 Hi everyone. I'm not sure if you were expecting me today, but I am here to moderate this session on the New Fedora logo from Marin Zafi, better known as Migno. She was unable to join us today. So I am here to play this YouTube video and to take your questions at the end as best that I can and maybe Matthew might want to jump up with me at the end to help answer those. So I am going to get the video started and I will be back at the end. Enjoy. Hi, my name is Maureen Duffy. I'm the team lead for the Fedora design team and I worked on the new Fedora logo that we are unveiling with this latest Fedora 34 release. So I'm here to celebrate the release of Fedora 34 with you and also give you just a little bit of information about the new Fedora logo in case you were curious. So I have here, this is sort of a horizontal sheet of some of the thinking around the new logo, how you might expect to see it rolling out as we've been rolling it out. And I guess there's there's, I kind of went through a bunch of the postings about the new logo and went through the comments and tried to figure out, you know, are there patterns and questions or concerns people raise about it? And I just kind of wanted to address them all here. And if you have any further questions about it, please feel free to reach out and I'm happy to talk with you. So this is Inkscape, by the way. So these are some questions and concerns that I've seen. And I've taken a little screenshot of where I've seen examples of that concern raised. So the first one here is that some comments have been made about, does this have anything to do with IBM's purchase of Red Hat? And I can tell you that it does not. The idea to redo the logo is honestly something that I had broached one of our trademark lawyers. I had broached with them probably 10 years ago. And my concern at the time was twofold and it is still a concern with the old logo, which is part of the reason why we're using a new logo now. The first one is that the font in the old Fedora logo. I can kind of drag you over here and show it. This font is a font called Bryant 2 and it is a proprietary font. This is a product of the time, the historical time period during which this logo was created. There were not many open source licensed fonts available anywhere. At the time I raised the concern, there were many more fonts available that were open source. And I felt that in keeping with the logo being reflection of our brand, of our values, it should probably consist of an open source font. At the time, it just wasn't in the cards to change the logo. But that was one concern raised. The other concern was that this mark is a layered mark and it cannot be done in one color. This has caused us issues in the past. One prominent example that I can think of, which happened actually right after we started this process of creating this new logo, was Font Awesome, which is a project that uses one color, marks, symbols, logos and puts them in a font for use on web pages, had a version of our logo that did not reflect the design of our logo because our logo can't be done in one color. So it was missing the infinity. It just had the F and we worked with them to get a temporary solution in place while this new logo was being designed. But there's been a number of issues that being one of the more recent ones where our old logo couldn't be produced in one color and it caused problems. So those are the two concerns I raised about 10 years ago or so. And so, I mean, you could say that this process started back then, but this most recent process started in October 2018 publicly and IBM purchased Red Hat. That deal went through in July 2019. So, no, this has nothing to do with IBM, but, you know, you might not know that. So now you know. Let's see another concern, two years. So this took two years, right? Well, yeah, actually a little bit more than two years at this point, because what that was October 2018. And right now we're sitting in April, well, May 2021. So, yeah, it didn't actually take two years to draw this new mark, right? This didn't take two years. You can actually see pretty much all of the work that was done on this mark was done completely in public. So you can see some of the blog posts that I've pulled up here. You could see this is the ticket that was opened on October 2018. And you can see some of the early thinking, some of the early mockups and prototypes and things that were thrown out, both by myself and the community, all of the discussions. We have blog posts and you can find these linked off of the Fedora magazine article too. But the whole process was done in the public and it did not take two years. The design portion of it did not take two years. A logo is a trademark, which has a special legal significance. And there's like filings and other considerations that you have to do when you change a logo. And all of that sort of legal related stuff takes time. And also at the time we started this process, we didn't have budget allocated for the legal side of this. So we were actually on a pause for a while. I want to say it was like maybe March 2020 through the end of summer 2020. We were literally just in a pause because we were waiting for budget or something. I don't remember. I may be wrong on the dates, but there was definitely a long term pause just because we were waiting for the fiscal year to roll over so that we had the budget available to actually do some of the legal paperwork involved in a project like this. So no, it didn't take two years to draw this. And let's see contrast. So this is something that I've seen brought up in a number of ways. I think some of this is, I hope some of this is simply a misunderstanding. And some of it is maybe folks being used to a certain type of color. Sort of seeing something new. And the logo is sort of in that uncanny valley of it actually is very close to the old logo, this new logo. So you almost expect it to be the old logo. So some of it is just, I think an uncanny valley effect there too. And the similarity of this logo with the new logo was quite a deliberate choice. We wanted an iteration. We didn't want something completely brand new. But yeah, so I mean, I've seen comments that, you know, this blue here. Of this old logo and then the blue here in the new logo. That this is a low contrast color. So one of the one of the tests of whether or not something is low contrast is how does it look in grayscale? And, you know, there's a number of different ways to change something to grayscale. And so I'm just going to grab just a random one out of Inkscape here. So you can see this logo definitely clearly stands out against a white background. So, I mean, it's not an issue of this being a low contrast logo and this being a high contrast logo. The issue between these two logos is that this blue and this is the main fedora blue here. It's closer to the purple side of blue, whereas this blue is just nudged slightly towards the green side. So there's that. And anything that has sort of a green pigment to it on paper on a screen can vary a little bit more widely. So that's kind of one disadvantage of the new color. The other thing is that this blue, this main old fedora blue, it has more shading in it. So it is a darker color, whereas this blue is more it's got more of the blue hue in it with less darkness added to it. So it's sort of a brighter color, but it's not it's not low contrast. I mean, if I convert it to grayscale, there is contrast. So the issue isn't so much contrast as it's a different hue of blue. It's closer to green and it is also that it's a brighter blue. It has less shading to it. And this background blue here is a rather dark color, too. One of the advantages of our new mark, though, is that it can be done single color. And because it can be done single color, we can be a little bit more flexible about recoloring it in certain situations. And our new logo guidelines are sort of a work in progress. So we haven't worked out all the context in which that may be allowed. But for example, this sheet shows the logo on top. Do you see this this gradient here? This is actually the new fedora blue with a linear gradient into the old fedora blue, but it's kind of an I don't know. I we've been using it in a lot of the new logo materials. So this version of the logo, because it's one color, we can clip it on top of that background so you can see it's sort of a slightly shaded version of the logo. So we can do things like that. We can also do things like this. This is the fedora magazine version of the fedora mark. And you see how we have used that darker blue color. So, you know, if you have some use case where, for whatever reason, you need a darker form of this whether it's on a different color background or there's some specific use case, it can be recolored in a way that the old logo was not able to be recolored because the old logo required a minimum of two colors. And that comes with a lot more room for error. So we explicitly had to forbid recoloring this logo. Whereas with this logo, we can be more flexible and allowing more colors with it. So I hope that addresses the concern about contrast in the logo. But if you have more concerns about that, please feel free to bring it up to me. OK, so here's another one that I've heard. All this money and effort to bring a new logo. I've seen stuff like, oh, you could have developed new features in that time. Well, I'm a UX designer. I can code a little bit. I can. I mean, I have a background in that. But yeah, you're not missing out on, like, you know, new kernel features or some new awesome, you know, thing because time was spent on this logo because the time spent on this logo was my time and Fedora design team members time and the broader communities time. It didn't take away from anything. These are the sorts of things it actually would save the design team time because this logo solving a number of problems, which we'll get to in the next question, because it solves a number of problems that us on the Fedora design team deal with every day and cause challenges in our work. It actually saves us time to have a logo that solves those problems. So the other thing is all they did is some tweaks on the edges and colors. Well, as I pointed out before, this logo was very deliberately designed to be the next step of the old logo. We weren't looking to create a completely new blank slate brand here. We were looking to just come up with the next iteration of the logo we already had. We wanted it to be, you know, something that could actually maybe even be confused with the old logo or not seen as so distinctly different because we like our logo. I mean, we like the spirit of it. We like what it stands for. So we didn't want to change it too much. We wanted to kind of make the bare minimum of it changes necessary to solve some of the problems we identified with it that were technical problems with the logo. So, yeah, I don't think it was a waste. I'm the person, as are many other on the design team. I am a person who consumes the logo in regular work and definitely I don't see the fixes to the problems we identified as a waste. And finally, why? Like, why are you doing this? Well, have I got a blog post for you? I actually have a series of blog posts for you. So the first thing, let's see, again, and I referred to these earlier, but I believe this is this is Design Team Ticket 620. A number burned in my brain and this basically outlines the issues we had. The old logo doesn't work well at small sizes. It has all these different components that are layered. And when you get to small sizes, they kind of bleed into each other. It doesn't work at all in a single color. It is just not possible. Our old logo guidelines basically said, if you need the logo in one color, you have to drop the F mark and just use the type because there's nothing you can do with the mark. It's hard to work with in a dark background. And part of that was because that two color mark, we couldn't give you flexibility in changing the colors that were on that mark. So if you had a dark background, people ended up adding a halo behind the logo, which is also against the guidelines, by the way. But it just made it very inflexible. Whereas with our new logo, because it's one color, we can provide sort of some some more flexibility in allowing for contrast with different colored backgrounds. The voice bubble means it's hard to center visually in designs. This is something that some of the mockups that we came up with addressed, but ultimately, and let me show you some of those ones. Do, do, do. Okay. Yes. So this candidate, which is just sort of the F infinity mark without the bubble behind it, that would have addressed that issue because it doesn't have the bubble. So you don't have to center the bubble, although it is a diagonal mark. So you still have that issue to some extent. We, we opted to pick the candidate that we picked, which is, you know, the new logo now, because it, it kept a very strong connection to the old logo. And that was an important consideration for us. So we didn't solve that one. The fedora wordmark is based on a non open source font. Now it is based on an open source font. The A in the wordmark is easily mistaken for an O. So I'll talk about that in a second. And the horizontal wordmark logo with the floated trailing logo is challenging to work with. So let me show you that. So here again, oops. So you see how this is sort of elevated and smaller and up here. It makes the entire shape uneven and a little kind of crooked. And it just, when you're designing a layout and trying to work that full logo mark and type into a design, it's just, it's unwieldy, right? So here we have the mark has been moved to before the wordmark fedora, which honestly, some people would manually do with the old logo anyway, even though it was against the guidelines. And you could see it just, if you squint, it forms more of a regular rectangle shape. Whereas this one, it almost kind of looks like a horse. So it's like a little bit of a weird, so we've corrected for that too. Now, what was that? There was another issue here I wanted to point out to you. Yes, the A is easily mistaken for an O. So you can see the O here, it just has a little bit of blip and that makes it an A and then O. So if you're reading really fast or you're trying to read it from a distance, it could be read as fedora, which it's not our name. We wanted that to be more clear. So you can see here some of the changes then that were made. You position these a little bit better. We took the font Comforta and Comforta had the same style of O based A. So we changed, we just basically designed a new A from scratch in the spirit of Comforta and added a diagonal to sort of speak to the diagonal nature of the F infinity shape. And we also added a little bit of a hat so it cannot be mistaken for an O. We wanted that clarity no matter what. Another change we did is we did a custom E and we tipped it slightly and the tip again. And oh my gosh, there was so much discussion about this E and the tip and all this. But we tipped the E slightly to also kind of both speak to the A and kind of balance it because it's the E is kind of closer to the center. The A is on one side and then the mark is on the other side. And then so we have the mark that is diagonal, the E that is diagonal and the A that is diagonal. We're trying to look for sort of like a regular balance in the whole design. So there's that. And then the F we also worked with a little bit. We wanted the F to have more of an overhang than the default Comforta F, which it sort of the overhang doesn't go very far in Comforta. So we modified that other than that, like the D and the O and the R are the same as the upstream Comforta. As far as I remember, I don't think there were any tweaks to those. So, I mean, there you have it. That is the new Fedora logo. And I hope I've addressed any potential concerns about it. And, you know, we don't have any intentions to change the Freedom Friends features first. I mean, we maybe could tweak them a little bit. But I mean, as far as I'm concerned, they're still in place. The Fedora colors, which you can see, I also have loaded in my Inkscape palette here are staying the same. We're just adding this new additional brighter blue, which is going to be the new Fedora blue. And then I also actually Marie very kindly helped me out with a a color picker book. So we have both CMYK and Pantone values for all these. A new set of logo guidelines is forthcoming. It is not ready yet. Like I mentioned earlier, we're trying to do this a little bit more organically. So as teams need a design, we'll kind of work out what works at the time because it to me, it doesn't make sense to prescribe how the logo should be used and then not see how it actually would be used and have to change it. So I'd rather us do it a little bit more organically. And I think that's it. I mean, I guess the only other comment I would make is that the main logo is this horizontal version. We do have a vertical version for the cases where you really need it. But we prefer this is our primary mark. We want to use the horizontal version of the mark and the type whenever possible. And yes, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Oh, and then a couple of other things. We have a Fedora classic logo that is a work in progress. These are some sketches that Marie did. And I believe that Masha is taking over this ticket to kind of, you know, finalize the design and get it in an escape. And we'll put out some Fedora classic swag as well. You know, the old logo, we're not destroying all the stuff we already have. And we'll keep it around. And what was the other thing? Oh, and the transition timeline. So we do have a logo transition timeline. You can see how we had some milestones for beta, milestones for final. Yeah, I mean, we're we're sort of working towards these these things. I'm trying to think if there was anything else. Yes, one more thing I want to point out to you. I have created a new Pagore project called Spot the Old Logo. If you find the old logo someplace that you think needs updating, whether or not it's on our timeline to update or if you think we've missed something, maybe there's some Fedora social media account that's using the old Fedora logo. File a ticket here and we will take care of it. And it is it is under the Fedora design namespace and the name of the repo is Spot the Old Logo. So that's it. Thanks for listening and enjoy the celebrations for Fedora 34. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that video as much as I did. Let's take a look at the Q&A. Right. OK, so where can I get Merch with the new logo? Merch with the new logo has yet to exist. This is something that got approved not too long ago and we're focusing on getting it out into the release and various other places online before we worried about Merch. That being said, the Mindshare Committee is talking about what things we're going to be ordering and there is a list. I'm going to be the one to coordinate that order. And in the future, we're hoping to pair with Red Hat and the open source program office to use basically an online vendor that will allow us to give basically, you know, coupons or you can go on there and buy your own merch at your own pocket or things that we could use like giveaways or, you know, the kind of nest swag bags that we've sent. We could do it through a vendor like that. So that is in the future. It takes some time to get these things in place. So please have. And we will have Merch with the new logo. I can guarantee that for next. So I hope you come back for next. Also, Ben mentioned that HelloTux is an authorized vendor. They don't have the new logo yet, but we're going to be updating them with that. Is there an adoption timeline? There is. And we'll see. There is notes on it here. So I just put that into the chat. That is a public document, but it's for Mo's reference mostly. So there's that. All right. And, Edward, yeah, the places that you're still seeing it, you can put it onto that spot, the logo Peugeot. OK, the secondary font in the sub team logos is Montserrat. So you can actually find that a little bit more about that here. As far as I know, that's staying the same. And if it's not, I apologize for the misinformation. As of right now, we are using Montserrat for our headings and most of our like poster type graphics. We've deprecated the use of Comforta, except for Fedora badges. So that's not something we use very often anymore. And Edward asked, we change the color of the logo. Will this affect the Fedora palette? Yes and no, we're adding a new color, but all the other colors will say the same and they work together. So I'm pretty sure that's the answer there. And what is the OK, someone put in perfect. So I'll just also put that in the regular chat Comforta, it's it's definitely round and bubbly. And I think it was attached to Fedora's like, you know, brand for some time. But I think moving to something a little bit more modern makes sense. And it can still exist within the badges space and we can enjoy it there. So are there any more questions? I don't know if anybody put anything forward to season two. Awesome. I would agree with that. Neil says Comforta has enough ambiguity is in its design that people get confused. I'd agree with that. All right. And as Mo said, breach out to her if you want to talk about it. I think she was just on Twitter doing a Fedora logo AMA. She's definitely open to having conversations about it and could probably dig up that tweet. And let's see. I'll drop that in the chat before we go here. And let's here it is. OK, for folks that want to ask Ms. Mo a question directly that I wasn't able to answer here. If you think of something later, you can jump on that thread. And AMA or ask Mo anything, really. Thanks for coming and enjoy the rest of the sessions.