I have to say, I was stunned to find on coming back to Haiku after a multi-year hiatus that that logo was still there. I am so discouraged by it that I eventually decided to auto hide the Deskbar even though I love the Deskbar and never hid it within BeOS. I thought it was a temporary placeholder. Apparently not. You could argue that the system is in beta therefore it’s not a big deal. But the logo is…
a) an extremely easy thing to do (at least technically) and
b) of an importance that can’t be overstated…
The logo is an emblem, a totem, a talisman, an imprimatur. It’s part of an OS’s bearing. It’s how the system presents itself to the World. It’s important. It has to right.
I think what you say apgreimann is correct but I have slightly different ideas about a new logo. I’ll list my not so humble ideas:
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The current leaf has to go because it looks more like a feather and it touches the edge rather than being centred. I’m sure some would say it just looks like it has fallen to the bottom but I say it looks like unprofessional design.
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The colour has to go because it’s not neutral. It should be black, white or grey so that it can never look wrong with any colours elsewhere (or be distracting). And given that Haiku has a non-flat deskbar, an indented logo (like Apple’s was before it went flat) would probably make sense; no colour, no border, just in indentation. If Haiku’s interface ever goes flat in the future then the logo could easily go flat.
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The maple leaf would be an improvement but it is strongly associated with Canada. I don’t want another country’s emblem on my desktop.
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Other possible designs: an oak leaf might be an option. like apgreimann I think the word HAIKU or haiku or Haiku or an upper case aitch might work. Either could be plain or stylized. Honda uses a stylized aitch and so do Hyundai. I believe Honda once complained about Hyundai’s logo and the two companies eventually came to an agreement whereby Honda was satisfied Hyundai’s badge wasn’t too much of a copy. I think an aitch with tiny leaves on it wouldn’t work at small scale. Some altogether new abstract design that doesn’t reference Haiku specifically might be possible but I think it would take a very creatively-skilled person to pull that off.
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How about a logo competition like the start-up sound competition? I’m not really a huge fan of things being decided this way—it cancels out the chance of individual genius (even if a genius offers his work, the plebs might vote for a gaudy, whizzbang monstrosity). The fact that most people aren’t bothered by the current logo worries me. But given that Haiku is already a semi-decentralised, open-source collective of sorts we probably can’t expect some kind of Jobs/Ive dyad to steer things beautifully on our behalf can we?