Identity

The need of a visual identity

GRASS is still lacking a relevant, well tempered graphical identity. Some proposals are being discussed especially to design a new splash screen (and welcome banner). The full thread is there.

This page is intended to initiate a place where tests and suggestions could be gathered.

Logotype

Graphics

GRASS official logo is a great starting point, as it has been here for ...ever? Given the original vector file is somewhat irregular (twisted diamond, doubled vertices in grass, overlapping shapes) a cleaned light version is proposed.

GRASS GIS cleanup logo, color version

For consistency, it is important to use this logo as is, i.e. not being tempted to distort it by any trick (shadows, bump mapping, blur, differential rescaling,...).

Itemisation should be limited to:

• black (and grayscale) version;

GRASS GIS cleanup logo, grayscale version

• white version, in case it should appear over a dark background/image.

GRASS GIS cleanup logo, white (sort of negative) version

Tagline

The historical one was : «The world's leading open source GIS». Several slogans were recently proposed:

- «Bringing advanced geospatial technologies to the world»;
- «Advanced geospatial technology for everyone»;
- «Opening advanced geospatial technologies to the world».
- ...

Colors

A grass green...

The basic green color is defined as follows:

 - 0,144,0 (rgb);
 - 100,100,44 (cmyk);
 - #009000 (html).

aplha channel is set to 1 (no transparency)

...and a grayscale tone

When required, a grayscale transposition is applied to green:

• either it is an opaque grey:

 - 144,144,144 (rgb);
 - 0,0,0,44 (cmyk);
 - #909090 (html),

• or it is multiplied over background, with alpha transparency:

 - 0,0,0,111 (rgba);
 - 0,0,0,100,44 (cmyk);
 - #0000006f (html).

The white version may as well be declined in opaque or transparent, then green is replaced with translucent white:

 - 255,255,255,111 (rgba);
 - 0,0,0,0,44 (cmyk);
 - #ffffff6f (html).

Typo

The logo can come with text. It uses two fonts. Add your suggestions...

Main font

GRASS GIS name, capitalized. Composed in Fontin regular, with a slightly negative approach. This font is designed by Jos Buivenga, and is free. Comment by ML: this seems to be free as in free beer, but not as in free speech (no distribution allowed. For an OSGeo project such as GRASS, I would prefer a really free font.

Yes, I agree. Not that easy to find a fully developed font family (lots of ugly things in fact...). Let's have a look at this project. It makes sense to confront a modern sans serif typeface, preferably light, to a very classical Garamond. See below tests number 5 and 6. Changing GRASS GIS to lowercase was done on purpose, my opinion is GRASS initials usage turned the word into an acronym, which does not need to be capitalized.

The Fira Sans is a nice clean font. GRASS IS an acronym of course (geographic resource analysis support system), but the lower case is fine after all these years and indeed looks good.

Secondary font

This typeface is used to display additional text, such as a motto or tagline. It is composed in EB Garamond, a font designed by Georg Duffner, inspired by the famous historical typeface drawn hundreds of years ago by Claude Garamond. It is freely available, under the terms of the SIL Open Fonts License (ofl).

Applications

GRASS GIS Splash screen

Objective

Please refer to this thread

Proposals

Here are several tests, feel free to add yours of course.

GRASS GIS splash screen with minimalist color logo+text

GRASS GIS splash screen with white logo+tagline, metaphoric background image (to be refined)

GRASS GIS splash screen with white logo+tagline, variation in the layout, personal background image (for the record)

GRASS GIS splash screen with white logo+tagline, grassy world map background image (made from scratch in Blender)

GRASS GIS splash screen with white logo+tagline, another attempt with Fira Sans as titling font

GRASS GIS splash screen with color logo+tagline, Fira Sans titling in a more sobre composition

GRASS GIS Welcome banner

The welcome banner is the image displayed on top of the Welcome frame that pops up when launching GRASS. This image, if present, should be coherent with the graphic design.

Proposals

GRASS GIS simple welcome banner

GRASS GIS simple welcome banner with transparency (fails on dark bg desktop themes)

GRASS GIS simple welcome banner, small logo, bigger text, works on every background tone

What next ?

add your suggestions...