Introducing the elementary Community Logo

After a fan reached out to us about usage of the official logos in community projects, we worked with them and our design team to better define community usage of the elementary brand. The result: an awesome new elementary Community logo!

We first debuted our Brand page on our website nearly a year ago in an effort to help provide guidelines for the usage of our logos. We also wanted to encourage third party app developers to use the elementary name and logos in the right context.

What about the community?

However, elementary fan Frank Gregor pointed out that this leaves a bit of confusion for community projects; that is, elementary-related efforts from fans or developers that aren’t officially run or supported by elementary ourselves. There have been a number of local sites, forums, chat, etc. that have sprung up by and for the elementary community. While we don’t have the time or resources to moderate each and every one of these (nor would we want to impose that sort of control), it has always been a bit of a gray area when it came to the usage of the logos. On our brand page, we write:

elementary owns two marks: the “elementary” logotype and the “e” logomark. Both are considered trademarks and represent elementary — the company — and its products.

Community efforts are related to elementary and our products, but they’re not directly moderated or endorsed by elementary. To provide an easier and clearer way of drawing this line, we worked to design a new elementary Community logo for use by these sorts of efforts.

The Process

Color

When we were first brainstorming ideas for a community logo, I wanted to primarily use color to differentiate. Drawing from our brand colors, I thought our Lime was a nice bright alternative to the typical blue of our logo. I ran it by Frank, who liked it because it was welcoming and reminded him of a playground — a place for the community to come, hang out, and have fun.

My first mockup

Simply adding text, however, was a no-go; it’s too small to see at a small size, and doesn’t really feel well-considered.

Shape

So we worked to come up with a unique shape for the new logo. Our founder and lead designer Daniel Foré mentioned that he wanted more than color to distinguish the logos; he was worried it would just look like elementary changed our background color (as we’ve done in the past to celebrate holidays or historic events). I agreed, but struggled to come up with an alternative mark. In the past we have used a heart shape to represent community efforts, but it doesn’t stand alone well; we needed a mark that simultaneously communicated “elementary” along with “Community”, not just one or the other. And bonus points if it felt like it belonged in the same “family” as our existing logomark and logotype.

Dan’s first rough sketch

Inspired by the elementary Brazil community logo, Dan roughly sketched out a logomark with a little heart after the “e” shape. He was mobile, so it was a bit rough on his tiny phone screen, but it was enough to communicate the idea. From there, it was mostly just a matter of polishing.

I tried my hand, but am honestly more of an interaction designer than brand designer. I took the elementary Brazil logo as a starting point, slapped a heart into it, and wasn’t too thrilled.