Plasma Desktop/Active/Netbook, unfortunately unlike Gnome KDE never pushed for the Plasma Desktop name.

Hans wrote:I see. To use an analogy from the corporate world, it would basically be similar to what Microsoft did with their rebranding?

Microsoft logo:


Windows logo/icon:


In that case I think promoting a new Plasma logo while keeping the KDE logo for the community sounds great, and it's likely less controversial than replacing the beloved KDE logo.

I think ideally the Plasma logo should look similar to the KDE logo, much like what Microsoft did (see above). After all, the desktop is probably the best place to promote KDE. This would be the case if both of Uri's suggestions were accepted, but unfortunately the connection between the proposed Plasma logo and the old KDE logo is weak. I do like how ">" signifies "Next" and that there is no clear letter in it (personally I think a letter-less logo would be more minimalistic), but there's a hint of a P. (Also, does anyone else see a smiley in the logo? A ":>" with three eyes (alien?). )

The difference however is that Microsoft was more than willing to change their image given the debacle of Vista, and their already old logos, for the company and for Windows. Not so much the case here.

The connection is weak, primarily because my goal is to present Plasma as something new, and reinvigorated, modern and with future, easy to use and friendly, something that it's an extension of your experience, and not just software made by very technical people. We're dealing with computers not machinery, when was the last time you changed a gear in your computer?.

Exactly.

Hans wrote:I would love to propose some design that is more similar to the current KDE logo, but unfortunately I'm out of ideas. A cogwheel without the "K" is boring. Another idea I had was a cogwheel-looking sun (or sun-looking cogwheel?), where the cogwheel would show the connection to KDE and the sun = plasma (furthermore, people often associate a sun with positive things, e.g. good weather). Unfortunately I couldn't come up with a design that looks minimalistic and elegant.

Like I said before, we're using computers not mechanical machinery with gears. And even the mechanical parts of current computer hardware (already making their way out) don't use dented gears.

Thanks for the long response Uri! I don't have any objections to the suggestions, and I agree with the others that the "folded" detail is really sleek!

Hi!
There have been some open requests for logos and icons.
I´m interested in helping out in some of these tasks, but how far should "unified logos" go?
Should there be a line in every single logo, or which logos are affected?