New Ubuntu Branding
There was an announcement today about the Ubuntu theme and branding change. I’m letting the theme digest for a day or two before I blog about it in any detail. Instead this post is going to talk about the logo branding:
I really like this new logo and apart from the logo inconsistency inherent in some of the draft uses of the new logo; the logo is sharp, professional and well designed in my opinion.
There was a concern amongst some Ubuntu community members that dropping the brown and orange, earthy crunchy, brand indicates a departure from a Home Desktop, human focused distribution and a re-badge to make the Ubuntu brand more acceptable to various new partners. I think that the orangey colours were very nice and I liked that we could tell an Ubuntu machine from across the room.
Although “precision, reliability, collaboration and freedom”, guys, that’s not a meaningful mantra. It’s not as catchy as “Free as in Speech” or “Of course! don’t you know anything about SCIENCE!”
What are your thoughts on the new brand?
Tags: branding, marketing, Ubuntu
Gotta love that there are 2 logo-types, best kept apart by looking for the cross-bar of the “t”. For all I know you have the earlier draft version in your post.
I quite liked “Ubuntu: Linux for human beings” slogan, until a friend of mine spotted it on the back of my laptop and asked me: “who else would it be for? Aliens?”
Which is great! It shows that Linux is losing its image of being too difficult for normal people. We can move on to a new slogan.
If comments around the web are anything to go by, by and large people either love the new branding or don’t really care either way, as its the new default theme that is getting all the talk. Window controls in the left corner being a huge talking point.
You might argue its a shame that people seemingly don’t care about the branding as much as the theme, but in a way I think thats right. People don’t love Macs because they like the logo more than the MS logo, they ultimately use Macs because of the style of the specific product’s software and hardware.
Theme aside, I think the biggest change is actually the website not the logo. Having a slick, modern website that invites people into trying out Ubuntu is going to a huge step forward, and IMO will have a much bigger positive effect than changing the font of the logo.
- having a redesign is ok I suppose
- I liked the focus on “Human Beings”, and would appreciate if that would still be the focus (rather than “Light”)
- the new theme (grey panel, black panel icons, purple background) is difficult to distinguish from OS X desktop (compare the Light screenshots with http://seanmcgrath.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/sean-leopard-desktop.png or http://media.photobucket.com/image/os x desktop/spidy333/desktop.png), so after a causal glance on Ubuntu desktop people might put us into the same corner as Mac users which I see as very wrong
- minor nitpick: in the image you embedded above, the little circle-of-friends logo looks a bit like a trademark symbol (c) (r) or a footnote 1)2)*) like in telecoms ads – both rather unfortunate associations
- dislike the fact that the new brand was internally developed and then announced to the unwashed masses
Stylistically, it’s a great step forward. Looks clean and fast.
I think the bigger story is in the removal of the Linux branding from the tagline, the web site, etc. This will allow Ubuntu to come to (mass) market with fewer misconceptions. Naming a distribution after a specific component (kernel) was never a good idea. May as well name it GRUB if that were acceptable.
Now, if only they could somehow convey the correct pronunciation of the brand: “Oo-boon-too” (as it is said in it’s original language.) It’s still getting butchered by too many… Maybe that’s a throwback from the “Lye-nucks” days
Cheers,
Randall.
I like the new logo. Logos that are too “busy” just overloads the message. I don’t need to know this is for “Human Beings”.
It’s clean and “space-age”, likely to remain hip and modern for a few distributions. These positive changes should carry though to all versions, especially the muddled “brainstorm” Yuck!
@Flimm: Funny you should say that… have a look at my submission to the Free Culture Showcase:
http://www.peppertop.com/greys/?p=253
I love the new design… but unfortunately the loss of the “Linux for Human Beings” tagline renders my submission a bit anachronistic. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard to fire up Inkscape and modify it to suit the new branding a bit better:
http://www.peppertop.com/greys/?p=268
From the screenshots in the initial report of the new theme I got to say it’s an improvement over the previous theme for Ubuntu. I just wish that the UI designers at Canonical would consider taking a look at the netbook interface and perhaps changing it up a little, maybe perhaps make the interface more like what is being done with the KDE 4 netbook interface.