Develop a logo for AsciiDoc
AsciiDoc has never had an official logo, so one needs to be developed. The AsciiDoc WG has a temporary logo, which was created as a placeholder until the AsciiDoc effort at Eclipse was fully formed. But that logo is not official. The AsciiDoc TLP provides the necessary governance structure to proceed with this effort. We should frame this effort as an initial logo design rather than a redesign.
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 look from which we're looking to escape.
It's important to note that the development of the AsciiDoc logo is a blocker for the relaunch of asciidoc.org.
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.
The AsciiDoc logo needs to be designed in a way that it can support variants and possibly derivatives from a template, sort of like the Jakarta logo. We know we need to support several variants:
- to represent the language (and AsciiDoc as a whole)
- to represent a compliant implementation (perhaps like you see on https://jakarta.ee/compatibility/)
- 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 https://www.eclipse.org/org/artwork/#wg-logos)
Naturally, we'll want these logos to be accompanied by usage guidelines.
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.
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.