Safecoin Design Competition

Good find, although a worrying statement from within the ripple post “…The contest forum thread had very little activity at first, and one wondered if anyone was even going to take a run at the prizes of up to 50,000 XRP. Eventually, two designers came forward”. IMO this is exactly the situation we are looking to avoid.

I agree that the designs are stunning, but they are incorporating an existing ripple logo onto a 3d coin. What we are looking for is a design from scratch and I believe the community need to see a number of concepts in order to make a balanced judgement.

3 Likes

I have two suggestions for the safecoin design competition.

My first suggestion would be to require the new safecoin logo to be published in an open source vector image format (preferably SVG). This would make it easier for web developers and web designers to insert the logo as a vector image in their websites. And for people who use open source vector graphics editor like Inkscape, it would make it easier for them to modify it. Of course, this should be in addition to the proprietary .ai format and the popular .pdf format.

My second suggestion would be to require the new safecoin logo to be dedicated to the public domain via the Creative Commons CC0 Waiver. If you have any concerns about the public domain, I would like to hear them. The second best choice would be to use the Creative Commons Attribution license. Any other license would be too restrictive. I don’t see any advantages to using a copyleft license (for example, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. I think we should make it as easy as possible for people to copy, modify and distribute the logo, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. And it doesn’t get easier than a public domain dedication! :smiley:

Why do we want people modifying the logo?

Why not? :stuck_out_tongue: I think we should encourage a remix culture. You think something like the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives license would be better?

I can think of a lot of reasons to remix, transform or build upon the safecoin logo. It could be to adapt it for a t-shirt, for a poster, for an artwork, for a 3d printed version, etc.

1 Like

So you’re saying you want to limit the competition to 2D imagery and disqualify 3D graphic artists? Also even within 2D imagery vector graphics isn’t everyone’s forte. You’re getting very specific there.

Not necessarily. I’m not an expert with 3D graphics but if they are accepted, then my suggestion would be to require the 3d safecoin logo to be published in an open source 3d graphics format. Probably one that works with Blender.

Well vector graphics would be ideal for a logo. But I guess raster graphics can be accepted too. In that case, JPEG or PNG would be good formats to accept.

1 Like

These use cases would be part of the design brief itself, I would think. The actual logo it’self should not be altered…the symbol represents the life blood of the network…and needs to be kept consistent across all media and within all apps.

1 Like

Then I would suggest keeping it REALLY simple just like religious icons are REALLY simple. Leave the elaborate decorating and stylizing to remixes. I say you should be able to draw the maidsafe symbol with dots, lines and geometric shapes. The Christian cross is essentially two lines that intersect at a right angle and yet it’s been stylized countless ways over the centuries and has immense symbolic power. Likewise if you say the core symbol shouldn’t change then I suggest keeping it incredibly simple. Also I suggest having a real in depth discussion about what core concepts maidsafe is trying to symbolize with it’s logo. From what I gather from the images so far it seems to be trying to portray the resource loop between farmer, network and user via proof of resource. I also think they’re trying to illistrate decentralization but that’s just my interpretation.

Don’t want to create cult mind you (I know you are not saying that). What about colourless genderless humans in a penrose triangle form or perhaps a sphere to represent global equality and freedom? They may look a little like ants :smiley:

Caveat I am terrible at the creative art type stuff and compared with artistic people I am amoeba like.

@frabrunelle I’m all for creative culture, but the purpose of the logo needs to be considered when deciding how to license it.

The purpose is to represent the project and it’s core values, so anyone can easily identify things which are aligned with that, and distinguish them from things that are against SAFE, or just nothing to do with it.

It would be bad for SAFE if people could take our logo and use it to pass off things that are opposed to what SAFE stands for, or use it to gain credibility and sell things that don’t have SAFE’s attributes, and the foundation be unable to do anything about it.

3 Likes

Well this is why I’m more in favour of letting the logo evolve, like having new anime themes pop up every once in awhile. Say we held a new logo competition periodically, every month or bi-annually or annually, then adopted whatever was best at the time. That way people keep playing with the logo and if it’s not picked well maybe they can come up with something for the next event. Isn’t maidsafe all about constant evolution anyway?

We could even have a page on the site showing the history of the maidsafe logo through time.

Yep…stick to the maths and inventing stuff I reckon and playing guitar of course :smile:

1 Like

No thanks, one awesome logo that does not change for the foreseeable future.

1 Like

Yep…a network as good as this, deserves a professional approach to branding. Maybe one day it will just melt into the background…ubiquitous I think it’s called. But for the first years it needs to look like sharp and consistent.

2 Likes

I agree with @frabrunelle.

Unless we are all connected to a hive mind, people will have different interpretations, perspectives, and expressions of the SAFE concepts. We are still individuals.

MaidSafe should have a standard logo to identify Safecoin. At the same time, the SAFE community should have the freedom to create their own Safecoin logos if they don’t like MaidSafe’s choice. I think most would go with MaidSafe’s choice for uniformity and easy recognition.

2 Likes

SAFE concepts …agreed

I’m not sure that’s been established.


Not sure why were having a competition if any person or organisation, can make the appearance of SAFEcoin into anything they want.

This is my point of view, and others may disagree.

This competition gives MaidSafe the opportunity to pick a logo from the top candidates. Competition is about picking the best. And that will be MaidSafe’s official Safecoin logo.

But MaidSafe does not own the SAFE Network. It will be given to the world. So let the world represent Safecoin however they wish. I think most people will happily go with MaidSafe’s choice for uniformity and easy recognition but allow other developers make their own logo.

1 Like

I may have also suggested this previously, but has not yet been finalized by Maidsafe as far as I know.

Well I dont think ‘SAFEcoin’ is trademarked, so people can do what they will with the name and design around that.


Making derivatives of the official design seems nonsensical…why bother designing at all. It’s like designing a countries currency and granting licence to alter it’s appearance anyway the population sees fit.

SAFEcoin is a currency, medium of exchange, store of value, right? These qualities exhibit stability, open slather to change it’s official mark, does nothing to enhance these qualities if indeed they exist.

The current intention @chrisfostertv and @dyamanaka is that the community will pick the winner in a poll on this forum. I’m not sure yet of the practicalities of having the public select the finalists, so this part will probably be done by MaidSafe, but the community will select from a short list. So, we will move forward with a design that the majority of the community like.

IMO it would be a mistake to have continual changes to the logo over a short period and I think the way that pretty much all world class organisations manage this process confirms this. I personally can’t think of any that make continual and significant changes over a short period of time. The design component of brand awareness is built on familiarity and consistency. So gradual changes over a long period of time work better.

3 Likes

Likely a process for updating things such as logo could be made, and have them as important as updates to the source code; I’d also add that this poll should have a minimum number of votes necessary for selection; if only 20 people were to vote versus 100 out of the 300 or so members of MaidSafe.org - this probably wouldn’t be a worthy choice.

A cool example of how many of us actually access MaidSafe.org is likely the number of clicks on this link.
Marc Andreessen on Maidsafe