[fpc-pascal] Proposal for new Free Pascal logo

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2018, Mr Bee via fpc-pascal wrote:

> 2018-04-03 14:21 GMT+07:00 Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org>:
>
>>
>> I meant the icon it uses for the IDE.
>
>
> Do you mean this:
> http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/File:Lazarus-icons-lpr-proposal-bpsoftware.png
> ?

Yes. For me, this is the direction to go in.

>> And here I will stop: as said, branding is not a subject I am particularly
>>
> fond of or interested in. I am more interested in the contents of the box
>> than in the packaging...
>
>
> Well… if we want Pascal to be known again –as modern programming language,
> not the old 70's Pascal– then branding is quite important. Especially to
> young generation. See what Apple has been achiving with Swift within only 4
> years. It goes from nothing to the top 10 of most known programming
> languages of the world today, despite all of its flaws and immaturity. Sure
> it's also helped by the power of Apple's brand (and marketting), it's still
> a good achievement nevertheless.

Eh, and the fact that you are almost forced to use it if you want to program 
for the Mac these days ?

Just like Microsoft pushes everyone to C#.

I think the innate properties of these programming languages have nothing to do with
it. It's just a vendor lock-in strategy.

>> If we're looking for 'My little pony' kind of people, then we should
>> definitely aim for cute :)
>>
>> But this is not exactly the kind of people I think we should attract.
>>
>
> Well, I'm exactly aiming at young people, the next generation of Pascal
> developers. I've been seeing FPC's core devs team doesn't change much since
> the first time I found FPC almost 20 years ago. I mean no offense, but I'm
> not hoping to see this same team again for the next 20 years. I hope we're
> starting to see new and younger people joining this great open source
> project that we love. These young people is our hope to keep Pascal alive
> in the future.

Absolutely.

The question is: do you need 'cute' in order to attract young, capable, people?

I doubt that.

>
> A cheetah is not cute. It's a wild animal which will have no compunction
>> about slashing your throat or ripping your intestines out if you get it
>> cornered.
>>
>
> It's just a logo. It's a brand, not a 100% exact representation of the
> product/company. Don't take it too literally. Python is also a wild and
> dangerous animal, but Python language and the users are very far from that.
> :)

And this kind of statement is why I don't take branding or marketing seriously.

On one hand "..then branding is quite important" and on the other hand 
"don't take it too literally".

That simply does not compute for me.

Michael.