Develop logo and brand identity guidelines for AsciiDoc

AsciiDoc has never had an official logo, so we need to create one. This effort should be framed as an initial logo design rather than a redesign. (In other words, please disregard all previous brand identity, or lack thereof). The AsciiDoc Working Group (WG) is responsible for the AsciiDoc brand identity and provides the governance structure to coordinate and manage this effort.

Please note that the development of the AsciiDoc logo is a blocker for the relaunch of asciidoc.org.

The AsciiDoc WG has a temporary logo. It was created as a placeholder until the AsciiDoc WG at Eclipse was fully formed and had the necessary budget to undertake this initiative. Please disregard the temporary logo when designing the official logo. It's not a reflection of the AsciiDoc brand identity.

Design brief

The style we're aiming for is modern, minimalistic, and/or abstract. Among other places, the logo will be prominently featured on the relaunch of the asciidoc.org site. The current asciidoc.org site, which has stood for over two decades, looks very antiquated and is precisely the early dot-com, raw HTML look from which we're aiming to escape.

Shapes we may want to incorporate into the logo are an equals sign (=), a dot (.), the letter "A", and the letter "D". The equals sign is notable because it's the first character in most AsciiDoc documents and as a marker for section titles. It's also used as an enclosure for example, admonition, and collapsible blocks. The dot is significant because it's the first character of a block title. Since both "A" and "D" are uppercase letters in AsciiDoc, we should avoid using the lowercase version of these letters in the logo as that would be misleading.

We often say that the AsciiDoc language is a form of digital shorthand. So we could play on the concept of shorthand writing in the logo.

Color

We want AsciiDoc to make a bold statement that it's entering a new era, that it's here to stay, and that it's evolving. Let's get away from anything that looks stale, corporate, or conservative. Where on the spectrum the color falls we leave up to the discretion of the designer, but it should appear bright and lively. Possible ideas are international orange or bright forest green. We'd like to avoid blue and avoid yellow. But we're also open to new ideas that shatter or preconceived notions about color.

The logo should work when shown in all white on a dark background for the purpose of being placed alongside other brand identities (sponsor lists, trade show booths, etc).

Variants / logo family

The AsciiDoc logo needs to be designed in a way that it can support a logo family (sort of like the Jakarta EE logo). We know we need to support several variants:

• to represent the language (and AsciiDoc as a whole)
• as a favicon for the asciidoc.org site
• to represent a compatible implementation
• to represent an AsciiDoc file (i.s., filetype) (like you see in from of .md files shown here https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipse/chess/chess)
• to represent the working group (perhaps like for https://tangle.ee/, also see on https://www.eclipse.org/org/artwork/#wg-logos)

Usage and brand identity guidelines

We want these logos to be accompanied by usage and brand identity guidelines. Here are some of the things to consider in those guidelines:

• AsciiDoc is not to be written in all uppercase (wrong: ASCIIDOC)
• AsciiDoc is not to be written with ASCII in uppercase (wrong: ASCIIDoc or ASCIIdoc)
• AsciiDoc is not to be written with a lowercase "d" (wrong: Asciidoc)
• AsciiDoc can be written in all lowercase in code when uppercase is not permitted (correct: asciidoc)
• If the "a" in AsciiDoc is lowercase in code, the "d" should not be uppercase (wrong: asciiDoc)
• AsciiDoc is a registered trademark, so define when the registered trademark symbol is required

We'll iterate until there's general agreement that we're satisfied with the result. Ultimately, the AsciiDoc WG Steering Committee will vote on the design. But that vote will take into account feedback from the AsciiDoc community-at-large.

Relationship to Asciidoctor logo

The Asciidoctor project, out of which this initiative emerged, has its own logo. That logo could be a source of inspiration, but must remain visually distinct as it represents itself rather than AsciiDoc. One way to draw a distinction is for the AsciiDoc logo to use both the "A" and the "D", contrasting with Asciidoctor's use of only the "A". It also reinforces that the A and D are uppercase in AsciiDoc.

Contract

We will be using Ura Design as the design firm to develop the logo and brand guidelines.