The LGM splash
An M for Meeting
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
For the 5th edition of the Libre Graphics Meeting, OSP proposed to replace the paint splash by an abstract drawing of three squares forming a flag and also the letter M.1 The splash had been in use since 2006 and some community members felt alienated by the proposal. On 10/10/2009 AL explained on the CREATE-mailinglist: “The main issue for OSP, is that we don’t think continuity can be resolved by going back to the paint splash. We honestly feel it misrepresents the pleasure of using and developing Libre Graphics Tools and we have consciously decided to work with imagery that avoids such remediation.“2
Two years later, the Scribus Icon Contest (deadline October 31!)3 seems to have run into a similar argument. One of the proposals features yet another stylized iteration of a fountain pen:
Original Scribus logo
Scribus 1.3.5 introduced: Handwritten textboxes
Calligraphy AND textboxes. Proposal: Ian Hex
I am not the only one who doubts the calligraphic turn. LD responds:
“The pen has been around for ages. Yet, a pen has not much to do with DTP and has always seemed to me a bit out of topic or a bit misleading. Typography is not calligraphy. No pen is involved in the work, really. It’s also arguable what a “scribe” has to do with DTP but here I find myself more comfortable since the scribe’s work was in fact to put down the ideas on paper. From that to layout, I think the link is pretty clear.“4
GP does not altogether agree: “I think the connection makes some sense in that you have something of a depiction of the work of a scribe, which at least connects to the name Scribus. Furthermore, scribes worked as individuals, sometimes adding embellishments of drop caps and artwork in the margins (primitive layout) and were therefore much like the idea of an individual doing publishing on his own.“
He adds: “The difficulty with using computers, screens, mice, keyboards, etc., is that these might be used in the logo for almost any software”
Avoiding the problem: Adobe InDesign (2011)
Reverse evolution: From a typographer's portrait to a writing tool. Aldus Pagemaker (1985)
An individual doing publishing on his own?
It puzzles me why the Scribus community — like other Libre Graphics projects — would want to ignore the rich source of imagery provided by their own object of development. Some keywords for a dreamt logo:
Box, Canvas, Chain, Character, Colour, Column, Curve, Diagram, Document, Figure, Font, Frame, Gap, Grid, Guide, Hyphen, Image, Layer, Line, Margin, Masterpage, Origin, Padding, Page, Pagenumber, Paragraph, Path, Point, Script, Sentence, Shape, Space, Stream, Stroke, Style, Table, Word.