Most of the logo decisions have been made and we’re ironing out the last details of font placement. Open questions are:
- What text placement do we like?
- Which of the new AcousticBrainz logos we we like?
- For the large MusicBrainz logo, do we want to have the drop shadows?
As usual, let us know your thoughts on our blog!
(P.S. Some of the logos have some minor artifacts on them — we’re aware of them and we’ll fix those in the final logos)
MetaBrainz Blog 
1. I like the placements where it’s all one line. This also means I’m not a fan of the current Picard one – I’d place the music & brainz as for MB itself, with the Picard centered underneath the icon.
2. I like the top one on both pages. Slight preference for the very first one (i like the analog line flowing into the synapses, although it should perhaps have an extra oscillation peak in it)
3. No drop shadow
4. Bookbrainz: preference for the second (slightly darker) color
I like the progressive thing, and how the single line on the “medium” CB icon still lines up with the second line in the speech bubble. And yay for BB logos! I know we talked about a green colour the other day in #bookbrainz-devel, but that would also potentially put it too close to the MeB logo.
A few bothers:
1) For the names split over two lines, it bugs me that they’re not con-nected by a dash. It’s one word, not two.
2) The CB and Picard hexagons have the middle speech bubble line and the tag’s string respectively lined up with the lines on the “brain” side. It bothers me that the neither the BB logos nor all of the ABz logos line up as well.
Those are my initial thoughts. I’ll pop in again if something else comes to mind.
Edit: I’m partial to the shadowed version.
I don’t like the ones where MUSICBRAINZ, etc. is broken by the logo or a new line. It looks okay either to the right of the logo or underneath.
Having all the letters uppercase makes them look too SERIOUS BUSINESS to me. Not sure what the font would look like as “MusicBrainz” instead of “MUSICBRAINZ” but I think it’d be a lot better.
Page 2 – I prefer the shadow, it makes it look more polished.
Page 3/4 – Don’t like the multi-line variant – it splits up the concepts, and reads like “Music” then “Brainz” rather than “MusicBrainz” – we don’t store data about “Brainz” 😉 Also, I don’t like centering the break between words underneath the logo, since it’s not symmetrical (esp. for CB).
Page 5 – If you adopt the TEXTTEXTTEXT style, then PICARD no longer needs a MUSICBRAINZ to balance it out, if that helps make the logo more compact. Alternatively, there’s no longer an issue with unmatched colours if you do MUSICBRAINZ PICARD.
Page 6/7 – Favourite is 7-1. 7-3 reminds me too much of skyscrapers, and I prefer the mirroring in the horizontal axis. I also like the two tone effect on 7-1.
Page 8 – I like the icon, but I think the yellow needs to be a creamier, old page colour. As an alternative, could we also try dark green/dark red, like bookbrainz.mbsandbox.org/images/bb_green.png (google image search “leather bound book”)? I’d like to give the impression of libraries, leather-bound books, studies – everything that’s cosy and interesting about reading.
For the MetaBrainz logo here, has the decision been made to use orange on the right side for all logos? I like the idea of being able to differentiate projects by varying the right side as well. It makes sense to me to use orange for all the MusicBrainz-oriented projects, but I think it reduces the available space of colors for other projects. I’m not particularly fond of either BookBrainz color here and I’m having difficulty finding something that plays well off the orange.
Page 2 – I would skip the shadow thing, keep it simple, a shadowed variation may come later (giving a 3D style ie. for large prints, but imho useless on icons, small web images, etc.)
Page 5 – Logo is ok for me, but i don’t like the splitted 2 colours MUSICBRAINZ text on the right of it
Page 6/7 – I have a clear preference for the 7.1 logo
Page 8 – I think the book page drawing isn’t obvious enough, did you try to add (stylized) writings on the page ? I think it is hard to identify as a page since it is only the half of a book. Colour isn’t great for me either.
I don’t like the ones where MUSICBRAINZ, etc. is broken by the logo or a new line. (i agree with @mwiencek on this point).
I also would like to see variations with “MusicBrainz” instead of “MUSICBRAINZ”, especially for non-splitted versions.
Overall, i think this work will be a real improvement, keep up the good work !
I like this a lot!
+1 to seeing how “MusicBrainz” looks instead of the ALLCAPS approach.
I kind of get what people see in 7.1, but it still irks me that the lines from the right side do not align with the ones on the left.
5moufl couldn’t post this for some reason so doing it for him:
I’ll do this page by page:
)
1. All good except for the MB one, I think both letters should be on the same side or maybe above/below
2. No shadow.
3-4. I don’t have a strong preference after looking at them for a while although I preferred the “everything on the same line” approach at first.
5. Drop the MusicBrainz mention for picard? or maybe only use the initials? Mirror the logo? (I know it would be break consistency
6-7. I like the 5th option (second one on page 7) the best. (then 4, 3, 1, 2, 6)
8. I prefer the darker shade.
I mentioned mirroring the logo, it could be used to differentiate different kinds of projects. Just a thought.
I also wonder what they all look like on a dark background.
Oh, from 5moufl’s comments: some people in #musicbrainz-devel talked about using the MusicBrainz logo’s left side with the Picard “tag” side on the right. That could also be an interesting way of using this logo “formula”.
I think it needs a little top to bottom gradient, just something to encourage the eye to move across it. I also think the orange is too desaturated.
I’ve been off MB for a while, so wow, these look really nice!
p. 2: Without shadow is better.
p. 3: Both are fine, both could be useful in different contexts.
p. 4: Now that Ben mentioned it, the asymmetry of the single-line CB logo really looks awkward. I think that makes that variant (single line of text below logo) unworkable. But the other variant (double line of text below logo) is fine.
pp. 6–7: My preferences, in order, are 7.1, 7.2, 6.3, 6.2, 7.3, 6.1
p. 8: Brown is better.
Some other comments:
In the second-to-biggest logo size (like on pages 3–4), the circuitry in the left half of the logo looks more like scissors handles. Maybe add one more node to avoid that confusion?
In some of the examples where the text is split by the logo (pages 2, 5–8), the gap on the right, between the logo and “BRAINZ,” is smaller than the gap on the left, between the logo and “MUSIC” etc. They should look the same. Because the final letters on the left (C, E, D, K and especially A) all naturally have some extra space around and/or inside them, they may actually have to sit a little closer to the logo than the B on the right in order for the gaps to match visually.