Tarsnap logo contest

http://mail.tarsnap.com/tarsnap-users/msg00678.html

by cperciva • 13 years ago

113 125 13 years ago

mail.tarsnap.com

prawn5• 13 years ago

A good way to make sure that the designer gets the full fee (without losing a commission to 99designs or by them participating in a design contest with no guarantee of getting paid) is to choose one designer and offer them the $500.

Does the interest in design contests stem from a fear of paying and getting something you might not like? Or not knowing what you might like until you see it?

cperciva13• 13 years ago

I have no idea what I might like. I'm hoping to get some discussion and sharing of ideas -- including from people who don't have any interest in or ability to actually produce a logo themselves.

If I knew that, say, I wanted a graphic of a piece of tar being snapped in half, I'd look for an artist and say "here's $500, please draw this for me". But given that I have no idea what I want, I figure the more people I invite to provide ideas the better.

Raphael• 13 years ago

All this time I thought it was tars-nap.

cfqycwz• 13 years ago

Lots of people hire a graphic designer with no real idea of what they want--the point of a graphic designer is to talk to a client about the ideas and values of their business, think a lot about those things, go through a bunch of iterations, and then eventually end up with a finished product.

That takes a lot of work--usually at least 30 to 40 hours for a good logo. Would you put in 40 hours of work for somebody on the off chance they might pay you?

You can rest assured of this as well: people will definitely submit to your contest--but none of them will be great designers, because all of them will be people who place the value of their work at somewhere around "maybe 500 dollars."

dpapathanasiou• 13 years ago

But given that I have no idea what I want, I figure the more people I invite to provide ideas the better.

You can just do what Steve Jobs did with Next: pick a designer you like, and leave it entirely up to him.

Ironically not because Jobs didn't have ideas on what he wanted but because the designer insisted:

"I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, 'No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.'"

http://www.logodesignlove.com/next-logo-paul-rand

lancer383• 13 years ago

Right, but the issue is that 99 out of 100 designers will do work for you and not get paid for it, while one will. There are some good links to thoughts about speculative work here: http://www.nospec.com/articles

joelhooks3• 13 years ago

I wasted money this year on a designer, who had work we liked, but couldn't come up with anything we liked for our brand. Wish I had crowd sourced it.

noir_lord3• 13 years ago

I dropped you an email but just in case http://i.imgur.com/k6elBCU.png

prawn5• 13 years ago

Is it about what you want, or about what best represents your product to your audience? e.g., you give the brief to a designer and they work from that.

Would you run a code contest to have a software product built?

cam_l• 13 years ago

http://imgur.com/3v3lj9E

Here is a piece of tar being snapped in half.. it just makes sense, you know you like it. You can have this one.. its yours.

If I were your designer-for-a-day, for 500 bucks i would do a few iterations once the concept is okayed to get it just right for you and give you all the svg / png / pdf or whatever other format you would like, and downscale to icon sizes etc.. but not until, in the immortal words of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP_GOoBPKfQ (c/o mike monteiro;)

dmix• 13 years ago

Glad to see Tarsnap investing in branding/identity.

I like how Colin adopted prgmr.com style of appealing to the technical minded for it's website design/documentation. A simple logo wouldn't hurt.

cperciva13• 13 years ago

A simple logo wouldn't hurt.

I'm certainly not opposed to having a simple logo. I want to see what people come up with. :-)

parennoob2• 13 years ago

I suppose tarsnap is named like 'portsnap', which you also wrote, but what is the thought process behind calling that 'portsnap'? That might help stimulate some ideas and suggestions.

I am assuming it's not a piece of tar snapped in half. Although sometimes, having the FreeBSD ports system compile perl and python from scratch when I am trying to install emacs does make me want to snap it in half (yes, yes, I know I am not the model FreeBSD user, et cetera :))

wrl• 13 years ago

Short for "snapshot", I think?

cperciva13• 13 years ago

portsnap = SNAPshots of the FreeBSD PORTs tree

tarsnap = TAR backups, in a SNAPshotted model (vs. incremental backups). I also liked the fact that it reminded FreeBSD users of portsnap, which is a very popular tool.

SwellJoe• 13 years ago

I understood the name immediately, but always considered it an awful name for most "normal" users. But, maybe UNIX culture will win in the end and "tar" will become a word everyone knows.

ericdykstra2• 13 years ago

I think you would end up with a better logo if you just did a call to your mailing list for designer recommendations, and paid a real designer $500 for a few hours of their work to come up with their best effort.

By opening a contest, you're not only going to get a much lower quality of submissions, but in the end, the final decision is going to be made by you, someone "useless at anything artistic".

Paying a designer $500 won't get you a full brand identity makeover, but that's not what you're going for. You should be able to find a talented designer who will spend an hour discussing what you want to get our of your logo, some time going over a number of their own ideas, and then wrap up the project and give you the sizes you need and a vector file if you ever need to scale your logo up or down.

joelhooks3• 13 years ago

Paying a single designer directly can be really frustrating. $500 only buys you so many variations, and if none of them hit the mark, you are SOL, either settling for something "meh" or forking out more $$ for another round. At the low end, crowd sourcing logo design makes a lot of sense.

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

Yes. And possibly even through the mid to mid-high end.

cperciva13• 13 years ago

in the end, the final decision is going to be made by you, someone "useless at anything artistic".

That's a fair point... but I do know what Tarsnap is, and it's not exactly "typical". I don't know how many non-tarsnap-using designers would come up with something which is consistent with the rest of the "tarsnap brand".

ericdykstra2• 13 years ago

Well, part of the $500 would presumably be talking through the goals of the project, what message you want to convey with the logo, how you might want to extend the Tarsnap brand in the future, etc.

To put it another way, if you needed to roll out a new feature for Tarsnap but couldn't do it yourself, would you hire someone on contract, or do a contest for it?

sixQuarks2• 13 years ago

I don't agree. He's looking for something that he can't put his finger on. The likelihood that the one designer he chooses comes up with the best idea is low.

By holding the contest, he can get dozens of submissions. They may not be well-designed, but he can use the best theme from the designs submitted to hire a top-notch designer and polish it up, if need be.

prawn5• 13 years ago

Reread this and imagine it's a code contest. Less subjective maybe, but would you want to build for someone with such a vague demand? "I need it to do, err, I don't know. Can't quite put my finger on it."

6ren2• 13 years ago

contest -> publicity

elwell• 13 years ago

The $500 is worth the marketing value of a contest alone.

neilk3• 13 years ago

You have a point, but one thing logo contests do well is they get a wide variety of concepts, from a community that knows what tarsnap means to them.

Then you call in a real designer to look over the submissions and pick the one that inspires them, and do an improved version of that.

invalidOrTaken• 13 years ago

Question---how do designers who do this survive? $500 is not a lot of money---you'd need 100 of these projects/year to make 50K. Do designers do that many? If you've got bigger projects, something like this seems valuable as a sales tool rather than your bread and butter.

davidw• 13 years ago

$500 is quite a bit of money if you live someplace relatively cheap. That could be Eastern Europe, somewhere in the midwestern US, the Philippines, or elsewhere. Granted, there may be more transaction costs working with people in those places, but in some situations, that may be worth it for the savings.

vicbrooker• 13 years ago

Considering Tarsnap doesn't have a GUI I'd suggest a text-only logo - something like Tarsnap_ for a full logo and then just T_ for social media icons/favicon/128x128.

I can put something together but at the end of the day it's just changing fonts until there's a winner.

Colin, if you're interested in the idea and there's a particular font/color you would like used let me know and I'll make the pngs for you. Don't stress about payment, it's quick and easy for me to do.

cperciva13• 13 years ago

That's certainly an option. Whether that's the best option, I have no idea until I see what people come up with. :-)

But someone is going to get $500 (or $500 minus 99designs' cut), even if it's just someone who typesets "Tarsnap" is a way that I like more than anything else.

gingerlime• 13 years ago

my thoughts exactly. In my very non-artistic, unimportant opinion, the last thing tarsnap needs is yet another logo with a padlock / key / chain / castle / fortress / shield / guard / dog.

These security-related icons are so frequently (ab)used that I'm getting a strong urge not to use any product that relies on them to symboloze its security.

cperciva13• 13 years ago

the last thing tarsnap needs is yet another logo with a padlock / key / chain / castle / fortress / shield / guard / dog.

I'm inclined to agree... I'm not saying it's impossible to produce a good logo with one of these, but I'd need to see something really inspiring to put up with a cliche.

dnerdy• 13 years ago

Text-only is also what I was thinking.

Implemented via the Web Inspector:

http://static.deliciouslynerdy.com/tarsnap/logo-and-favicon....

http://static.deliciouslynerdy.com/tarsnap/styles.png

coherentpony• 13 years ago

Slightly off topic, but is there a way to have tarsnap back up to my own server instead of S3?

cperciva13• 13 years ago

No, the tarsnap client needs the tarsnap server.

X-Istence• 13 years ago

Will you ever make the tarsnap server available?

elehack• 13 years ago

If you want similar backup capabilities to your own server, check out obnam or bup. Both do de-duplicated remote backups with differing tradeoffs and capabilities in security, efficiency, etc.

srgseg2• 13 years ago

http://www.one-tab.com/web/images/tarsnap.png

A castle and medieval font to convey security and resilience

Use of a font with a distinctive R to help it appear as TAR-SNAP and not TARS-NAP

A monospaced font with underscores to convey that this for the UNIX command line

Subtle gold/silver colors that convey a history of widely acknowledged value and future longevity

Font: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/metamorphous (free) Castle: http://3docean.net/item/door-castle/4004680 ($32 licence required)

Please feel free to use/build on this concept if you like it, I waive my rights to this logo design.

ape4• 13 years ago

Not bad. I think that castle is somewhat busy for a logo.

weaksauce• 13 years ago

Maybe just the silhouette would work.

tptacek11• 13 years ago

Every time I hear the name "Tarsnap" I think of the long skinny dragons on heraldic crests, so I'm with you thematically.

I think it's a bad idea to use a novelty display typeface for the name. Also, that typeface looks like something from a 1990s Front Line Assembly album.

Also, any typeface you pick better mesh well with Times New Roman, because Colin can be trusted to set type in that.

The castle will be hard to reproduce at different sizes, won't work at all in black and white, and is effectively clip art.

srgseg2• 13 years ago

Btw the castle source is a 3D model, so this logo can be scaled infinitely.

AnotherDesigner3• 13 years ago

I've wrote about this a few times on HN before. You guys like to downvote me every time I do but here we go again ...

Good designers, the ones you want if this is important to you, don't do contests. We have families to feed and bills to pay. "Winning" a popularity contest, not based on substance but instead on style, doesn't allow us to support ourself and our families doing our work. So, who are the designers doing these contests? Well, besides the large number of completely untrained laypeople, it's mostly students wanting beer money and portfolio pieces. And lets face it, most designers need many years beyond school before they're anything approaching "good" at their craft. Those years are spent doing grunt work with increasing amounts of responsibility under senior designers, art directors, creative directors, whatever.

My second point about that is how rare it is to win a contest. Designers know that they're often designing blind here. They could spend all the time in the world creating the perfect brand and the client could choose something else because they don't like the color blue or they're scared of clown logos or whatever. Point is, the client is often hardly objective in these situations and the designers know this. What does this mean in practicality? They are going to put as little effort as possible in to this because the chances of reward are small. Personally, I'd love to see the average amount of time spent on these logo entries. I bet most of them are well under 10 minutes.

Legal issues. I'll skim here because I don't have my links handy but most of these contest websites have been caught with stolen logos in their submissions. Companies have been sued for using these logos from contest websites costing them thousands of dollars they didn't expect. It happens and when the "designer" is some anonymous guy across the world, you have no recourse but to pay the fees, lawyer fees and then pay to do your logo all over again. Not to mention the embarrassment to your company when this happens. This stuff is very, very rare for clients working with designers face-to-face.

Lastly, when you're missing the face-to-face collaboration between designer and client, you're also missing most of what makes design "design", instead of art. The research as well as most of the creative process tends to go missing. The designer starts to view the client as the ones to design for instead of the "user" and as a result, the logo/brand/whatever becomes less effective. And you know what? A lot of important questions go missing ... like what are your plans for the future? What is your strategy to deal with your competitors? Even simple things like "am I making the logo for the company, the product or both" ... changes in company strategy are rarely mentioned in logo contests and this could be the most important question in the world. Logos need to be adaptable to company strategy and that strategy needs to be talking out between company and designer. Often NDAs are signed beforehand, good luck doing that with on a contest.

cperciva13• 13 years ago

Good designers, the ones you want if this is important to you, don't do contests.

I'm not looking for a good designer. I'm looking for a hacker (ideally a unix hacker) who happens to have some design skills.

huhtenberg4• 13 years ago

Then you should've not offered the $ reward. This motivates wrong kind of people and sure as hell it does not do much to motivate a "hacker with some design skills".

prawn5• 13 years ago

"Anyone here a half decent designer? I want to pay someone $500 to make me a logo."

AnotherDesigner3• 13 years ago

I'm looking for a hacker (ideally a unix hacker) who happens to have some design skills.

I hope you find somebody that loves your product to do the logo and don't have to fall back on the contest. Good luck.

tptacek11• 13 years ago

I've watched a bunch of my friends do 99designs contests and can back you up with the concern about stolen logos. In the contests I've run in the last couple years, I've tried to submit somewhat idiosyncratic briefs to constrain the possible logos. On the other hand, I'm betting you'll have a hard time naming a company that had to pay "thousands of dollars in lawyer fees" for buying what turned out to be a boosted logo. You just take the logo down and get a new one.

The rest of your comment, though --- what is Colin supposed to do with this? He doesn't want to buy face-to-face collaboration. He doesn't want to subsidize your whole industry. Have you seen his website? Suffice it to say that your profession has very little to with his company strategy. I doubt he cares how many minutes go into the design; the point of contracting the work out is that other people can do in 10 minutes something he couldn't do in a month.

So what it boils down to is, he's made a decision that a logo has $500 in business value to him. The process you're advocating, with the specific bells and whistles you're mentioning, starts at $5000. No sale. Could you instead give him some advice that involves a more effective use of $500?

AnotherDesigner3• 13 years ago

On the other hand, I'm betting you'll have a hard time naming a company that had to pay "thousands of dollars in lawyer fees" for buying what turned out to be a boosted logo. You just take the logo down and get a new one.

It doesn't exactly work like that. I wish I could find my notes right now, I have a half-written blog on copyright issues for clients that I did a bunch of research and found these cases. Anyway, you don't get to just say sorry and move on. You're liable for damages whether you knew about it or not. You can, of course, go after the designer if they're not outside your reach (international or hidden behind an anonymous online identity) but it's a real issue. As a designer, I have to know about this stuff because I can be sued if a client gives me something they don't have permission to use and I do. There are, of course, a number of issues that could effect the outcome including if the copyright is registered and if they're willing to go through the effort to go after you but it's a danger that shouldn't be ignored. (I am not a lawyer. I just have a healthy fear of them.)

The process you're advocating, with the specific bells and whistles you're mentioning, starts at $5000. No sale. Could you instead give him some advice that involves a more effective use of $500?

Not always. My wife and I are both designers. Many of our friends are designers. We do a lot of on-the-side work with small budgets that would give a much better result for the same cost. Sometimes one of us will come home from doing something during our 9-5 for a huge multi-billion dollar corporation to do something for a 1 person startup. Often the startup has more interesting projects and are much nicer to work with. Plus, I don't have to wear a suit, a fake smile and get patted down by under-paid security when I go to meet the CEO of tiny-startup, llc. And as a bonus, most of you guys pay in less than 6 months without having to resubmit form 41824817B with the new PO number to the department that never answers their phones. (I hate corporate work.)

stevewillows• 13 years ago

You probably spent more time writing this comment than it would have taken to design something simple for them.

I do agree that contests are shit and that we never take part in them. This contest is unique in that he doesn't want a designer as much as someone who 'get it' and doesn't need any direction.

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

Ok, I have to say this: there are too many people out there holding themselves out as designers, and truly good ones are very hard to find. I have spent thousands over the years on design I never used and have spent thousands more on items that were usable, but sub-optimal (i.e. I settled).

Portfolios aren't enough. Conversations aren't enough. And, the standard payment plans of a third up-front leaves the client holding the bag if the designer can't deliver. It comes down to whether the designer can understand what the client likes, add his/her experience, design principles, creativity, artistic ability, etc., then execute in a way that is compelling and professional. But, frequently you don't know if the designer can truly do this until you have committed and get that initial revision.

Here's how it goes: After the initial revision, you then give feedback and the designer begins to iterate, frequently getting further and further away. From there, it devolves into a frustrated designer who then puts the onus on the client to tell him/her exactly what he wants. This means the client is now effectively designing and the designer is just putting the pixels together in Photoshop. Game over. Of course the client doesn't know what he is doing or how it will look ("maybe if you move this over there" or similar is frequently heard). But, the designer then takes the position that "this is what you asked for."

I have seen some variation of this happen far too many times, and not just with my own projects. It seems to be the rule, and not the exception. The designer either gets it or not, and too many don't.

So, something needed to change about the process or otherwise, and I think that is the entire impetus behind these contests. Maybe they are not perfect and have their own downside, but they shift the risk squarely to the designers' side. Too much? I don't know. But, sites like 99designs are a market-based solution to a real pain experienced by clients in the design space. Think about that: It is not just price. It is the total experience and the risk profile on the client side.

If more designers were taking better care of their clients (as you may well be doing), I would have no interest in seeking such alternatives.

hxw• 13 years ago

IMO, the designer is not to blame if the client keeps changing their mind about what they (or their spouse, nephew, neighbour or cat) like - which, believe it or not, happens.

tvanantwerp• 13 years ago

By using a contest format and only offering $500 to the winner, you're significantly limiting the talent pool of designers. Designers who are good--and know that they are--probably wouldn't design a logo for a guaranteed $500, much less for an effectively random chance of payment.

Maybe you don't really care if it's a very good logo, or if you're collaborating with a professional who can walk you through the process of discovering what you want. (You do want something, trust me--you just won't know it for sure until you start rejecting the things you don't want.) And that's fine--it's your choice. If your business is doing fine without an awesome logo or a slick brand, then good job!

But if you really do want something professional, something that can be built out into a bigger brand, and something that someone put a lot of thought into, then this is the wrong way to go.

I wouldn't hold a contest for $500 for a developer to write a piece of code for me. Why would I do it for a logo?

niels_olson3• 13 years ago

Beastie leaning an elbow on a treasure chest, looking cool, as though it were a bar. Cool like he's taken down marauding hordes with his bare hands so keeping you away from that box isn't even a thing.

cperciva13• 13 years ago

Can't do it -- beastie is trademarked, and Kirk only licenses it for BSD things.

niels_olson3• 13 years ago

Then a turtle or a sloth.

nilved• 13 years ago

Nothing on tarsnap.com will load for me in Luakit (WebKit) on Arch Linux. Has anybody else had this problem?

cperciva13• 13 years ago

This is the first I've heard of any problems... please let me know if you figure out what's breaking for you.

jasonkester• 13 years ago

I've said it before and I'm saying it again: It needs to be a parsnip.

That's what springs to mind when you hear the name of your company, so that's what you need for a logo.

Here are a few options:

https://www.google.com/search?q=parsnip

tptacek11• 13 years ago

I think a parsnip would also be an awesome logo.

Before you discount it, remember that Sourcefire has a goofy looking cartoon pig.

eps2• 13 years ago

Yeah, but snout is a great concept for something that involves sniffing. Parsnip on the other hand just goes well with pancetta.

socksy• 13 years ago

So something like this, but less shit: http://i.imgur.com/30lVuJk.png

nimble• 13 years ago

That's funny. The first thing that came to my mind was turnips. Maybe there should be a parsnip and a turnips in the logo. Maybe a parsnip pointing down between two turnips, in a T formation.

6ren2• 13 years ago

On the topic of brand, I always read "tarsnap" as "tarsnip" - like a parsnip.

I think I get the name (unix `tar` plus a snapshot or securely locked in). It's not lack of familiarity - I've known about it for years, and even have an account.

I doubt you're keen on a name change, but "tarlock" would avoid this.

Or... a parsnip as a logo.

EDIT how bizarre! The instant I commented this, jasonkester made the same suggestion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462378

lazugod• 13 years ago

An asterisk encased in amber.

eps2• 13 years ago

"Design contest" to a designer is what "prototype me my facebook idea" to a programmer. You will be laughed out of the room by professional designers at best, so what you will end up with a clipart logo based on a ripped concept done by someone who has zero idea of what tarsnap is (but who really needs your 500 bucks).

Do the right thing, Colin, call this thing off, take an hour to go through logopond and dribbble and email a dozen of guys you like. $500 is a good budget to get a good logo.

EDIT - alternatively, just pick a good sans font (something that you personally like and that matches well what you think tarsnap is about - simplicity, clarity, reliability, etc.), take a semibold or bold weight, type "tarsnip" in lowercase letters, kern it tightly and you got yourself a clean and concise wordmark.

anologwintermut• 13 years ago

And yet I bet he will get results and they will look good enough, even if you and everyone else who considers themselves a designer laughs at him.

He can actually judge the logos he gets and choose the best one (or potentially non at all). Designs don't have anything close to a monopoly on good(enough) taste.

Evaluating the quality of a code base, on the other hand, requires close to enough skill that you probably could write it your self. It's not analogous.

neilk3• 13 years ago

Did a sketch of an idea here:

https://github.com/neilk/tarsnap-logo/blob/master/tarsnap.pn...

I wanted to get away from castles and locks and such. You can check out the README if you want to know what my thought process was, but it should be distinctive and appealing without an explanation.

jyap• 13 years ago

I quite like it.

Note that the font is not free. From the fine print: Use by more than 25 Users, or equivalent Website Visitors, is a breach of this Free Licence Agreement, and instead requires a commercial licence.

neilk3• 13 years ago

Thanks.

About the license - you are correct. I was under the impression this font was already distributed via Google Fonts, but I was wrong.

It's a very nice font, and just costs $67.00. But it could also be swapped for a font with a less restrictive license.

bambax2• 13 years ago

Nothing in the brief says the font has to be free...?

daviddaviddavid• 13 years ago

How about snapping fingers?

Something like: http://mobiusband.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/finger...

But less detailed and with something that indicates noise emanating from the fingers.

Sorry for being too lazy to take a stab at implementing the idea.

sgt2• 13 years ago

Here's my proposal, very simplistic and based on the inconsolata font (which is licensed under an Open Font license). Original artwork is SVG. http://imgur.com/SVOZTC6

bambax2• 13 years ago

Interesting, but there's a big hole between the r and the s (tar (...) snap).

sgt2• 13 years ago

Thanks - will move them a bit closer.

noir_lord3• 13 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/UP5d3gH.png

edit: http://imgur.com/k6elBCU with masthead

Not a professional designer but I like mucking around in inkscape and it was a fun way to avoid work.

dchest• 13 years ago

TARSNiP? :)

(I quite like it, but if you replace that keyhole with a simple "A", it would be much better.)

selmnoo• 13 years ago

Oh Gosh, that was all done in Inkspace? Pretty impressive, I'll have to check that program out.

noir_lord3• 13 years ago

Yep entirely in inkcsape.

It's a fantastic program even to a developer type like me, it also has really really good PDF import which is useful sometimes :).

da_n3• 13 years ago

Here is the idea I submitted, uses Deja Vu monospace for the font. The shape is a bolt, and I am trying to go for the idea of industrial strength and security.

http://dev.bitmono.com/tarsnap/tarsnap.png

graue• 13 years ago

This one is my favorite so far :) Very sleek. But I wish it distinguished "tar" and "snap" to give a subtle cue as to pronunciation. What if the "tar" part were set in a slightly heavier weight?

da_n3• 13 years ago

Thanks and an interesting idea, I can see where you're coming from. I have tried it with a bolder font on the tar, it does hint more as to how to pronounce it.

http://dev.bitmono.com/tarsnap/tarsnap-variation.png

da_n3• 13 years ago

Another screenshot showing it on the website, a simple black and white version.

http://dev.bitmono.com/tarsnap/tarsnap-website.png

PS: Created in Inkscape, font is Deja Vu.

contextual• 13 years ago

Design a logo contests are tacky. It reveals a lack of understanding of your own brand and it's bad marketing. Go out and hire a professional graphic designer.

underdown• 13 years ago

I have used tarsnap for a while now and id be willing to bet this hacker news post will get him more business than a well designed logo. Have you seen the site? It looks like ass. Didnt stop me from trying it great service btw.

samweinberg• 13 years ago

I'm normally against the idea of spec work, but I think it makes sense for an open source project. People contribute code, sometimes even copy and graphics to open source projects, so what's the problem with crowd-sourcing a logo?

moonie1• 13 years ago

my take, a bit simple: http://imgur.com/JBnLjgL

Font is consolas

cromulent• 13 years ago

Choose one of these:

http://codepoints.net/mathematical_operators

I suggest ⊷ "Image of".

http://codepoints.net/U+22B7

cperciva13• 13 years ago

Interesting idea! I think "multiset union: might be the most appropriate: http://codepoints.net/U+228E

currywurst2• 13 years ago

true, but the "image of" gives ideas of "two entities related by a link".

currywurst2• 13 years ago

"image of" is just great !! Really scalable figure that can even be used in an e-mail sig :)

AdamMeghji• 13 years ago

My version of the logo: http://imgur.com/Laxvw7E

The logo is the wheel on a cassette, which is a fun throwback to the tape days, inspired by TAR -> Tape ARchiver.

cschmidt• 13 years ago

How about:

Tarsnap: a guard dog for your backup data

An then your logo is the very stylized face of a bulldog, looking straight on. The word tarsnap is set to the right of the dog face for the full logo. You can use the face by itself for the favicon etc.

I think the word 'snap' has a lot of dog connotation to me. A dog snapping at your heals. The dog snapping at the mailman. And a guard dog is a pretty good metaphor for your product. It keeps things safe and protected from the bad guys.

Also, to have a 'mascot' like logo fits in with the penguins, devils, ponies, etc. You can make it stylized to project a "serious, reliable" image, rather than cartoon like.

If you like my suggestion, take the $500, and hire my favorite designer, tywilkins.com. You get a much better result than me trying my hand. The problem with a $500 budget is you don't have a the time to explore a lot of options. At $100/hour, you just have 5 hours. But that might be enough time to draw an already fleshed out idea.

ihenriksen• 13 years ago

Have a look at http://logo.designcrowd.com/ for logo design crowding, my company did it and is very happy with the result. Don't cost much.

webehpi• 13 years ago

here's a sketch of a small idea that came to my mind: http://i.imgur.com/ZaIR5yD.png

... basic idea was: "box" - not very original, but imho appropriate when thinking of storing things. as illustrated on the right, the form is the intersection of the shapes on the three visible faces of the box. the two in the front make up the "T" and on top is a very minimal "S". i thought of this intersection as a simple visual analogy of encryption.

wouldn't consider this a final logo - probably there could be done some more work on the details.

Tarsnap logo contest

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