Re: RFC: Designing Logo of Pandoc

[JM Marcastel <jm-hh8AyDY1G20S+FvcfC7Uqw@public.gmane.org>]

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Is there a need for a logo? I appreciate John’s pragmatism, as often seen — 
this is not flattery. I, as a starter, plunged into the logo design topic 
forgetting, perhaps, its very purpose. Let's take a moment to reflect on 
that.

A logo is not here to provide graphical components and a favicon for 
websites and other documentation; though obviously it can be used for that.

The primary purpose of a logo is to uniquely identify “at first glance” the 
brand it represents. Its prime characteristics are that it must be succinct 
and efficient.

Now consider the world “pandoc”. It is succinct (2 syllables) and efficient 
(the word says it all about the software).

In effect “Pandoc” has become a brand of a widely used tool which sets the 
standard of the software niche it has created.

Pandoc adheres to the UNIX  philosophy: do one thing and do it well. This 
further enhances the quality — one could say the “robustness”, of the brand.

Don’t get me wrong here. Pandoc is a complex beast with a myriad 
capabilities. But from a user perspective it is “dead simple”. And that is 
the distinguishing factor of the “Pandoc” brand.

Pandoc, the  brand, is well established in the community and has been for 
over a decade now.

So, what distinguishing factor would a graphical component -- i.e. a logo, 
add to the brand ? Well I must admit after long meditation on the topic: 
none.

Consider the logos of companies like Coca Cola, Ford, IBM, Oracle. The logo 
is the brand’s name. The brand name (and its colour) allow you to 
immediately identify that brand.

Adding a graphical component to the “Pandoc” brand will not significantly 
enhance its visibility, will not make it gain more “market share”, will not 
further extend/enhance the “core business” of the Pandoc software, … 
 (because that is what PR is about).

And speaking of PR, one could even argue that a logo is not a good idea. In 
an all visual world, often with little content, "good old Pandoc, says 
little but gets the job done". And to be a little sarcastic, consider those 
legions of Javascript frameworks that have appeared in this decade and 
almost immediately disappeared... they had wonderful and ever so promising 
websites, logos, etc. whilst their implementation remained beta or even 
pre-beta.... where are they now?

Does that mean that all the discussions made in this thread should be 
trashed? No. Imagery to document Pandoc on various media is necessary. 
Obviously. Be it in print or digital.

Such imagery is necessary to create consistency and further enforce the 
brand’s “robustness”.  A favicon, a graphical representation to beautify 
documents and blogs, a symbol to use in workflows and engineering diagrams, 
etc.. all are needed. But they should probably not be called a logo, least 
“the Pandoc logo”.  They should simply be part of a standard visual 
statement designed specifically for Pandoc.

(Remember that the colour codes are as important — if not more, than the 
graphical representation. All components of the visual statement must 
adhere to the “official” colour set. Think of Coca Cola’s red or McDonalds 
yellow :-)

As food for thought, consider AWS (Amazon web services). The words "AWS" 
and "Amazon", like "Pandoc", reflect the quality and value of the 
associated products. Amazon has created (and actively maintains) a unique 
and distinguishing stencil set for engineering purposes 
(https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons/). This is, in my (modified) 
opinion, what this thread should about. Just strip the word "logo" and keep 
going :-)

Thanks John.

Cheers
Jean-Michel

PS: I initially started this reply as a long discussion on the pros (and 
cons) of one letter logos — the most famous being McDonalds’ M — which for 
memory doesn’t (or didn’t) represent an M but two (initially overlapping) 
arches of their first (high tech) franchise. I stripped it because that 
would have ended up as a long (and possibly boring) dissertation. In 
essence none of the pros really apply to software products in general, and 
Pandoc in particular. Happy to drill this down if needed.

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