Logo already in use by ChatSecure project

[chrisballinger]

Original ChatSecure Logo

https://github.com/chrisballinger/ChatSecure-iOS/blob/master/media/icon/ipad%402x.png

Conversations Logo

https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/blob/master/res/drawable-xxhdpi/ic_launcher.png

Your app looks awesome and I really like your modern design but I'd appreciate it if you didn't reuse our logo because it might create confusion for end users, especially since both apps are XMPP clients that support OTR.

Thank you!

[iNPUTmice]

Will change that with version 0.2 - sorry

[chrisballinger]

Awesome, it's no big deal. I don't have an android device myself but I'm
going to compile it soon to check it out. We are redesigning chatsecure-iOS
right now and I think there is definitely a chance for collaboration here.

Have you seen the OTRDATA spec for in-band file transfers yet?

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, Daniel Gultsch notifications@github.com wrote:

Will change that with version 0.2 - sorry

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/14#issuecomment-38595330
.

[revuwa]

What's about some color tuning like that?

[chrisballinger]

The issue is that this is the logo from ChatSecure and it may cause
confusion for end users. Please change the shape as well, not just the
color.

On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 10:02 AM, revuwa notifications@github.com wrote:

What's about some color tuning like that?
[image: example]https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/7300276/2905832/51d85dcc-d609-11e3-8442-cc924cc6fb5b.png

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/14#issuecomment-42454059
.

[revuwa]

I'm sorry. I thought the part: "We are redesigning chatsecure-iOS right now and I think there is definitely a chance for collaboration here" was a go to use the estimated logo, but my english sadly isn't the best. I'll see what I can do here...

[revuwa]

Would be a minimal modification like this ok?

Or would it be better to change the shape completely like that?

PS: I'm a dirty amateur - I just had the intention to give my off-the-cuff inspiration a try...

[iNPUTmice]

@chrisballinger Hi Chris. Just a little update from my side. I know I promised I will change the logo with version 0.2... now here is the deal. I am not a designer myself. I know a fair bit about UI and UX but I'm struggling very hard with design. Believe me I tried... (Even painting your logo green and cutting out the middle to make it transparent took me literally two hours.) I'm trying to get in touch with a designer to create something for Conversations (I have a couple of ideas.) however this is going to take a couple of weeks (weeks. Not month)
Unfortunately I will have to push out version 0.2 within the next week or so. (To long to explain, but i need to push bug fixes I cant back port yada yada yada) Would it be ok with you if I continue using the logo up till the 0.3 release which will be coming up in early June (I'm planning on switching to monthly releases beginning with the 0.2)
The only alternative for me would be to create a really ugly placeholder logo myself specifically for the 0.2 release.

P.S.: I would love to talk about any kind of cooperation with ChatSecure if you guys are still up for this. Do you have a chat room where you hang out or so?

[revuwa]

In other words, I'm out... Chapeau

[chrisballinger]

@revuwa The second one looks awesome to be honest!

@iNPUTmice The second logo that looks like a shield seems like a pretty awesome logo and looks completely original, maybe you guys could ship with that one and iterate on that design? Generally I lurk in #guardianproject on freenode IRC

[kalkin]

I do not like the matrix effect. I think, It will not appeal to normal users. It looks too geeky.

[chrisballinger]

Yeah the matrix effect is a bit much, but the shape of the shield as a lock / chat bubble seems great

[revuwa]

I like matrix, and I like geeky, but how is it with the originally color of the conversations logo?

[kalkin]

It looks much nicer and clean.

[revuwa]

Now I've invested more time to make the next version of the last one with better antialiasing and a minimal 3d effekt. The color is inspired from the standard messaging app. The keyhole is is a slightly modified one of the ChatSecure logo, if this is ok for @chrisballinger?
@iNPUTmice: I would be glad to help out for the upcoming 0.2 release with this temporary logo, 'til yourself or another pro have time to make a better one.

[chrisballinger]

@revuwa That looks awesome! My feedback would be to make it slightly wider because it looks very "tall" compared to the last one and might look weird because most app icons are square-ish

[LalitMaganti]

Googles icon design guidelines recommend all icons to be flat afair so the flat version is probably the way to go if you want to stick to them.

[revuwa]

@chrisballinger Thanks. Do you mean like this one:

@tilal6991 'minimal 3d effect' was the wrong choice of words, sorry. I meant flat design with minimal in-depth look, as you see.

@iNPUTmice I've made another one which goes more back to the roots. Hope you like it:

[Bengt]

I think the keyhole only works in combination with lock outline. The lock outline/keyhole and the shield are both symbols for the security/encryption and thus redundant. Combining the outline of a shield with the outline of the speech bubble seems overloading the outline. Maybe one could incorporate the speech bubble as a symbol of communication with the outline of a shield, thus avoiding similarities with the ChatSecure Logo. I am no professional designer or anything, but gave that a try. I found it had to come up with a shape that is clearly a shield and still almost square. Perhaps someone has better ideas for that. Also, this has to work on the typically black and dark backgrounds of smartphones, so I added some test

I made a gist with various resolutions and the svg source file.

[Bengt]

I made a version with a more classical shield shape:

[revuwa]

@Bengt I like that idea and I would prefer the second version.
But I have the feeling that we wasting time creating anything; I think @iNPUTmice is sticking on his plan to getting in touch with a designer...

[Bengt]

@revuwa Thanks for weighing in on this.
I just had the feeling I could contribute to solving this issue and did what I could. Perhaps it helps others to come up with a better solution.

[emdete]

Hi,

I looked into it and had an idea - don't know if someone likes it so i post it here. the main idea was to use a speech-baloon (obvious) which dissolves to a punched tape. this was my first list of topics collected:

• i prefere a simple, pure outline (leave coloring for states or the like)
• base must be a nice plain speech balloon
• symbolize the transfer (and encryption) via a punched tape (telex tape)
• let the ballon dissolve to punchholes towards the right
• point the arrow of the speech baloon to the left

then i tried to paint it (with pencil, irl) because i am not that good with inkscape & the like. the circles on the right must be more exact and the "diccolve" should be nicer but i leave that to the professional designer.

i just put the punchholes where i think it looks good, don't know what that means, maybe it would be good to look at it ;)

here is one in green:

[BenoitBouvarel]

@emdete like your idea

Let's give it a try :)

One bubble, two chatters (bottom left and up right) and the C of "Conversations", "crypted" or whatever. The second one uses the "C" character to create a key because this app isn't a locked down and private way to express ourselves but a key to free talking.

[diesys]

Hi! Here's my try
Hope you like it!

all files: http://efesto.eigenlab.org/~diesys/grafica/vario/conversation

[michiwend]

@diesys nice... defenitly the best one so far

[diesys]

@michiwend thanks!

[revuwa]

IMHO it's not gentlemen-like that @iNPUTmice doesn't let himself be carried to comment any design proposal here. v0.4 is upcoming (with unchanged logo) and I kindly want to remember the following comments:

• logo change in v0.2: Logo already in use by ChatSecure project #14 (comment)
• logo change in v0.3: Logo already in use by ChatSecure project #14 (comment)
  @iNPUTmice: I don't know if there are some secret deals with @chrisballinger, but if there are still plans "to get in touch with a designer", it's probably an option to try out: https://99designs.de/

[chrisballinger]

@revuwa No secret deals yet. I'd definitely appreciate a voluntary logo change for Conversations before I have to resort to legal remedies. Honestly @diesys your new logo is totally awesome!

[revuwa]

@diesys: I like your try, too. I just would go back to a more typical chat bubble. Also I would prefer a (little bit) more "square" overall appearance.
Just to show what I mean, I (crappy) modified your logo:

[Bengt]

I found the steady arch of the lock's bow odd in @diesys' logo. Maybe, it looks better with a short straight bit towards the base like in an U-lock?

[iNPUTmice]

I'm writing this from my mobile phone so please excuse my spelling and me being rather brief.
my original thoughts on the logo involved moving away from both the speech bubble and the secure aspect. the speech bubble in my view is extremely overused in the entire chat market. I would very much like to see some new ideas in this field. (wild brainstorming on my part where two head silhouettes talking to each other. just to give you an idea of the direction . I wouldn't mind an entirely different approach either). furthermore I'm not a huge fan of the secure / lock / keyhole thing either. Conversations in early development was called SecureConversations but I would like to move away from the secure part as the image or the marketing for Conversations. security and privacy should be something that comes naturally and as something the user doesn't need to think about. I would like to put other great features of Conversations in the foreground.
Moving away from an abstract idea about the logo as for the actual design I would very much like to see something that is more closer to the stock Google Apps icons like maps, g+, pictures and so forth. following the design guidelines for Android icons which I can't like right now because I can't exit the github app. but you can easily Google them. tldr almost square and a slight 3d effect as viewn from above. and more nexus ish colors like we can see in the new camera app icon. (not all of them of course) like imagine the nexus 5 product images with the home screen and think that the conversations logo should fit in there.

[iNPUTmice]

keeping my previous comment in mind for the moment I like the ones by @BenoitBouvarel
almost square. simple. could need some 3d effects (but just very subtle ones like the g+ icons) and a more holo ish color. and rather the direction of the first one.
the c is a bit boring however if I had to choose now I would go with that one

[diesys]

@iNPUTmice, using holo colors and g+ icon style I made some new drafts:

suggestion and critics are welcome

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http://efesto.eigenlab.org/~diesys/grafica/vario/conversation/2/

[iNPUTmice]

@diesys Wow I actually really like the first one. Thank you. The colors are awesome. The gradient in the background with the little curve... looks really professional. I will have to install this on my phone and see what it will actually look like in the ActionBar and against between the other Icons on my phone but I have a feeling it will look great.

Just two more thoughts... I don't have a solution for it yet and they are not total deal breaker just random thoughts.
The "..." is sign for silence or speechlessness... I'm not entirely sure if this is appropriate for a chat app. Just a thought though... Maybe we can replace it with something else. Not sure what...

And all good Logos / brands have a somewhat distinct shape / outline in them that can be displayed in mono color on their own. Think of the facebook f or the google g. I'm missing something like that.
Maybe the speech bubble (yeah yeah I know what I said about speech bubbles) with something in them could be a start for something like that.

Don't get me wrong the first one already looks great but maybe I can use my input to let your creativity spin a little further.

[diesys]

"..." is often used to indicate that the other user is writing, there's one with the smile (but it has been already used by SMS google app) but if you prefer it you can use it.
Monochrome versions are the one for the notification i think it's nice hope you like it

[iNPUTmice]

Hi @diesys

I've gotten used to the "..." so I think we can go with that one.

The notification version needs no be white at full opacity (0xffffffff) with a transparent background (instead of grey on black). Android will render the rest by itself. While the monochrome icon looks great on my computer screen the outline of the bubble almost vanishes when used in a notification. (The smallest rendering of this is 24dp). Can we make the outline a little thicker? Not much. Maybe 1.5 times bigger? So that the outline is similar to the dots.
(for consistency we should also transfer that change to so original logo)

It's interesting that you thought about filling the bubble with some green because i had similar thoughts.
So we are almost done here I think.
One small thing I would be interested to see is what the logo would look like without the square box around it. Just the bubble filled with green and the green outline and the dots. (The would have to be rendered at full opacity of course though) Maye we can use this for the action bar.

btw can you create a pull request which puts the three resulting SVGs into the project? (This will make your name appear in the commit history)

[rtreffer]

Small hint: android icon guidlines suggest a top level "art/" folder for raw artwork.

https://developer.android.com/design/style/iconography.html

[diesys]

@iNPUTmice , the bg was black only to see it it was white with 50% of alpha channel.
I made the border thicker (1.25x) and that's the result:

http://efesto.eigenlab.org/~diesys/grafica/vario/conversation/
here are svgs and pngs also of notification/monochrome icon

[iNPUTmice]

can you make the bubble in the bubble only version bigger relativ to the document? I'm planning to write a short bash script which will render the different resolutions automatically and I'm planning to use the document size as a baseline.
and could you create a pull request for the three resulting svg files? put them in a folder called art like @rtreffer mentioned above.
(when I last checked the bubble in the monochrome version wasn't a full opacity. while this was trivial to change it would be nice if your pull request would contain that change)
furthermore the graphics need to be licensed. would you be fine with GPLv3 like the rest of the project?

[diesys]

If I've not misunderstood, I edited the necessary¹. For license, I prefer to use for the icon CreativeCommons BY-NC-SA v4.0.
I'm going to make the pull request!

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¹ http://efesto.eigenlab.org/~diesys/grafica/vario/conversation

[ghost]

Hi,
I think the outline in the bubble notification should be continuous. In my phone I can't appreciate well the bubble.
And maybe the outline in the bubble icon should be a little more white to appreciate better the bubble too.

Anyway I love the new icons.

[iNPUTmice]

Logo has been replaced. thank you Diego Turtulici