new Beehaw community icons!

One thing I just noticed: some of the community sidebars have a blurb about the icons' authorship and licensing, but the license link may need to be clarified. On Gaming and Technology, for example, the text of the link says CC BY 4.0, but the underlying link points to CC BY-SA 4.0.

And the amount of times we hear people trying to get out of paying the artist or designer...it really put me off trying to freelance as an artist (not to mention the anxiety making art brought me lately...)

on this specific point (we're tackling the other, will report back on that one later--the previous icon for that community was one i didn't make so even if i wanted to i literally couldn't speak on it like i can with most of our previous ones lol):

I think the color palette of the community icons shouldn’t be restricted to only black and yellow, that makes everything “scream” as that is usually a color combination used to express a warning or announcement. I’m no graphic designer by trade, but I think colors should be used as a distinguishing feature between the instances commmunities, and less dramatic colors, so to speak. Having the icons have a hexagon shape should be enough to recognize them as Beehaw-communities, even if they have different color schemes.

aesthetics are not really a big consideration for us in general, because we're very much in function over form mode right now.

but, when the subject needs to be broached, we want to do that right. in this case we have to account for a lot of things with aesthetics here, including but not limited to:

• how our website is branded already and how to make it all mesh (bee theming has pretty specific associated colors);
• how to make things work for all lemmy themes (there are several we have to make all the icons work with);
• how to make them look good against each other (which is ultimately a consideration with no objective answers, so there's no way to please everyone);
• and how to make them as accessible and as unambiguous as possible for everybody within the constraints of those other points (which further limits the range of color choices we can work with; we also have to work with the accessibility limitations of the platform, which are numerous here to say the least.)

all this to say: there's really just not much wiggle room we have with the icons and their colors given those considerations, and there are other factors i'm no doubt failing to mention too. our previous icons were dichromatic black on white and very utilitarian/minimalist for a reason, and likewise these are pretty minimalist too.

there's also the consideration we'd now be asking someone to rip up all their work and basically start over, which we're pretty hesitant to do--not only because we've already paid them, but because the simple reality is we can't please everyone and i have no doubts we'd get similar critiques with more new icons and/or introduce new problems. at some point we just have to go with something and iterate on it, and as far as i'm concerned these kinds of critiques of the icons i can live with.

And to add a little more: the icons contribute to making the Local timeline for Beehaw to become overly "busy", since every post has a very stand-out yellow icon under it, usually signifying something important (hence why it should stand out). The icons become to prominent, especially considering the websites dark background color. I can see the appeal of being able to easily identify Beehaw-communities in Subscribed or All timelines, but to be quite honest, I find that the overly attention-seeking color choice of the icons clutter up the Local timeline to a point where they are more of a nuisance rather than conveying any kind of distinguishing information about the community. My Local timeline now looks like this:

Don't get me wrong, I think they are beautifully designed, but the color choice is very much working against conveying any useful information at a glance (except what instance theyy belong to...). There is a reason that not all traffic signs have the same colors.

So either way that icon has to be changed to be in compliance with the usage guidelines (@alyaza, @Gaywallet and @UrLogicFails ), since I believe the Beehaw-community does not want to infringe on such a point. I am also then not sure if @UrLogicFails can release the icon under a license as is done here, since the keyhole logo is trademarked (see the OSI Trademark Guidelines). See for instance how !opensource@lemmy.ml has solved this. They use the icon with the ® symbol as well as attributing the OSI in the sidebar:

can now also speak on this point: we have an alternative in the works, ETA to its completion is tomorrow. given the short turnover we're expecting here i think we'll just leave the current icon in place for today--our backup and previous icon would infringe on the same principle in any case so it's just trading one icon issue for another, lol.

You may not remove or obfuscate either of the TM or ® symbols in the OSI Logo.

Ok completely unrelated. I always use the proper ™ or ® in whatever context it is required whether I'm writing for work or otherwise, even if I have absolutely no stake in the game at all, not working for any of the companies either. Because if I don't then they can lose their trademark.

For example. Suppose I am responding to a post about motor oils in a Reddit Beehaw post, and I mention a fully synthetic motor oil like Mobil 1™. I use their trademark, but I don't use it, endorse it, nor work for Mobil™.

Do I need to do this or is this just an obsessive compulsion of mine? Do other people do this? What's the "right" level of mentioning trademarks without making it seem like I'm a corporate shill?

I feel like there's genuinely a lot of room to play with bee iconography including the hive, the honey comb, honey dipper, and of course the bees themselves.

I don't know how all of the iconography will come into play, but I'm definitely excited by the possibilities

Nice. Thank you for answering :D

I think it might be a bug, cause i cant figure ou another explanation for it, but sometimes my local shows lemmy.world mixed in with beehaw (I do subscribe to them and a bunch of others but thats the only one that does that) and all does nothing at all, it just remixes local.

I have to insist a bit for the page to actually show me the all page. It's completely understandable considering everything right now, so I'm not really annoyed at it.

Okay, thank you. I just saw the Subscribed option. The UX could be a bit clearer, overall... but so far, this is great. I'm bummed about the inability to filter out content I don't want to see, though.

Thanks for the quick answers! :)

I would love a rotating logo like this. It would be awesome, and tbh why should we be concerned with branding? Why can't our brand be "kickass cowboy bee art"?

That's a good idea, but I think having a single great logo is better for our identity