It'd be nice to have something that ties it to Fedora visually, without being the Fedora Project logo. Kind of like the Ask Fedora logo!

Hello! Here's an idea I'd like to share for the logo.
It's a VERY rough design, so let me know if you would like any changes to be made.
I plan on adding the "fedora" text above the main text like in the 'Ask Fedora' logo, but I thought I'd first see if you like the idea before I request the fedora logo and work on it any further.
Like I said, it's a very rough design so any additional ideas are welcome! I have a few other iterations I might make but again, after I hear back from you.
I'm a bit of a beginner at this so I apologise if this is nothing like what you wanted.

Hello! Here's an idea I'd like to share for the logo.
It's a VERY rough design, so let me know if you would like any changes to be made.
I plan on adding the "fedora" text above the main text like in the 'Ask Fedora' logo, but I thought I'd first see if you like the idea before I request the fedora logo and work on it any further.
Like I said, it's a very rough design so any additional ideas are welcome! I have a few other iterations I might make but again, after I hear back from you.
I'm a bit of a beginner at this so I apologise if this is nothing like what you wanted.

To be honest, that is better than I imagined. I'd never thought of doing a briefcase instead of a tie.
Don't put "Fedora" anywhere on the logo. Although many (most) of the packages in EPEL come straight from Fedora, they are built off RHEL. We've found that when we say "Fedora's EPEL" or anything like that, it confused people. They start looking for the "RHEL EPEL".

Hello! Here's an idea I'd like to share for the logo.
It's a VERY rough design, so let me know if you would like any changes to be made.
I plan on adding the "fedora" text above the main text like in the 'Ask Fedora' logo, but I thought I'd first see if you like the idea before I request the fedora logo and work on it any further.
Like I said, it's a very rough design so any additional ideas are welcome! I have a few other iterations I might make but again, after I hear back from you.
I'm a bit of a beginner at this so I apologise if this is nothing like what you wanted.

To be honest, that is better than I imagined. I'd never thought of doing a briefcase instead of a tie.
Don't put "Fedora" anywhere on the logo. Although many (most) of the packages in EPEL come straight from Fedora, they are built off RHEL. We've found that when we say "Fedora's EPEL" or anything like that, it confused people. They start looking for the "RHEL EPEL".

And now I'm going to put my "tie" on and carry my briefcase. As much as I like this centaur, and I really do, as Matt said above, it doesn't match any of the other Fedora (or RHEL) logos. Maybe it just needs to be tweaked with the word on the side, or made blue, or something.

But the more I look at it, the more I like it and feel it has the spirit of EPEL. Half man carrying a briefcase, very businesslike and stable. Half horse, carrying a sword, running free and cutting through any obstacle.

I wonder if there's room for both a logo and a mascot? Because I too enjoy the crazy-in-a-good-way symbolism, but it feels like there is a lot going on for a logo, which needs really clean, easily-recognizable shapes.

True, maybe this would be a good mascot. Similar to how Fedora has that badger that shows up everywhere.

Should I open a separate issue for an EPEL mascot?

Hello, thank you so much for the feedback! Glad you like it!
So I was wondering if I should make more changes and try to make it more logo-like?
Or if I should submit it as the mascot instead?
Anyway, I think I'll put the svg here so anyone more experienced than myself can have a shot at editing it!

It'd be nice to have something that ties it to Fedora visually, without being the Fedora Project logo. Kind of like the Ask Fedora logo!

Love this suggestion, and I think it could be fairly easily accomplished by using the same font as the new Fedora logo.

Going a step further, how about the letter "e" on top of the...teardrop? I don't know what the background shape is called in the Fedora logo.

Better?

@firelily52 Did you get part of that illustration sourced from somewhere or did you draw it yourself?

Tried to mock up my own idea.

Oh, I like that. Now I understand what you were talking about in the above comment.

This is the original image, I edited it on GIMP to make the image in the logo.

Well, actually I traced it to make my own copy, then edited that copy, so I used this as a template.

@firelily52 what is the license of the original image? Where did it come from?

Going a step further, how about the letter "e" on top of the...teardrop? I don't know what the background shape is called in the Fedora logo.

I like this concept! We call it the "bubble" -- like a speech bubble -- because it comes from the original Fedora slogan "freedom, infinity, voice".

http://clipart-library.com/clipart/rijRqMG7T.htm
The licence says personal use.

@firelily52 Ah ok. Unfortunately private use isn't going to be workable for ab EPEL logo :-(

I understand, sorry about that, I'll make sure I check the license of the image before I use it next time. Lesson learnt! Would you like me to remake it with a different image?

That's ok. I think we need a concept before artwork. What was the story behind centaura, ants, and ties? How do they relate?

That's ok. I think we need a concept before artwork. What was the story behind centaura, ants, and ties? How do they relate?

The idea behind them is that EPEL is more geared towards Enterprise and/or business work.

The ants and ties come from the EPEL badges, specifically the "Corporate Drone"
https://badges.fedoraproject.org/badge/corporate-drone

The Centaura came about because someone mentioned that EPEL was a fusion of Fedora and RHEL. But we couldn't use RHEL anywhere, so it's a fusions of Fedora and CentOS. This leads to Centora or Fedos. When you say Centora aloud sounds like Centaur.

Maybe we can put an ant icon in the 'bubble' instead? (sorry for such a late reply, I've been a bit busy)

We had some discussion about this, and decided having the ant in the 'bubble' isn't a good idea.
Most everyone thought it looked like a 'bug' and didn't want epel being associated with bugs. Especially if people don't know anything about epel and are seeing this for the first time.

I personally am leaning towards having the e in the bubble.

Here is an SVG of having the e in the bubble.

Hello! One last suggestion by me; I thought you might like the centaur in the bubble instead?
Sorry for being so persistent, just making sure all ideas are explored.
Don't worry, I won't use the same centaur in the actual design but since I haven't made a new one yet I'm using this for the time being to illustrate the design, if you like this idea then let me know and I will get to making a new centaur!

My svg wasn't showing up, so I loaded a png

Now that I can see both the e and the business centaur in the bubble, I'm torn, because I like them both.

But if I give it the "across the room" test, I'm going to have to go with the e in the bubble.

The "across the room" test is this: If I am in a conference, and on the other side of the vendors room from the booth with my icon, will I be able to tell the product the icon stands for.

But, now that I look at it, I see a glaring problem. It's all in lower case, while EPEL is supposed to all be in upper case.

But, now that I look at it, I see a glaring problem. It's all in lower case, while EPEL is supposed to all be in upper case.

Hmmmm, this is an area where I'll defer to Mo's branding expertise, but I don't think that's necessarily a big problem. In the Fedora wordmark (as well as in the logo), "fedora" uses a lower-case 'f', but we've never stylized it as "fedora" in text.

I don't mind the casing. One could make the similar argument that the F in Fedora should always be capitalized, but it's lowercase in the logo.

I would like to see the e in the bubble be different somehow, similar to the Fedora logo, to differentiate the e in the bubble from the first e outside the bubble. I would be interested in seeing side by side examples of different variations on the casing.

• (e) EPEL
• (E) epel
• (E) EPEL

Let me come up with a few options here based on the discussion / sketches so far.

Sorry, got these done before I saw your comment. But, Just so people can see what they might look like.

OK so let me show you what I came up with so far and some of my thinking.

First, what I took from the discussion so far:

• We want EPEL to have a logo that looks very much part of the Fedora brand family but also can stand a bit on its own.
• While the use of an ant as a symbol was one idea, in practice there is a concern it could be interpreted as related to bugs, connotating that EPEL is buggy. (Good call, IMHO)
• Another idea was using a centaur as a symbol because of the similarity between Centos + Fedora = Cent-ora. The half business / half getting it done kind of concept of a centaur also relates.
• Generally looking for a professional kind of feeling here.

From the discussion it seemed to be a centaur would be the right symbol to start with as a base. First I took a look at the Fedora editions logo set. A Fedora edition is a little more tightly bound to Fedora's core brand than EPEL should be, but at the same time they each have an independent identity too and have specific user audiences, so I felt it a good place to start in thinking about what kind of treatment to consider.

So one of the things we did with the edition logos is we have a common grid (roughly 3x3) in which the shapes are drawn. (Originally we also had a 'cloud' logo that was an abstract cloud formed by three horiz lines.) So I felt to kind of match this format, we should have a heavily abstracted form of pegasus, maybe not as strict as the 3x3 grid, but similar shapes.

This was my first attempt:

Three things here:
- The comfortaa font should be reserved for rare occasions and I don't think this should be one, esp. since EPEL is kind of a "cousin" brand and not a brand under Fedora (eg it's not "Fedora EPEL") (correct me if I am wrong here on the EPEL brand positioning)
- I used the font Montserrat in a bolder face than we typically use in Fedora. It is the main Fedora branding font used for editions, etc. - just bolder.
- the artwork here is just a bit too detailed to hang with the edition work. It's ok if its a bit more detailed since it's not an edition itself but this is too different I think to hang together as a related family member.

So then I ended up with this progression:

You can see where I started simplifying the details, then adding some whitespace / spacing between shapes to try to emulate the use of whitespace in the edition logos.

Some more simplification:

I started struggling at this point because of that 3x3 grid being insufficient to render a centaur, you see how the human torso bit is just not really working out so simplified. But I really started liking the shape of the tail with the curl in it and saw how it could relate to the 3x3 grid and maybe be a bit of a symbol of the centaur itself -

So this is where I'm at. It's very abstract - basically meant to be a centaur's tail. But it hangs loosely with the edition logos, looks Fedora-y (in my estimation anyway), and also is professional in its abstractness.

LMKWYT

It's very simple, yet professional looking. I passes my "across the room" test.

I think my only issue with it, is that if you take the word EPEL off, it's just a shape. If you look at the other logo's, you can see a workstation, server, core, and lots of little things.

EPEL stands for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. What if we focused on the Extra, or Extra Packages.

I could almost see what you have, and with a little coloring, make it look like a ratchet tightening a bolt.

I'm not meaning the bolt thing in a bad way. I'm meaning we're adding something onto Enterprise Linux. Adding something Extra.

since EPEL is kind of a "cousin" brand and not a brand under Fedora (eg it's not "Fedora EPEL") (correct me if I am wrong here on the EPEL brand positioning)

Soooooo.... there are good reasons to not say "Fedora EPEL", because it leads some people to think basically the opposite -- builds of enterprise packages on Fedora Linux.

But inside Red Hat, I say it basically every time I mention EPEL, because I want RH management (and particularly the business-side folks!) to remember where this comes from and that they really can't have EPEL without continual investment in Fedora. (There's no current risk to that investment, but it's also really good to keep that reminder present.)

Which, all together, I kind of like it having a similar font, and in particular the smiling "e". It feels to me like it makes a tight visual connection without requiring words.

@mattdm I just don't feel comfortable using comfortaa (lol comfortable / comfortaa, sigh) outside of the main Fedora logo. It's outside of what we've done before, and the styling of the font is a bit dated in terms of what Fedora uses for titling (Montserrat)... we used it specifically in the Fedora logotype to have an open source version of the old Bryant font as to not introduce a lot of chang in making a logo iteration... but it would be a step backwards to me in my opinion to start using Comfortaa for subbrands again when we haven't done that for... I don't know maybe 8 years or so?

But I hear you on wanting the positioning to Fedora to be a bit closer so Ill try to think of other ways to do that without having to resort to Comfortaa here.

@duffy Makes sense on the old font, yeah.

@tdawson

"If you look at the other logo's, you can see a workstation, server, core, and lots of little things."

I would argue if you werent familiar with those logos and they did not have the text adjacent to them, you might be hard pressed to read those meanings into the shapes as well - they are extremely abstract.

EPEL itself is an acronym so it doesn't have meaning written as "EPEL" if you don't know what it stands for.

"EPEL stands for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. What if we focused on the Extra, or Extra Packages."

I think this is an interesting approach; would this work OK because we don't have red in the Fedora palette?

Looks red enough for me. I think the extra color adds something to it.

Just adding a few thoughts here after reading through the abstraction process. I like the simplicity here.

I explored:

1. Adding piece separation.
2. Adding a puzzle element.

And I thought about bringing back the briefcase (maybe just a handle on the central block) but didn't do it.

"a" is @duffy most recent render (I approximated in inkscape) and the others are iterations for additional thought.

For clarity of intent, the reddish piece is adding something extra to the other element ;)

I like the e option, but I would suggest some color changes. The left wing can be in red color representing rhel and the right wing can be yellow (or some other color from centos logo) representing centos stream and middle can be in blue color representing fedora which distributes epel. These are all tied together (puzzle pieces joined) representing the make and usage of EPEL. WDYT?

@kylerconway I like b because it introduces the negative space gap between the shapes that the other edition logos have.

I worry that the puzzle piece bits are a bit too on the nose, and wonder if there would be a more abstract way of conveying the same info. (Maybe it is as simple as using lego-style nubs for the interconnect the way the server edition logo does?)

@duffy -- agree with the "on-the-nose" comment. "b" was my favorite as well - though depending on sizing it might be good to increase the separation.

I've added lego-style below and included the svg.

What if we combined B and E.

Instead of having puzzle pieces, just have two negative space gaps. And, as Mohan said, three colors. One Red, one blue, one something else that looks good. Possibly the dark blue of the font. Yellow might be ok, or purple, or something else.

I think having the two negative space gaps would still give it a recognizable look, even if it was one color, for those times you need it in one color.

And what if we orient the logo as well, so that it looks like letter N representing EPEL NEXT as well?

And what if we orient the logo as well, so that it looks like letter N representing EPEL NEXT as well?

That would be confusing. The logo is for EPEL, not for it's sub-projects.
After we finish the logo, we can look at logo's for the sub projects, such as next or the SIG.

I'm also not against the e in the bubble idea. Or maybe even an E in the center block.

I think the two-color one works better than the three colors, FWIW.

I think the two-color one works better than the three colors, FWIW.

I agree. I did try some different colors, (yellow, green, purple) and all of them looked fairly ... not good.

Yeah, two color option is better as I initially suggested, but I prefer not to have anything inside the middle block (like E from above examples) also I think its better to have different spectrum of colors rather than two shades of blue as in above example.

I did some more thinking on this inspired by @kylerconway 's tweaks, lmk what you think... these are in chronological order as I played with it, we kind of ended up with an E in the end.

As much as I like the balanced and rotated shape from the centaur's tail, I really do enjoy option #6 because with the 3 pieces you can represent ALL letters (E.P.E. and L.) which is pretty fun!

I am not sure I can articulate why, but "Rotate (4)" and "Dbl-Notch (3)" jump out at me as pleasing.

I am not sure I can articulate why, but "Rotate (4)" and "Dbl-Notch (3)" jump out at me as pleasing.

It sort of looks like a socket wrench, but it also has a diagonal symmetry which is pretty appealing

"Rotate (4)" makes me think "RHEL base, extended by Fedora", which is nice.

I like (3) (4) (5) and (6). Each for a different reason. So I'm not being helpful there, cuz I would be happy with either of them.

(3) - Symmetrical and tilted. Just feels right to me.
(4) - Symmetrical and not-tilted. More real to life ratcheting. Which seems right as well.
(5) - E for EPEL, with the nut the correct shape. I can pictures the letters, and I like the nut the right shape.
(6) - E for EPEL. The nut with the spur doesn't seem right to me, but I can picture E better with it.

Sorry, alot of words, but not much help. :)

"Rotate (4)" makes me think "RHEL base, extended by Fedora", which is nice.

Would it work better if the bottom component was blue and the top magenta?

Would it work better if the bottom component was blue and the top magenta?

Not at all, the bottom component being magenta to me would signify the RHEL (or RHEL-like) base, which then goes further by EPEL layered on top of it.

Would it work better if the bottom component was blue and the top magenta?

Not at all, the bottom component being magenta to me would signify the RHEL (or RHEL-like) base, which then goes further by EPEL layered on top of it.

Ooohhh I think I see - the magenta as a sub-in for the red of RHEL?

Ooohhh I think I see - the magenta as a sub-in for the red of RHEL?

Exactly.

I am liking where this is going, but I'd also love to see a centaur mascot. We need more mascots. :)

Should we file a separate ticket for that?

I am liking where this is going, but I'd also love to see a centaur mascot. We need more mascots. :)

Should we file a separate ticket for that?

Mascot ticket filed
https://pagure.io/design/issue/775

This is the first time I've worked through creating a logo the Fedora way. How long does this usually take?
I guess my real question is, can I use any of these in my talk at Flock/Nest next week?

@tdawson I don't see why not... which is your fav? You could explain it's a WIP. I'm not familiar w EPEL governance - is there a regular meeting it could be voted on maybe?

I like both dbl-notch (3) and rotate (4), but since Carl likes rotate (4), I would go with (4).

Yes, we have a weekly meeting. It's today in fact. We could have a vote on which they like out of the six on https://pagure.io/design/issue/770#comment-744088

I'll be sure to preface the vote that it's still a work in progress, but that we want to know the direction we should go.

@tdawson Oh OK great, if you could do a vote today that would be fantastic. I think 4 is a good direction, 3 and 4 are actually my favs as well. Let me know how it goes and I can prep it in a format you can use for your preso.

I like 3 and 4 as well. I lean toward 3 because I like the tilt making it look like the relationship is more symbiotic.

We had a vote in our committee meeting. I asked for each person to pick their favorite, and second favorite. It looks like 4 won, because everyone voted for it, either as first or second. And then everything else got a smattering of votes.
1st: 0(0) 1(0) 2(0) 3(2) 4(1) 5(1) 6(1)
2nd: 0(0) 1(0) 2(1) 3(0) 4(4) 5(0) 6(0)

To give it weight, I gave all 1st votes 2 points, and all 2nd votes 1 point.
0(0) 1(0) 2(1) 3(4) 4(6) 5(2) 6(2)

So either way, 4 got the most points/votes. So let's go with rotate (4)

Just to comment, I realize this isn't the final logo, but it gives us a direction to go on. And it gives me something to use for Flock/Nest.

Any way we can get rotate (4) in an SVG format?

Sure thing, attached :)

Sure thing, attached :)

Thank You

What is the next steps for a logo?
I've put the logo on our web page and used it in my presentation. I haven't heard a single "I don't like that". Nothing other than "OK".

In short, what get's us to the point that we can legally make t-shirts and hats?

@tdawson I think you are good to go. If the EPEL folks are cool with the rotate-04 version you've been using and no complaints, I say go with it :)

If you want to order t-shirts and hats and that sort of thing... let me put together a CMYK version for you. Do you have vendors in mind that have specific specs - you may want some color variants depending on the color of the shirt, etc.

I was asked to show what the logo would look like without the "nut" in the middle. Here it is.

I was the one that asked, and I do like it better without the middle section. If I'm the only one that feels that way, I'm not opposed to the rotate-04 version from before.

Carl's voice should count many times mine here, but for what it's worth I prefer the triple version, both because of the reference to the E (even if it's hidden in the "twist" of the bottom) and because the more-square format seems a lot easier to work with.

My preference is version 4 (what we currently have) over version 7.
Having the nut in the middle feels more like it's building something versus just putting two things together. If that makes sense to others.

We had our EPEL Steering Committee meeting today. We had a RCV vote and rotate-04 won the vote. It was closer than I would have liked. We are moving forward with rotate-04, but with the condition that if after a year we find that rotate-04 has problems we will revisit the epel logo.

Can we use this rotate-04 shifted "E" image in Copr code, as a chroot icon?
We've been using "CentOS" symbol for EPEL historically, but since we are moving
EPEL 8+ to RHEL (and stay with CentOS 7 for EPEL 7), we should change something.
I believe that the EPEL logo seems OK. Example of icons:
https://copr-fe-dev.cloud.fedoraproject.org/coprs/praiskup/ping/

Can we use this rotate-04 shifted "E" image in Copr code, as a chroot icon?
We've been using "CentOS" symbol for EPEL historically, but since we are moving
EPEL 8+ to RHEL (and stay with CentOS 7 for EPEL 7), we should change something.
I believe that the EPEL logo seems OK. Example of icons:
https://copr-fe-dev.cloud.fedoraproject.org/coprs/praiskup/ping/

Yes
The icon itself can be used. This is especially useful for small icons like what you are using them for.

Ok, proposing here: https://pagure.io/copr/copr/pull-request/2031