Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)

From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Wed May 28 2003 - 12:45:50 EDT

  • Next message: Sarasvati: "Summer mail"

    I wonder how a character standardizer would like it if a bunch of
    graphic artists criticized her character encoding. ☺

    OK, I have to admit that even though I applied the Savvy logo to my home
    page almost immediately, with an eye toward applying it to all my other
    pages, I could see some room for improvement. Here are some (hopefully)
    constructive suggestions, in no particular order:

    1. If the W3C HTML conformance logos were used as a template (a good
    idea), there's no reason the Savvy logo couldn't have been exactly the
    same size (88 × 31). That way it would line up more uniformly with the
    W3C logo, as I tried to do on my page. The Savvy logo is slightly
    bigger, 89 × 35.

    I also like the "beveling" effect on the W3C logo, which could be
    achieved easily in a 256-color GIF without increasing the file size
    noticeably.

    2. The "pink" version is actually a decent match for the inside pages
    of the Unicode site, but as Marco pointed out, red and white are really
    the defining colors of the Unicode logo. I don't care that the name
    "pink" makes no sense (actually I'm grateful it's not pink).

    3. The gray version is too dark.

    4. It would be nice if the Savvy logo could incorporate the basic UNi
    logo in some way, but I understand how this could be a problem. After
    all, the Consortium has strict licensing and usage guidelines for use of
    the UNi logo (http://www.unicode.org/consortium/logo.html).

    4a. The UNiCODe lettering might be a bit odd, but it's been a trademark
    of Unicode, Inc. for at least a decade. Deal with it.

    5. Translated versions would be a definite plus. Multilingual support
    is, after all, probably the main benefit people associate with Unicode.
    If Kareem needs some additional "pro bono" work, perhaps list members
    could send suggested translations (to Kareem or Magda directly, **NOT**
    to the list).

    6. Then there's that word "savvy." As others have explained, it's a
    slangy English word meaning "knowledgeable in a practical sense." Like
    "savoir-faire" and other terms from the same Latin root (sapere, "to be
    wise" or "to understand"), it has acquired a special meaning beyond the
    literal and can be difficult to translate. It's noteworthy that someone
    like Marco, who is not a native English speaker but whose use of
    colloquial written English is excellent, did not know the word.

    I don't really think we are trying to say that a Web page is
    "knowledgeable" about Unicode, but rather that it "uses" or "takes
    advantage of" Unicode. How about "Powered by Unicode"?

    -Doug Ewell
     Fullerton, California
     http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/



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