Wheaton Lab Logo--does this look decent?

Hi all!

Some of you might know that I've been having a blast making a website for Wheaton Labs--that way all the event and bootcamp (and eventually accommodation) info can be easily found in a nice shiny website. (You can see it here: wheaton-labs.com/ :D )

But, it doesn't have a logo! All good websites need a shiny logo, right?! And we want something that has a "Mad Scientist" vibe. Paul thought of a sketch of a mad scientist or a lab coat, and then a lightbulb went off in my head, and I thought "Lightbulb!"

It's more of a Frankenstein/Victorian/Steampunk mad scientist, and less Dexter's Laboratory, but what do you think? Does lightbulb say Wheaton Labs and all the permaculture and homesteading innovations that happen there....or does it just look like a lightbulb and lame.

Here's some different attempts I made. I had fun sneaking in a little W in the middle. My husband thinks I should make vines growing out of it or something, to make it more growies, but that seems a bit too complex. Ideas?



I'm hoping it'll also scale down really tiny to fit on browser tabs, but would it still work?

I think a lightbulb could work.

My favorite is
with the only nitpick being the filament… I would expect it to be white.

It's clever. I like the one Sebastian picked out as well. I do feel that other aspects of what the Lab is could be represented, though, so the observation made about the vines resonates a bit. But it could stand on it's own, I think. I don't think it needs the addition of letters outside the bulb, but that might just be me.

But I like the association with "lightbulb moments," and the reference to Paul's views on incandescents.

Is it to be a singular logo, as in "the" logo for Wheaton Labs, or is it one in a series of similarly clever iconography?

-CK

My favorite is the same as Chris and Sebastian's...I do wonder about some leafy bit added though? maybe some of the lines in the halo around the light could be a little squiggly with a leaf here and there?  I suppose that would get lost when it is scaled down though.  And I like the 'W' in the filament a lot.  The other letters outside the bulb seem unnecessary...the bulb stands well all on it's own

Nice web site!

Vote #4 for the same bulb.

I like the lightbulb / growie / vine ideas.  Found lovely vine artwork here:  https://ya-webdesign.com/explore/vine-frame-png/

Not sure which vines to experiment with, though I like how this one with sunflowers seems to emanate from and to, so that was used though I think leaves could be as nice or better.  If the flowers were leaves, I think smaller versions and black and white could be more clear.

Also thought about using a simple leafy vine to make W L inside or outside a lightbulb.  

Okay.  Guess the 50% downsized didn't get saved.  At least there's a 100% and a 25% :.)

It's an incandescent bulb, so the filament should be 2700K.

<rimshot>

Seriously, make it a just ever-so-slightly yellowish glow and that will be the salsa on the taco.

I really like the light bulb. What it the 'glow' was in the shape of a leaf?

I've done a bunch of logos in the past. What I took away from doing them is to make them damn obvious. I love the lightbulb idea, but I miss the super-over-obvious W, to me it just looks way way too hidden. Just my 2 cents though...

I'm with you, Rene! I actually tried a lot of ways to make it bigger, and I just couldn't find one that worked.

The worst part is (I feel a bit silly admitting this), but I don't really understand how lightbulbs work, so it's hard to fiddle with them in a realistic way. People are mentioning that the fillament should be white....and I'm over here googling fillament to make sure I know what it is that I need to turn white. But, if the W is the filament, maybe I can make it white and bigger like these ones are. That should help it stand out a lot bigger.



I worry that by adding leaves, etc, it becomes less of a logo. Logos seem to need to be really simple. But maybe there's a way to add them in in a simple way?

I would expect it to look something like this… if I had any drawing skills.
Or a white glow behind it? Now the contrast of white to yellow is quite poor. I don't think it would look well if scaled down.

I like the concept, but I would simplify it a bit so it can be applied to more scenarios and mediums.

Maybe remove the shadows, and some of the “shine” lines emanating from it.

Nicole, I like the versions with the "light rays". I also like the "W filament", It could be bolder , but also not concerned about folks finding it at first glance... those "aha!" moments of discovery can be quite nice. (totally a pun/coincidence given the imagery, but hey. ;-p )
At a small/tiny scale, I think the "glow" makes it muddy. At the scale they show in your post (1 1/2" tall) it is fine.

I've got 4 tabs open: GMail, Craigslist, Permies, and McMaster-Carr. Permies shows the biggest difference between active/non-active tab (using Firefox) when the background toggles between dark (blue?black?) to white, the "P" is legible and recognizable in both modes. Be sure to check both modes, especially if a large portion of logo is same as a tab background color?
Another browser I use colors new tabs based on the tab a link was opened from, so maybe there's that to consider too?

I think the flowers and leaves one is quite busy. I don't think it will scale down well.

Some ideas:
Maybe the light rays could be alternating light rays and flower petals? or leaves? or thunderbolts instead of light rays?
Maybe at the base where you had "W L" there could be two leaves? (thinking of the flower petal/ray design idea)
Maybe from the contact at the base, there could be roots? something simple like 3 "branching roots", similar to/a play upon, an inverted image of the "W" and filament within the bulb.

Not to be contrarian, but I am not a big fan of the light bulb. Wheaton Labs is so much more than that, and I think something growing is much more in keeping with the aims of WL and permaculture.

The lightbulb just seems hackneyed to me, and a bit of a red herring for various reasons, controversial and distracting from the primary themes/goals. Just my view.

I am no artist, but what about a tree showing the roots and the soil biota or something like that?  I guess it probably needs to be reasonably simple and clear to communicate the right message, so maybe that’s not the right choice, but there has to be something better than the lightbulb to represent permaculture.

I also question the light bulb on account of the "theme" question. But if it must be a bulb, the filament can be remade. Below is  an example from one of the opensuse splash screens. A splash screen is NOT a logo - it's a splash designed to catch the eye using all the potential that can be wrung from a high end monitor - thus the colors are not, IMHO, what one would choose for a logo. But it shows  the use of a bulb/filament design.

+1 on basic colors, simple graphic shapes. To mash a metaphor, this is not opera, but a herald braying the  name of the IMPORTANT PERSON coming down the street. Needs to be loud, distinctive, memorable and evoke, somehow the entity it's promoting.


Rufus

I tried a few more attempts. I have a hard time drawing in photoshop--it just never quite gets the same effects as a pencil and paper. But, it sure is a lot easier to edit when I'm working in the dark trying not to wake my kids at night!

I'm going to have to play with paper and pencil during the day to see if I can incorporate some leaves somehow. One neat thing about the rays of light is that they kind of look like Einstein hair when zoomed out!

I sketched in some leaves and a new W....and then realized the lightbulb looked like a dandelion, so I drew some dandelion leaves! I still need to go back and clean up the lines around the W, but I think I like the curvier W.

Not bad. What's it look like shrunk down to it's most-used size?

I like the dandelion.


Rufus

Let's see. I'm thinking if it were on the corner of the website, it'd be about this size:



And, on a tab, it'd look like

I'm not quite sure how many pixels wide the little tab images are...

Edit, looks like on a tab it's usually 16x16

But, sometimes it shows up as 32x32

Maybe on the tab we just do the lightbulb?

Looking at the small ones, I think the  "W"  really needs some steroids. Maybe make it half again as thick, maybe even twice as thick and bright red or something? It seems like the site would only need maybe 3 standard sizes and I don't think they really have to be all exactly the same...

Also, there's various massaging that display software can do which smooths jaggies and I _think_ that is often applied to icons as well as fonts. Maybe somebody familiar with web page design and/or fonts could clarify how to plan for that stuff.


Rufus

Actually, I take it back. The "library"  might need half dozen or so different sizes to accommodate the usual different screen resolutions?

Anyway, I just wanted to add that bulb looks real neat! <g>


Cheers
Rufus

I really like the idea of incorporating the leaves and making it a 'dandelion'.  That get's out of the idea of centering this around the 'lightbulb thing", which some people don't 'get' or ascribe to, and could take away from the potential draw of being primarily a permaculture demonstration site.   The latest incarnation fits Paul's world at Wheaton Labs much better, in my opinion.   The dandelion represents much in the way of permaculture, being a medicine, a feral forage, a vegetable, a weed, a tap rooted accumulator... while the lightbulb indicates novel ideas, inspiration, and light.  The old-timey Victorian nature of the art indicates that there is an element of permaculture that harkens to incorporating or meshing the present with the best things of the past when things were simpler, and more experiemental, and perhaps accessible to the inventiveness of the common backyard hack.  

I think that the super tiny tab dandelion looks like a flower and not a light bulb, but... I don't necessarily think that that is a bad thing at all. I think that if people have already clicked on the site and there is a tab on their screen then they will know what it is, and I think it's actually pretty cool that when it is small it looks like a dandelion flower, but blown up it proves to be a steampunk dandelion lightbulb!  I think that adds to the magical alchemical properties that the mad scientist in me fully appreciates.      

Hi Nicole, I've been enjoying the growth of your creation. As I got to the last post of the thread, there is that house on the far left at the bottom that puffs smoke out of the chimney every so often.
I then saw your dandelion light bulb doing a similar thing but with seeds floating away and spreading new ideas of permaculture all over.
Certainly not for a tiny logo but maybe just for the larger version. The subtle motion (also like the advertising asterisk at the top of the reply page) catches the eye and adds an extra element of dimension that is kind of soothing and makes you want to look at it longer.

Nicole Alderman wrote:I sketched in some leaves and a new W....and then realized the lightbulb looked like a dandelion, so I drew some dandelion leaves! I still need to go back and clean up the lines around the W, but I think I like the curvier W.

For anyone who lived through the counter-culture of the 60's and 70's it looks like one of those symbols: smoke a spliff and have great ideas!

For that reason alone, I like it!

(P.S. maybe a splash of paisley and the colour purple?)

I love the dandelion leaves!

Nicole Alderman wrote:

I'm hoping it'll also scale down really tiny to fit on browser tabs, but would it still work?

You don't need to scale the entire logo down for a favicon. You can take an element - in this case I suggest The Element - and make it prominant in the cramped space you have available.

Such icon files can be 16×16, 32×32, 48×48, or 64×64 pixels in size and are used by different browsers in different circumstances.  I'm happy to explain more but here is an example from my own past work.

EntrustedMana logo

The original designs were awesome but the addition of the dandelion greens make it more overtly wheaton. I think the w needs to be very straight lined and bold to make a clear "I'm wheaton and I'm fucking awesome" statement. Subtle jokes are the best best it seems with logos you have to be bold enough that it can never be confused but just subtle enough that its clever.

These are great work! I can't wait to see what you come up with through this illuminating thread

Nicole I like the lightbulb with the dandelion leaves. To me, having some green growth or the lightbulb growing from a plant makes my brain interpret the logo as more than just ideas (plain lightbulb) but the growth and nurturing of ideas.

I wonder how it would look with a tree as the filament. The lightbulb is kinda uterus shaped so having lots of symmetry in/around it makes it look like a sexuality/fertility symbol to me, so if you like that cool, but if it's not what you're going for making it slightly asymmetrical would make it look less like a cult symbol.

For logos, you have to make sure it's 'readable' at small and large sizes.
The lightbulb is great for all sizes but the W gets lost at small sizes.
I like Nicole's dandelion leaves, but I would bump up the W a bit more to make it strong even small.
IMHO.

I'm partial to this:

Nicole, of the first group of options I would simply say this,... Use them all.
The top left with the letters is my favorite, if you were proposing these for my books, It would be my primary choice.
I would still yet use all others you proposed in their separate "elements" (pun intended) :) ...
One for items related to garden-wear, one for , One for seed packets, One for Coffee Mugs, Hats, Tee's, One for Greeting Cards, and a variety for Gift Cards available to be purchased as gifts for others to buy things from your  Wheaton Lab's online store.  If the store thing and gift cards comes to fruition I would like two matching coffee mugs and/or tee's (one M, and one XL). With your Logo, above the word's "THANK YOU" on one side, and your stores website address on the other. This way no matter the side of the coffee table I am conversing from, no matter which side of the mug or Tee's I see, I will be making someones day.
"But wait there's more" lol
I hope you have as much inspiring fun considering using all of your logos as I did sharing a portion of my opinion about just some of the empowering projects possible in this reply.
Truly having fun.
Larry Jackson

I gave up doing my own logos because I would jam too many ideas into them (usually three into one graphic).

Anyway, this is my sketch after reading all the comments.

More energy to you :)

Davin Hoyt wrote:I gave up doing my own logos because I would jam too many ideas into them (usually three into one graphic).

Anyway, this is my sketch after reading all the comments.

More energy to you :)

I made the logo with the purple circle and light bulb in microsoft paint, with just images from the internet of a real bulb.  But when I blew up the picture in paint by increasing the zoom, I just hit the keyboard function Prnt Screen, and then paste (cntrl-V) into a new paint (to copy a blown up blurred image of the bulb), and it blurs or lowers the file size of the light bulb.  It still looks like a light bulb, so I drew a black line around it in paint with the pencil.  Basically, you can blow up a real image of a light bulb, and then do drawing on it, and the color or light looks real even though the file size decreased or blurred because the light is a real bulb.

Also, the purple circle was a youtube video of supercritical liquid carbon dioxide, and the liquid turns into vortices, but if you notice in the picture of the blue circle (the supercritical carbon dioxide), the whole image is rotated clockwise a bit.  I think that's because when you flush the toilet, the water always rotates clockwise.  It helps to see the rotated image by zooming out to 25% on chrome.  I think you can also render images of simulated light bulbs if somebody finds a physics paper or something that describes how a real light bulb's color is displayed, but simulated, and the file size is probably smaller than a copied image.

Also the fire at the center of the blue supercritcal co2, was a copied image of a real fire, but my computer was left out in the rain so it still works, but when I opened a new window, the fire image was still in the same spot of the new window (which is supposed to be a new blank window), but fainter.  So if you look at the image of the fire, it's basically an image of a damaged processor of a fire, and it kind of has a shimmer or shake when you first look at it (also the fire or vortices of the fire align with the vortices of the supercritical co2).  But there is by the way a race condition in concurrent programming that can simulate a damaged processor, so I might try to see if I can simulate that specific damaged processor image.  I only say that because the fire may imprint somehow on the computer circuit itself, so that the image on the screen is translated to your computer as a fire state in your processor, not just my damaged computer, that a damaged thing can go into a circuit and stay there in normal healthy computers.

I like the idea of the dandelion leaves, but the light bulb tends to get lost when it's scaled down, and the leaves make it seem kind of spread out. Not necessarily a problem. I'm just used to seeing compact logos.

I thought the light bulb looked good on its own (the most popular one was my pick as well).

Would it be possible to put something green growing inside the light bulb?

I've kept fiddling with this. This is a large-sized, detailed version. I'm thinking I need to figure out how to simplify images and lines. I'm also wondering if I should have made the lightbulb's lines darker, or the yellow to be lighter... I think maybe I need to make the W have cleaner lines.

I have to say I do not see the W at all unless I look specifically for it.

I like your latest logo.

Use it!  Make it official!  It's been months!  Go final!

If you're hesitant, fearing that you'll think of an improvement but it'll be too late once the logo is announced ... well, it won't be too late!  Just make the improvement.  Logos are fluid, you're not stuck with the one design for perpetuity.

I like your latest version. It looks great and I think that the W is very visible. With a logo like that I don’t think that something like the W has to be glaringly obvious, it’s just a nice feature of the design.