Forum Heading

[Matt K]

I like it!

[Neo Bri]

I like the trombone outline - sleek.

I like mine, too, though it could be refined quite a bit. I'll stay out of the discussion henceforth.

[Neo Bri]

By the way - 53 posts and counting - i wouldn't mind 100 posts per page.

[Matt K]

I think the only thing I would personally change about it is to make the trombone perhaps a little smaller and the words a little bigger --- at least as big as the bell. I like the all caps. Very clear. Matches the clarity you get without the F attachment... anyone else?

[Neo Bri]

Either way we go - TromboneChat has no spaces.

[Matt K]

Ah I forgot about that. In that case, maybe we should have mixed lettering. Otherwise it'll just be TROMBONECHAT Which isn't as legible to me at least.

[Neo Bri]

Notice that my header above is mixed-case.

TromboneChat

I think it's legible.

[ronnies]

Being a bit nitpicky, but does anyone else find the fact the bell stays aren't parallel slightly annoying?

Ronnie

[Matt K]

I meant that ALLCAPS wouldn't be as legible as MixedCase not that we should add a space

Being a bit nitpicky, but does anyone else find the fact the bell stays aren't parallel slightly annoying?

Ronnie

I've never had a trombone that had them parallel! That would be an uncomfortable horn to hold indeed, though it isn't as prominent a feature as when you're abstracting out to a single color and putting it in a banner!

[ronnies]

I meant that ALLCAPS wouldn't be as legible as MixedCase not that we should add a space

Being a bit nitpicky, but does anyone else find the fact the bell stays aren't parallel slightly annoying?

Ronnie

I've never had a trombone that had them parallel! That would be an uncomfortable horn to hold indeed, though it isn't as prominent a feature as when you're abstracting out to a single color and putting it in a banner!

Why would it be uncomfortable? I think all the straight trombones I've played have had all the bell stays parallel. Maybe I'm odd though.

Ronnie

[hyperbolica]

About the braces, this was traced from an image, and they definitely weren't parallel in the image, there's some perspective going on with the image. The distance from the "camera" to the object is about the same as the distance between the stays, so due to perspective, they won't seem parallel, even if they actually are. The only way for them to actually look parallel is to get the camera very far from the object (or use an idealized system like CAD where we ignore perspective).

So, mixed case, larger letters, smaller bone.

Having made these changes, I do like this new one better.

[Matt K]

That's EXACTLY what I had in mind!

[LowrBrass]

I mean all of this constructively:


I still like Neo Bri's logo (aside from maybe the wonky-looking mouthpiece angle, and whatever's going on with that spit valve). I don't totally understand what you're hoping to gain out of this redesign, other than satisfying personal aesthetics, but since ya'll seem dead set on changing it...


Concept is good.

* The mouthpiece intersecting with the brace is visually confusing/unattractive. Could be solved by redrawing at an angle so the slide isn't completely head-on.

* I agree with Ronnie, I'd prefer if the bell and slide were parallel to each other, even if it's not 100% realistic. It'd feel stronger, more balanced, more intentional, less "I had to draw it this way because that's the way my photo was."

(I realize these two comments would likely require a pain-in-the-ass total redraw)




* All caps vs. sentence-case: You could try small caps and make everyone happy.
ex.
TROMBONECHAT
There's a button for it in most 2D design programs that can handle text. It takes sentence case and converts it into the sort of big-little caps treatment I just did by hand. (Doing it by button instead of by hand can help make sure you get the proportions right)

* How does it look with slightly tighter kerning? I feel like the letters are awfully far apart from each other. I'm not 100% sure, I'd need to see it.

* I may have missed this part of the discussion... is the outline of the trombone intentional?
I'd get rid of it entirely.
If you're worried about not being able to see the yellow, maybe darken the yellow to ensure it shows up on all themes.
If you really want to keep the outline, maybe knock the color back to something more subtle--a slightly darker shade of the same yellow color on the bell.



I'm not trying to pick on anyone's design skills (maybe a little ). It's a good start. I just think it can be even better!

...But I'm not the client, so really this is all just my $0.02.

[Neo Bri]

...he said kerning...

[hyperbolica]

Lowrbrass,
Some of your suggestions have already been discussed and decided the other way. Group design projects can involve a lot of tail chasing if you can't make decisions. I'm not designing this, just taking input and making an image. I'm deferring to the people who started this site before we needed it, Brian and Matt .

Input is great, but maybe read the rest of the thread to see what ground we've already covered. Or you can create and propose an image.

[jack]

I like this a lot! It's better than the current one in my opinion. The only thing that looks slightly off to me are the colors. It doesn't match the muted colors of the theme, but maybe that was on purpose? It definitely stands out more as is, but I prefer the colors used in the current heading.

Going back to my previous comment, I think once the design is finalized it should be SVG, rather than PNG for several reasons. The first reason goes back to this:

Okay, I think if we use this brownish hue (the darker of the browns from the original header), one with the text as white, and one where the text is a lighter shade of blue that should cover all the use cases we'd have.

With SVG, colors and outline can be changed on the fly with a few lines of CSS code added to each theme, it's very adaptable. Obviously with PNGs you'd have to create multiple files and a change would require exporting a new image/uploading it, etc.

It also has the benefit on being tiny file size and obviously since it's vector, will scale without losing quality. But either way, the image resolution of the current PNG is large enough for that not to be a big issue (not to mention the file size isn't anything crazy, either... currently 61.97 KB). Let me know what you think.

[LowrBrass]

Lowrbrass,
Some of your suggestions have already been discussed and decided the other way. Group design projects can involve a lot of tail chasing if you can't make decisions. I'm not designing this, just taking input and making an image. I'm deferring to the people who started this site before we needed it, Brian and Matt .

Input is great, but maybe read the rest of the thread to see what ground we've already covered. Or you can create and propose an image.

Ah sh!t. Sorry!
This is the downside of a 50+ -post thread.
I skimmed and missed things, and forgot earlier stuff that I *had* actually read.
As you were!

[ronnies]

* I agree with Ronnie, I'd prefer if the bell and slide were parallel to each other, even if it's not 100% realistic. It'd feel stronger, more balanced, more intentional, less "I had to draw it this way because that's the way my photo was."

Actually that's not what I meant. Slide and bell are very rarely parallel but the stays which hold the neckpipe and bell together usually are in my experience. Having them at two different angles to horizontal doesn't look right to me.

Ronnie

[Matt K]

* I agree with Ronnie, I'd prefer if the bell and slide were parallel to each other, even if it's not 100% realistic. It'd feel stronger, more balanced, more intentional, less "I had to draw it this way because that's the way my photo was."

Actually that's not what I meant. Slide and bell are very rarely parallel but the stays which hold the neckpipe and bell together usually are in my experience. Having them at two different angles to horizontal doesn't look right to me.

Ronnie

ohhh, I misunderstood your previous statement too then! I couldn't tell the bell braces weren't parallel with eachother.

I only know enough CSS to make rainbow text on a non-live site so we could do SVG, though it appears as though phpBB supports it. I wouldn't be opposed but I have no idea what that would entail on our end. I do know the logos would take only a minute for me to transfer over even to all the themes that we have. Though if we can dynamically color them that would be a plus.

Obviously there is some degree of being pulled in many directions when making such a decision by committee! I don't have a problem with the current logos we have (although I evidently need to fix the logo.png which for some reason seems to continue to not be updated on some browsers who have never touched the site...can't figure out if it's DNS caching on my sides or something else). Though I do like the way the newer one looks since most of the design elements were my idea I've been preoccupied this last week so my apologies for not being as active in it's creation as well. Too many choices! I will think about what has been posted and reflect on them and maybe post after work.

[ronnies]

Actually that's not what I meant. Slide and bell are very rarely parallel but the stays which hold the neckpipe and bell together usually are in my experience. Having them at two different angles to horizontal doesn't look right to me.

Ronnie

ohhh, I misunderstood your previous statement too then! I couldn't tell the bell braces weren't parallel with eachother.

Ah so that explains why I couldn't understand the comfort comment.

Ronnie

[BGuttman]

The slide on Hyperbolica's logo looks uncomfortably long. Maybe only underline "trombone" and not "chat".

Note that the two braces by the tuning slide are parallel, but not parallel to the bell brace. I'm not sure I find this uncomfortable.

I should point out that the colors seem to be keyed to the Latte and Latte Red themes. The Prosilver and many of the Flat themes would work better with black text.

[Neo Bri]

ohhh, I misunderstood your previous statement too then! I couldn't tell the bell braces weren't parallel with eachother.

Ah so that explains why I couldn't understand the comfort comment.

Ronnie

Triple and quadruple-nested quotes. I like this!

[Neo Bri]

Okay - before more work goes into either of these logos, we need a concensus of which will be used (unless hyperbolica's wife is happy doing all of this out of the kindness of her heart).

I'm okay turning everything over to a vote, though I like my logo better (with some more tweaking). No offense of course, and I really appreciate the work going in and also everyone's opinion.

[tbathras]

I'm still fine with the current logo, looks good on all my devices. Only small issue is the search box is placed a little weird

[Matt K]

I'm still fine with the current logo, looks good on all my devices. Only small issue is the search box is placed a little weird

That is one of the reasons I was originally advocating a smaller image but as mentioned, we can make whatever we decide to go with smaller. That is a lot easier than moving that box, oddly enough.

[BGuttman]

I'm cool with either.

Brian's color scheme is apparently dialed in for Latte and maybe we want to make a different color scheme for prosilver and flat (but they can both use the same scheme).

I agree that we can do with a smaller header -- maybe sized so it just misses the Search box.

[Neo Bri]

I'm still fine with the current logo, looks good on all my devices. Only small issue is the search box is placed a little weird

That is one of the reasons I was originally advocating a smaller image but as mentioned, we can make whatever we decide to go with smaller. That is a lot easier than moving that box, oddly enough.

Super easy to make it smaller - either design. Want me to upload one?

[Neo Bri]

This is 800x200.

[Neo Bri]

Here is 600x150.

[Neo Bri]

And here is 400 x 100.

[Neo Bri]

Try uploading some of these, Matt K and let's see how they scale.

[Matt K]

Try uploading some of these, Matt K and let's see how they scale.

Cool, I'll do that when I get home.

[jack]

This is how all three look (done via inspect element change).

800x200
600x150
400x100

400x100 works the best, even when the viewport is below 900px (because below 900px, the image itself doesn't scale down, since its max-width is set at 100%, but the search bar never gets close enough to touch it before it disappears).

But I'd argue that making the logo smaller shouldn't be done via the actual image resolution itself, but rather using CSS. So, for example, keep the current image as is, but change

Code: Select all

.logo img {
	display: block;
	max-width: 100%;
}

to something like:

Code: Select all

.logo img {
	display: block;
	max-width: 65%;
}

and then once the media rule

Code: Select all

@media (max-width: 700px) { ... }

is reached, change the logo's max-width back to 100% (now that there's no search bar).

[Neo Bri]

Yes good info here. But all things being equal, the banner is going to load EVERY time and smaller file sizes make that faster. And a smaller logo dimensionally will be a smaller file, too. Thoughts?

[Matt K]

Yes good info here. But all things being equal, the banner is going to load EVERY time and smaller file sizes make that faster. And a smaller logo dimensionally will be a smaller file, too. Thoughts?

Actually, it should seldom load if I'm not mistaken. Logos and such are cached, which is why even though the old logo.png doesn't exist on the server at all anymore I'm still seeing it on some machines.

Thanks for the info Jack, I'm working on that right now. I think that makes more sense to handle it that was as well!

[Neo Bri]

Yes good info here. But all things being equal, the banner is going to load EVERY time and smaller file sizes make that faster. And a smaller logo dimensionally will be a smaller file, too. Thoughts?

Actually, it should seldom load if I'm not mistaken. Logos and such are cached, which is why even though the old logo.png doesn't exist on the server at all anymore I'm still seeing it on some machines.

Thanks for the info Jack, I'm working on that right now. I think that makes more sense to handle it that was as well!

Ahh, good point. Didn't think about that.

[Matt K]

Looks like the CSS for this theme is generated using a different type of file for which the compiler does not exist on our server. I'll see if I can get it compiled to do that dynamically. In the meantime, I've put the smaller logo in its stead.

[Neo Bri]

Not bad - I think the 600 px one would probably be perfect.

[jack]

Looks like the CSS for this theme is generated using a different type of file for which the compiler does not exist on our server. I'll see if I can get it compiled to do that dynamically. In the meantime, I've put the smaller logo in its stead.

Ah, yep - Sass is being used. That complicates it a little bit, you'd have to change the line 279 in the _common.scss partial to max-width: 65%, save it, then add max-width: 100%; to the line after 196 in _responsive.scss, save, then compile stylesheets.scss. If you can't get the compiling process to happen dynamically/don't want to compile on your machine and then upload the compiled css file, this might be a good option? It's written by the author of this latte theme - it does the process via phpBB interface, compiles to .css using his server then sends it back here.

Not bad - I think the 600 px one would probably be perfect.

The problem with that is that the image doesn't scale as the viewport shrinks, so at 701px wide, using the 600px-wide logo, the page looks like this. With the original-sized logo and the CSS changes, the logo scales as the viewport shrinks, so never touches the search bar.