Logo/name considerations

[josX]

markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk Tue Jan 02 09:54:03 2001 writes:
>> josX <joshb at xs4all.nl> writes:
>> Hi!,
>> We are talking about 'Free Software Foundation Europe', since everything
>> is held under the microscope: why use English? Only a small group of total
>> Europe speak it natively, and is isn't the largest sub-group.
> I am biased here, I know, but I suspect as a starting point for the
> target audience (European Free Software advocates), English is
> probably a good first choice, as having had to deal with the existing
> (predominately English-capable) community means most of them will at
> least read it. 
Yeah you'r right, but I was only talking about the name/motto language
here, not about day-to-day communitation. If one day Czech would become
the most widely used language we'll use that. The point is we need a
VERY, VERY good Logo[name[motto]], because if we fail here ... too manny
people will not bother to look a second time I'm afraid. The association
people will have in the first instance of seeing the Logo is the thing we're
after I think. In my opinion that is far more important than if it is 
historically a valid logo.
Let me just dump my opinion here if you don't mind:
-The stars are adopted by the European-Union. Whatever it actually means
	doesn't matter, it's their vlag now, if we use it we declare that
	'Europe' == 'EU'. Maybe not if you drool over it for weeks, but
	that will be the first reaction (well, it would be my reaction
	at least).
	It looks nice (the stars), but if the EU adopted, say, a cirkel
	with a cross in it, would anybody come up with 12 stars in a
	cirkel to represent Europe? 
-GNU != FSF, so the gnu is not obligatory.
-We need a strong[funny[whatever[...]]] image, more than we need a valid image.
-The image of the Gnu over the map with princess Europa on it is too
 soft, altough it very nice drawing on itself.
-Gnu is an animal, Tux is an animal, the BSD devil is sort of a living
 creature, mozilla is a little dragon,.... 
 Maybe FSFE should follow and also adopt something like that.

>> What may be more of a problem is the fact that English might be
>> associated with the kapitalistic Western world by large numbers of people
>> from Eastern-Europe.
>...and Russian would be associated with the communistic USSR?  Haven't
>we got over the whole capitalism/communism dichotomy yet?  :-(
Youre right, I got a little carried away on the language issue.

>-- 
>MJR
have a nice day,
	Jos.