Tarsnap logo contest

To: tarsnap users <tarsnap-users@tarsnap.com>

Subject: Tarsnap logo contest

From: Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com>

Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 06:16:23 -0700

Hi Tarsnap users, Tarsnap needs a logo. Some people think that it has needed a logo for a long time, but I've decided this need is now urgent: As of an hour ago, Tarsnap is a Silver sponsor of the FreeBSD Foundation, and this means their donors list will include a logo instead of just a name... or rather, would if Tarsnap had a logo. I'm completely useless at anything artistic, so I'm hoping a Tarsnap user can come up with something good. Consequently, I'm launching today a Tarsnap logo contest, ending on October 31st. If you submit a logo which I decide to use, you win $500. In the event that nobody submits a logo I like, I'll take the $500 and launch this as a contest on 99designs.com; but they take a large commission, so I'd prefer to pay someone directly, and I figure that Tarsnap users are more likely to know what Tarsnap is all about than random artists on 99designs. I'm looking for a logo which I can use: * In the top left corner of the Tarsnap website, * As a favicon for the website, * On the @tarsnap twitter account, and * As a 128 x 128 or smaller logo to put onto the FreeBSD Foundation donors page (and for any other open source projects Tarsnap sponsors). Obviously these images don't need to be identical; if the logo contains a graphic plus the text "Tarsnap", the favicon might be the graphic alone, for example. I think for most or all purposes all I'd want to have is a PNG, but you get bonus points if you can provide something scalable and tell me how to create PNGs from it on-demand. I have no idea what a good Tarsnap logo would look like; it might be graphical, it might just be a typesetting of "Tarsnap", or it might be something I can't even imagine yet. It should be consistent with the characteristics of Tarsnap, however; think "secure", "reliable", "serious", "unix" rather than "colourful", "fun", "web 2.0", "social", etc. Feel free to discuss this on the list, or to email me if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing what people come up with! -- Colin Percival Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid