W3C HTML5 Logo Unveiled
w3.org
w3.org
At first, I thought you were talking about DefCon, the convention, which really confused me.
Then, I realized you were talking about defense condition.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151458/i-desire-popcor...
Anyway, only people in the developers 'echo chamber' will have any idea what this means. Most people have no idea the difference between html4, javascript, flash or silverlight, and probably don't care.
It doesn't look like something someone hired from outside did, and the HTML5 logo looks like the header on a Tutsplus vector tutorial.
Most of the different icons have very poor symbolic value, and look really unintelligible.
They could do a lot worse, so that's always something.
It's a really great logo, definitely "with the times" with the bold, sharp lines and flat colors. I'm not sure I'll be putting it on any websites, since I don't think most users care or understand markup versioning, but grats to w3c for doing something that doesn't look like it came out of a committee of phds and marketroids.
I can't be the only user in the world who has seen an interesting "tech" thing and subsequently learned more from a website.
It can't hurt!
Not yet. W3C introduced this logo in January 2011 with the goal of building community support. W3C has not yet taken it up in any official capacity. If, as W3C hopes, the community embraces the logo, W3C will adopt it as its own official logo for HTML5 in the first quarter of 2011."
Think about its purpose; it needs to work with a huge range of styles, each of which will have specific and varied audiences.
The choices made (collegiate typeface / bright orange) are quite bold; I don't think it lends itself to sympathetically supporting a broad range of differing styles of design.
Also, when this is used, it's likely to be quite small - the gap between the tail of the '5' and its upper curve is slight. I think it will have a tendency to resemble a '6' at smaller resolutions.
Maybe I'm being too negative, but on top of all this I don't think it looks visually appealing or balanced. I don't think the proportions (forced perspective / surrounding gap vs. typeface weight) are pleasing to look at.
But then again, maybe once we see it everywhere, it's ubiquity will create new associations and familiarity will win out.
Someone realized this. If you look at the favicon, they've dropped the tail.
The smaller version of the logo should be the primary use-case imo.
Because being consistent is very deliberately not supposed to require being identical. So long as the visual identity is maintained, and I think it is, then small changes are welcomed.
If the mark needs to be altered to work in a particular format, I think that could show a lack of foresight on the part of the designers. I'm playing devil's advocate though.
I think a very simple HTML + black shield border + black 5, could provide a useful additional mark; which might prove less obtrusive.
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"It's very common to have structural changes in letters at different sizes in order to maintain readability, yet no one complains about consistency. Why?"
I don't know of any common examples of logos which make similar structural changes - but I'd be very happy to be proven wrong.
I'm on a really poor connection, so I'll do research later, but the difference between display and body variants in fonts comes to mind immediately. Knowing the two distinct use cases will highlight very different properties of the font's design, the letterforms are varied. The differences can be fairly large, however it is always clear that the two fonts are from the same family.
I see your point .. setting a typeface involves decisions re. kerning and many fonts use 'hinting' to ensure they can be read well at varying sizes, and some display faces are altered to suit headline text or specific use cases - but I think most logos have aims which are more specific than a typeface.
If people are free to alter the colours of a logo to suit a design, and the rules for doing so aren't defining clearly - before long a logo isn't able to fulfil it's purpose, because the unifying elements of the design become unclear.
That's not to say that a logo has to be the same everywhere - a successful identity system can break the rules, but if it does so, it needs to be very consistent in the way those rules are broken. I think agencies like Wolf Olins provide a good example of this kind of thinking.
I don't think the the adaptation of the HTML5 logo for the smaller favicon format is a feature - it seems like an afterthought.
(1) Do not correct the 5 and cause people to misidentify the logo at small sizes since it looks like a 6 then
(2) Correct the 5 at the cost of an almost imperceptible change in small instantiations of the logo
(3) Redesign the whole thing to use a font that is distinctive at all sizes
Wolf Olins is a particularly good example of the fact that brand is far larger than logo. I'm not even a particular fan of this new HTML5 brand, I feel like it overemphasizes and romanticizes a tool, but I won't get caught arguing that it's not comprehensive, or strongly suggested by all of the proposed instantiations on the website, or to weak to survive the likely numerous changes it'll suffer should it be widely adopted.
For example - this blog (http://almaer.com/blog/) is listed as an example of the logo in action on the launch page.
I think this page is a good example of my point; at this size, the logo suffers from the '5-becoming-6' problem - it doesn't actually communicate its message successfully at the most basic level.
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I've had a think about this in a bit more detail - and the more I think about it, the less impressed I am.
I think the whole concept should have been based around producing a mark that can identify whether a product supports HTML5 technologies.
I don't think the logo should have been produced to place on a site (or teeshirt) to show allegiance to the cause - I think it should have been created along the lines of the DVD, USB, HD or Blueray industry support logos.
An identity that helps promote HTML5 as a consumer technology - and shows a consumer at a glance, whether the product they are about to download or buy is capable enough to adhere to the upcoming spec.
But maybe that's what this is? Still, I'm a bit doubtful about whether it achieves these aims.
As a marketer, I agree.
I could also question the need of... 2^8 variations of the same logo (the "build a logo" thingy).
EDIT: fixed typo
Personally, I think its extraneous information. If you came away with knowledge of what the logo looks like (and you should since it took up fully 2/3rds of the first page), then you're set.
As for the rest of your criticism:
> I know nothing of web development, so I have no idea what this means.
Although HTML originally was created to be human readable, and better yet--writable by ordinary people---that isn't how history played out. Hardly anyone writes their websites in bare HTML anymore.
For a time, it seemed that HTML instead would be automatically generated by machines--either a CMS or Dreamweaver/Frontpage and its ilk. This 'dream weaver' age brought us XHTML and its XML inspired draconian parsing requirements.
But slowly, a cadre of individuals was growing who did write HTML by hand and documented the fine differences between browsers, and put pressure upon their makers to change them. These folks were a sect that didn't exist before (and perhaps couldn't have existed in the 90s low-bandwidth websites)...they are web designers.
HTML5, logo and all, looks like the w3's way of trying to capture the attention of web designers because at the moment they have little to no credibility with that group.
EDIT: I stand by my point regarding the layout though. I think a website promoting HTML5 should try to keep it clear. Trying to mix an informative content with an HTML5 demo page might not be the best idea.
More recently there's been a lot more positive feeling toward Safari and Chrome for pushing the implementation of new technologies forward, but it's worth noting that there would probably be a lot less confluence in the new technologies if not for the work the W3C and WaSP did.
Even if outside of that logo they both look really boring.
Is this a declaration of solidarity against the evil forces of the Flashicons?
Do people put icons in their iOS apps advertising the use of CoreAnimation? Do they put some kind of Silverlight or Flash badge on their web sites done with those technologies?
It's just a set of useful technologies. Why all the branding hoo-hah?
I don't think that word means what you think it means...
Sort of like dog whistle politics but used for good :)
The logo treatments and website seem like a contrived effort design a logo to whatever the designers believe is the "HTML5 Design Aesthetic." Sure, rich content and all, but HTML5 (and related technologies, like this logo is supposed to imply) shouldn't be represented by over contemporary design.
Interestingly, the logo is not the "official" logo. On paper, it's just the community logo - and it will only officially be adopted if it gets enough grassroots support.
Is this W3C's "official" logo for HTML5?
Not yet. W3C introduced this logo in January 2011 with the goal of building community support. W3C has not yet taken it up in any official capacity. If, as W3C hopes, the community embraces the logo, W3C will adopt it as its own official logo for HTML5 in the first quarter of 2011.
Tsk.
One of the many reasons I love Hoefler & Frere Jones.
Gotham + Mercury + Knockout, all from @h_fj, make the HTML-5 logo. http://www.w3.org/html/logo/ #next #stop, #webfonts http://twitter.com/H_FJ/status/27369279905071104
It reminds me of the "Netscape Now!" button campaign from the early web. The logo and badges looks nice tough.
However, I did find other exceptions. For example, the CSS3 Media Queries spec uses the @bottom-right and @bottom-left page selectors, which are introduced by the CSS3 Paged Media module (Working Draft): http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/default.css
http://twitter.com/#!/IE/status/27397420665016320
I think we can expect full compliance.
Interesting. Nowhere near as bad as I had expected, a little too alter-ego for my tastes though.
That, and learning that Netflix on the PS3 is a HTML5/WebKit implementation. I'm sold.
As long as you wear a XL or smaller.
I guess it's just like putting a badge on your website that says your site passes some html verification test.
It was used blindingly by most people regardless of whether the page was valid or whether it was used on HTML, normally alongside "Made on a Mac".
1) It's not black. (I have too many damn black tech shirts at this point in my life).
2) Sales profits go to development of the HTML5 suite. (A good cause!)
3) As you say, superman. And who doesn't want to be a super hero?
Ordering mine now.
Not that I am condoning it, I was just expecting it.