One symbol to rule them all

I vote the third symbol to be the company’s logo for just for the superman reference.

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That’s the Safecoin logo, the first one is the Maidsafe logo

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MaidSafe the company will melt more and more into the background
once the networks is launched. SafeCoin on the other hand will become
more and more important as the network gains traction.

Thats why it would make sense to start using the SafeCoin logo over
the triangle when referring to the SafeNetwork on the wiki, the homepage
and on twitter as well. Plus it looks cooler than the triangle :wink:

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I see the top one as MaidSafe the company, and the others as more to do with the network.

We and MaidSafe (@nicklambert) should agree what is what.

The “forum” logo is really nice, maintains a visual association with MaidSafe and so could be used for the SAFEnetwork - but I’m not sure of where it came from or the licensing status so we may need to check that with the first forum owner/mod @David

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I personally like the forum logo as the SAFE Network logo, although it would be good is @David could confirm where he got it from. I don’t like the idea of putting the safecoin logo at the front of the project, to me the network is much more valuable than the coin, but that’s just my 2 cents.

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I actually asked that question to David many months ago. He told me that he bought it on Shutterstock. The one he sent me is this one (stock photo). But there is also a vector version.

So considering that it’s proprietary (not under a free/open license), I don’t think it’s the best candidate for using as the logo of the SAFE Network.

So far I’ve been using the MaidSafe triangle logo in the projects I am making since it’s pretty much the only option available, but I agree it would be good for the SAFE Network to have a different logo than MaidSafe. And we might want the logo to be something else than an impossible triangle.

I also like the “Privacy. Security. Freedom.” banner and I don’t consider it to be a logo.

As for using the safecoin logo for referring to the SAFE Network, I actually think it’s an idea worth considering. It would make sense that the logo of SAFE Network would be a “S”. But then again it would be nice if we had other options to choose from as well.

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I expect that if we recreated the shutterstock logo with some changes we may be able to apply our own license to it, but I guess people in the community would need to want to use it though.

I very much agree (as does everyone in this thread) that we need one overarching identity understood by everyone to represent the SAFE Network, although we do seem to disagree about what that should be. I think this is a healthy thing, debate is always good. If we were serious about going down the route of a new brand, or discussing what we should use moving forward, we should first establish a process for coming up with a design brief before thinking about starting a design. Like any of these things, getting a good result always comes down to people and process.

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Personally I think the Shutterstock image isn’t a good universal logo. For the logo to be effective and timeless it needs to be simple, the Shutterstock image is just too busy, shrink it to a favicon and what do you have, make it black and white and what do you have, it needs to be robust, visible and recognisable in all sizes and across all formats to be a truly effective logo.

For this reason I think the Maidsafe logo with the blue triangle is the best of what we have so far, but I also really think that som of the development budget should be allocated to creating a concise and timeless brand as this will help with all marketing efforts going forward and is 100% part of the bigger picture.

I know plenty of people who are fantastic designers, and would be happy to help but a good designer/ brand expert will not work for free nor should they. Is there a way to put aside some budget to do this right as this will forever be a users first impression of the Safe Network and as first impressions are important.

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True

My 2 cents worth would be that it needs to reflect some of the properties/aspects of the SAFE network.

We expect SAFE to become the next evolution of the internet. We expect its currency to become widely used.

So I feel the logo needs to portray (some of)

  • Its Purpose
  • Not some nerds play thing - I.E. something real and/or serious (not stuffy conservative old man serious though). More like a revolutionary fridge compared to a “freeze-in-a-can that can cool a beer in 5 seconds gimmick”
  • Global
  • Easy to use
  • that SAFE is not “in-your-face” but “under-the-hood” I.E. you don’t have to understand it to use. You don’t have to interact with it to have it work for you. (only log in to store or use private data) I guess along the lines of Apple or Android where most don’t have a clue what Apple/Android really mean, its just a type of phone/tablet.
  • And something you want. I.E. symbol has to be appealing.
  • I.E. learn off some successful tech businesses out there - Google&Android, Apple, Linux, etc. Shamelessly take their ways of portraying their respective companies and attack the logo issue in the same manner.

Then we could have something for the coin that can slot into the SAFE symbol. I mean that usually the SAFE symbol + coin symbol are displayed together But the coin symbol can be removed from the centre (or side) and both look good separate.

Maybe on the hi-res versions of the symbol the name can be embossed and zooming in allows the full name to be read.

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Even though the official logo competition is not launched, I cooked this. I am not a designer so please pardon the bad quality :sweat_smile:

I hope the image conveys that SAFE Network, before being a global network freeing the entire world of privacy predators, is a user’s personal space, that he only has access to, and that makes him “safe” once logged in. Dark blue is the user, who is also the key to “his” safe, represented as the light blue area behind him.

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Agree. All big companies have one logo and one logo only.

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I like the design and I have seen many designers not produce something as good as this, nice one!

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Ultimately I think we need to avoid getting into producing logo designs, successful brands all follow a process to get to a brief and would like at answering things like:

How does it make us feel
Value proposition
Personality
Community culture
Positioning
Etc…

Most of the branding exercises I have been involved in we have had the luxury of face to face communication and one challenge I see here is we are geographically spread and there are quite a few of us :smile:. One way forward might by for a relatively small group to be nominated by the community to pull together a brief and then pass that to a designer who produces multiple designs which are then voted on by the community.

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I 100% agree! The process is key and too many people will confuse the issue, not everyone will like the logo, thats just an unavoidable fact but a few people should have the final say and let that be it.

If you need help I am more than willing to chip in, I know a few amazing designers who specialise in rebranding. One of them did the new AirBnB rebrand, which caused a huge amount of press for the brand, it decided opinion initially but of there’s no such thing as bad press.

Anyway, let me know if you want to chat more

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Let’s see more ideas , so far , none of them is really a universal winner .

I like that. Personal contacts give the possibility of something extra. I know the guy who did the designs for the London Tube (Metro) which have been appearing across the city over the last year. He’s just a one man band, so might be too busy with that (and follow up), but when we have something to look at I can ask if he’s interested. He owes me some favours too :smile: See http://robdurkin.co.uk/ and click on Illustration

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I meant to reply here earlier, so my apologies for being a little late. Anyway, I just wanted to add a couple of brief comments:

I understand that the forum logo (the blue-orange-and-green pseudo-Penrose triangle) probably isn’t intended to be used as a main logo for the SAFE Network. Regardless, I thought it might be worth noting that it does bear some similarity to the logo for Google Drive, which arguably competes in a similar area.

As for @nowfeelsafer 's logo, I have to say I really like it. I think you did a really nice job with it.

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This kind of inspired me here so I’m going to run with it. What if we did something like just let people make logos that represented maidsafe to THEM and then put them all up. Next step is when someone new came along they could take a look at the list and see if the symbol/icon/design they had in their head had already been created or if they wanted to create a new one. The maidsafe foundation itself could just stick the most popular symbol up on it’s website. So whatever resonated with the most people would be “The One” that got stuck on the site and all the merchandise BUT there’s nothing to say that that couldn’t change as different symbols might become more popular or resonate with different people. In this way it would also be possible for maidsafe to at times change their “theme music” just like many television programs and animes do. Having the same Iconic Symbol forever isn’t always a good thing, it can get boring. Compare the windows symbol of today with the windows symbol of 1995 for instance. Yeah it still looks vaugely like a window but it’s changed dramatically. Perhaps all we’ll keep of Safecoin is the word or the S and all the rest will change subjectively.

A symbol can have divergent meanings of ideas to different people but DIFFERENT symbols can also have CONVERGENT meanings of the same idea to different people. Maidsafe will mean a lot of different things to different people and it therefore follows that the icons that represent the SAFE network will also have different icons to portray those subjective concepts. The important point for the community is does a particular symbol resonate with a particular portion of said community and if so by how much?

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What about having a vote on new symbol?

First, a person sets up a vote; yes or no on a new symbol. If all says aye, then it proceed to stage 2 voting, vote for a new symbol. This vote only can be called once a year to limit interchangeability confusion.

Why not just have a logo repository like for any other file. “Hey keep up to date on the latest logo at our new Github repository! Make sure your t-shirts are never out of date!”