Yut Put wrote:

nice job but man this logo is just so ugly lol

I don't much like it myself, but that's because as someone mentioned in another thread, nothing about the logo immediately says "Game!". It could just as easily be used for something else. An outsider might take one look at that logo and think, "BYOND Science Foundation". The problem is that it's just too generic. When designing a logo, generic is something that you avoid at all cost.

With that said, the main theme of BYOND is the atom, and that can never change, so the logo must always maintain at least the shape of an atom. The logo should always have the Earth at its core, because it tends to be a good symbol for the internet, which BYOND is very strongly aligned with.

With that in mind, I think changes can be made to the logo that would improve its representation of BYOND. For example, instead of electrons, you could have spaceships orbiting in the same configuration. This would fill in the vital missing element of fun and games.

Also, instead of having a round border, the atom should have a hexagonal border, which not only outlines the rings of the atom, but makes the whole thing look like a bolt. If that sounds strange, just take a look at the Dream Maker icon. There's a wrench in it! This changes everything. Making the BYOND atom into the shape of a bolt adds the important element of building and making things.

I think that with those changes, we will end up with a very nice symbol that represents all of what BYOND is, so I plan on making what I described, mostly out of curiosity, since I won't be sure until I see it.

Lummox JR wrote:

Shoot, I could've saved you some trouble by cleaning up the SVG I have and posting that. But nice work on that recreation.

Thanks. I just don't want to distract you from working on the software.

I'd kinda love an animated one where the globe spun and the electrons moved. I played with that a while back but haven't picked it up for a while.

I was thinking the same thing. I'm sure I can figure it out somehow, so I will probably try to do that eventually.

Im pretty sure an atom logo can look better than this.. look at all the atom designs.. I prefer the freakin' jimmy neutron atom over this one.. any Jesus blessed day.

A.T.H.K wrote:

Gees, even this one isn't that bad ;)

you had one job

I think the idea behind the globe was to represent networking, which was a major thing when BYOND originated, since now it's far less innovative, I'm all for dropping the globe, just seems excessive, ATHK's looks great, maybe a bit of work here and there but honestly better in my opinion.

Well, it is interesting, but not really in the good way. It becomes a question of which license takes precedence. I think you could make the case that a logo is protected under both copyright and trademark laws, which may effectively supersede more open licenses like Creative Commons, but I really don't know.

I was originally looking for something in the public domain, to avoid such entanglements, but vector graphics are relatively uncommon.

I might have to try designing a globe vector myself. It can't be too hard. I would just be "tracing" over a detailed raster image. Another method might be to convert a view of a 3D model into a vector, which would also make it easy to animate.

I'm currently working on a programming project, but I will get back to this at some point. I have some really cool ideas in mind.

Lummox JR wrote:

Shoot, I could've saved you some trouble by cleaning up the SVG I have and posting that. But nice work on that recreation.

I'd kinda love an animated one where the globe spun and the electrons moved. I played with that a while back but haven't picked it up for a while.

Something like this? http://puu.sh/nsuXr/cf1f1b61b0.gif

Finally got around to updating the one I made a few years ago. I'll be posting the updated psd file in a few minutes :)