Alright, fiery crossbows and blasphemies aside, I’m wondering if anyone has ever thought Ember’s Tomster can remain our mascot, but perhaps the Ember wordmark could use an actual logo.
A quick google search, but I don’t see anyone jumping into that sort of a task.
This all stems from a need to present various javascript frameworks (and of course Ember’s my framework of choice)
But this doesn’t really hold a lot of water in business meetings…
Alright willing and ready to take a pummeling, but also somewhat excited to hear any thoughts / ideas.
The current logo is full of character and I personally like it.
But it’s unfortunate that in many (most?) companies the decision makers are not the technical experts. The bigger the company the more likely it seems to be the case. So yes, I’d bet money that ember is losing many projects simply because of the logo.
I’d love to see ember gain more traction. And if changing the logo would help, I’m all for it.
Couldn’t agree more, obviously you dont pick a framework because of its logo, but this is not for the coders or even development managers. This is for VPs and higher level perhaps.
Totally agree that the wordmark works
But a wordmark is not a logo, and a logo for ember that measures up to the other two could be pretty stellar.
The point is Ember is definitely fun, and Tomster should stay, but it would be fun to see a design exploration into simple logo / icons.
I guess I find the reality of non-technical people picking technical software to be more silly than Tomster.
I think the idea of changing the logo is fine, if the reason doesn’t endorse this backwards notion of non-technical people making important technical decisions which they know nothing about.
I do want to point out that of the three logos, Ember is the only one represented which actually says what it is. Regardless of Tomster, you can at least Google for “ember”. I don’t know what the hell you’d Google for the others…
Sure hope those non-technical-technical-decision-makers didn’t fall asleep during your framework pitch, because you might be stuck with Ember, because they couldn’t research a stupid shield or Tron lines and just went with the cute hamster, because… Internet=cute.
@jgwhite I’ve had comments saying that the framework might be good for side projects but that it doesn’t look serious enough for software in a professional environment.
I just stopped putting the mascot in my slides for that reason.
You can say it’s silly all you want, but that’s my personal experience.
@ggohierroy sure, just trying to get a sense of the situation.
My two cents, for what they’re worth:
Tomster represents something far more important than how serious and/or capable the framework is: it represents how approachable the community is. To adopt an open source solution without also engaging with its community is to miss out on a huge part of its value. Tomster is here to remind us of our ultimate goal: developer happiness.
I think the wordmark is fine for presentations that might be negatively impacted by the presence of Tomster. If we’re really worrying about these sorts of things basically the entire color palette for emberjs.com is too cutesy for “serious business”.
Having two logos seems like a disaster of an idea. I’d say keep Tomster and use the wordmark for cases where it isn’t audience appropriate. Considering Angular does alright with a big “A” and some graphics simply pulling the “e” from the wordmark probably would work. That’s what this forum does in the top-left navigation element, and it seems fine.
Probably the best action item here would be to create a “branding” page that offers these options and provides a high resolution version of the imagery. The logo seems like a good fit for the core audience, the real issue here seems to be promoting more business-friendly alternatives to it.
@atsjj I want to make sure folks know that I freaking love Tomster, and I don’t honestly care about the philosophical debate on who’s in charge, because we can’t change that.
Also the wordmark is totally cool also. I’m just curious if we want a logo since so far we have a wordmark and mascot.
@jgwhite I think its really not an either or scenario, I think Tomster should live forever.
@awj I think the caveat here is the need for something concise and small. Right now the logo (and favicon for this very forum) is just a cursive e
So perhaps that cursive e went through a branding exercise, ultimately if thats the logo that’s cool, it just seems like they just took ember and lobbed off the E
@drewcovi I don’t mean to be rollin’ relentless on the philosophy, but I do feel justified in trying to gain an understanding of why we ended up with something like Tomster and why we would do something else; some of the reasons above didn’t feel right.
That being said, please don’t take it personal. I’d like to share my love for this discussion and thank you for bringing it up. Honestly, this is a lot of fun discussing!
OK, so I would like to get some clarification from our Ember presenters that have removed Tomster:
Did you remove the Tomster based on your own assumptions about the community logo, or did you actually get feedback from your audience?
How do you feel about the official wordmark logo?
What is your comfort level branding with Ember’s colors; what scheme would you prefer?
Tomster is playful, approachable, and the opposite of what I’d expect from a corporate big business software project like Angular. Even the Ember wordmark appears casual and handwritten, in contrast to the sharp edges (pun intended) of the Angular wordmark.
Just want to say again that I love Tomster like an unborn child. Perhaps the real question is whether the word mark could use a better logo than a cursive “e”
