Re: [seul-edu] Logo suggestion

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

sze wrote:
> 
> I agree the chinese character "tree" has some indirect relation with
> education (an old chinese proverb, " ten years for planting trees,
> hundred years for educating men), but it also has a direct meaning,
> stubborn. So, I think it may not be a good chinese character for SEUL.
> 
It's important to remember that we're looking at a set of related logos
<http://www.mlwebworks.com/seul>.  The "tree" character wasn't intended
to be used for SEUL/edu, but for SEUL.  In that context it was intended
to represent "simplicity."  For SEUL/edu, the apple brings education to
mind (at least in the US) through various connotations such as "an apple
for the teacher" and "A is for Apple."  I think a bell might also work
in the US, and if it's a more generally recognized symbol for education
we should consider it.

It seems as though the trend here is toward the style of #6 for the
subgroups (SEUL/edu, SEUL/pub, etc.) and toward either #3 or #6 for the
overall SEUL logo.  Upon reflection, I'm not sure if Roger's concern
about a sun logo possible causing confusion about the pronunciation of
SEUL is that big of a problem.  That confusion is already there, as
Collette thought that SEUL might be pronounced "sol" rather than "sool"
as Roger and I do.  Also, to a native German speaker SEUL is obviously
pronounced "soil," while Roman tells us that there is a French work seul
which means "alone" and is pronounced similar to "perl."  For these
reasons I don't think that any added pronunciation confusion would be
noticable.

A bigger question to me is a glyph for the overall SEUL logo.  What
signifies "simplicity?"  And is that the concept we want to get across
in this logo?  Assuming that it is, I don't know of any glyph that will
be quickly and widely identified as meaning "simple" or "easy."  For
that reason, the Chinese ideogram may work as well as any other.  On the
other hand, if nothing says "simple," we are free to use any symbol we
like.  A sun is nice, and a circle is the simplest geometrical figure
(sort of), so that could work too.

But if we're to get a banner made for LinuxWorld and get it to the folks
who are going, we need to make a choice quickly.  Let's have some more
opinions and discussion until 2100 GMT (4 PM US EST, 1 PM US PST) and
then let Collette take our observations and work up a final design for
SEUL (the others aren't quite as urgent).  She can then point us at it
and we can make a final up or down decision.

-- 
Doug Loss                 The difference between the right word and
Data Network Coordinator  the almost right word is the difference
Bloomsburg University     between lightning and a lightning bug.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain