OpenWetWare:Logo and Promo Poster Discussion

Jen's Ideas

Here are some ideas based on the discussion below. Please comment and feel free to make suggestions.

General Ideas

I know Felice Fraenkel had some contact with Drew and maybe the lab? She seems to be good at visualizing abstract concepts which might be what we need (see the comment below). Anyone know her enough to be able to talk to her about it and see if she has comments/suggestions?--BC 14:46, 13 January 2006 (EST)

--I know Felice from when I worked at Whitehead Institute. Would you like me to get in touch with her and see if she has any input for the logo or poster design?--Jencc 11:19, 23 January 2006 (EST)
--Hi Jen, if you want to talk about this project with Felice that would be awesome. Based on what I've seen of her work she could be very helpful to you and us.--BC 12:20, 23 January 2006 (EST)

We also need to address the issue for how to communicate what we want. How does one represent the idea of on open biology community in a graphic? It seems like the ideas behind OpenWetWare might be difficult to represent graphically. Maybe we should think about abstract ways of expressing what OWW represents (adjectives and adverbs, analogies, mental images?) in order to help Jen come up with ideas.

One concern that has already been raised is that the name "OpenWetWare" conjures up the notion of wetlab work and possibly excludes computational folk. So perhaps whatever scheme we choose should try to attract both groups. --RS 18:34, 11 January 2006 (EST)

Business cards

• Go with simple design (just logo and simple text), or get artist to do the whole thing? ~tmt
• Here are a few pdf's with some sample business card layouts; you can print them yourself on card stock and cut to size, or we can talk about other designs and printing. --Dcook 09:56, 13 January 2006 (EST)
  • Business Cards with Grey OPENWETWARE Logo
  • Business Cards with Blue OWW Logo

There is also a page of older logo ideas.

http://openwetware.org

a wiki serving the biological science and engineering community

email admin@openwetware.org for an account

Great design Reshma! An addendum to this idea is to have a back that just has something like

[[DNA Ligation]] or [[Victor3 Plate Reader]] or [[Quantifying GFP Flourescence]] or [[Miller Assay]]

stuff like that.

also, definitely need glossy!!! --Sri Kosuri 12:18, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

Logo

I have been spending a lot of effort coming up with a logo for OWW but have been unsuccessful because I am trying to convince people who have no idea what to expect, and I'm pulling ideas from a broad avenue. Let's make this easier and set a list of criteria to describe what we want, for example, color scheme, number of elements, traditional, contemporary, typographic, etc. These are factors that will help narrow our canvas space, and in turn help the graphic artist, or even myself design the desired logo.

Do we want our logo to be...

1. Typographical: font speaks for itself? FedEx, Banana Republic, MIT, Dell, Google, ESPN, Nature, 3M
2. Image: a picture speaks 1000 words? Apple, NCRR, Gateway, Firefox
3. Text in shape? UPS, McGraw Hill Education, Business Week, ABC news, WIRED
4. Image + Text? Codon Devices, UT, Continental Airlines, Discover Card, NBC
5. Text in image? Boston Red Sox, Regency Cinemas, Starbucks Coffee, Burger King

Additionally, we should consider...

1. Ease of duplication
2. Memorable
3. Recognizable
4. How much color to use, etc.

So, these are some things that we should keep in mind and set so that we can move on with getting a logo! :) --JN 17:16, 13 January 2006 (CST)

--I really like the logo that you have on the site and on the business card idea above. The font suggests industry, which to me conveys the practical, "wet" hands-on side of biology while not actually picturing beakers or pipettes that might make some feel excluded, such as the bioinformatics people. The best thing about it is that it conveys the idea of "Open" just by leaving the side of the "N" open, and using the positive and negative space. It is a great font, and very clean. What I would like to do is create a smaller graphic, this time more pictorial, to go with it. This small graphic would be an emblem that could be used on each page of the site, and would convey the idea of an open biology community perhaps using some of the ideas below. The next thing to do would be to get the rest of the site and materials to follow this same style. I will work up some ideas and see what people think. --Jencc 11:30, 23 January 2006 (EST)

Some ideas

1. A DNA double helix wrapped around the world.
2. Stick people spelling out A T G C (like YMCA :) ).
3. A double helix that opens up (unwound) in the center, encircling a globe. (or a bunch of people, like a hogtie!!)

Poster

• How about having whatever graphics, and then putting on questions like...

Need information on DNA Ligation?

Ever wondered where you could keep your protocols?

Need a place to discuss scientific issues with a group of people?

Need an easy way to keep your website up-to-date?

(if questions, which is a good idea, then the questions themselves become really important. they must be catching, amusing, and relevant).

• We may also want to focus on some of the more "unique" aspects of the wiki, like protocols/types of pages that are visited most often, most-edited pages, or things that are not available/difficult to find elsewhere. We may already have information as to what people are interested in and, thus, what may draw new people in (i.e. stats, popular pages). This is likely different for different people, so we may also want to consider some kind of wiki-poll for current users: Why are you here? What do you like best? The poster questions should attempt to encompass as many diverse OWW aspects as possible, because OWW is going to mean different things to different people. We should also highlight the dynamic, responsive nature of the wiki as an advantage over traditional static resources. I also agree that the questions should be catchy. Perhaps we can take some inspiration from the apparently abandoned list of BBF t-shirt slogans.--Kathleen