Identity

The need of a visual identity

GRASS GIS 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

January 2015‎:

GRASS official logo (also here) 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.

Background info: the logo was re-vectorized by Markus Neteler in 1998 from a rasterized master file (for his master thesis)

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).

alpha 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. To comply with GRASS GIS license these must be open source fonts.

Main font

GRASS GIS name, capitalized or not. Composed either in Fira Sans, or in Alegreya Sans. It makes sense to confront a modern sans serif typeface, preferably rather light, to a very classical Garamond. Changing GRASS GIS to lowercase is discussed, my opinion is GRASS initials usage turned them into an acronym (we pronounce it), which does not need to be full-capitalized, except the first letter.

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

After several tests, we put things together in an array:

- col 1: capitalized title, fontface Alegreya Sans, text and tagline beside logotype;
- col 2: partially lowercased, fontface Fira  Sans, stacked centered layout;
- col 3: lowercase title, fontface Fira Sans, flushright/flushleft positioning.

- row A: white background, potential thin black border;
- row B: metaphoric background image (to be refined, potential restricted rights), white graphics+lettering;
- row C: 3d composition showing a virtual grassy world map, white graphics+lettering;
- row D: same sort of scene but in top view, on white or transparent background;
- row E: grayscale grassy world, black and green graphics+lettering;
- row F: personal image, less iconic than decorative in truth...

GRASS GIS splash proposals

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, especially with the splash screen.

Proposals

The following three banners go respectively with columns 1, 2, 3 of the array above.

GRASS GIS welcome proposals

Given latest requests, here are three extra png banners:

Alegreya Sans, capitalized

transparent

Fira Sans, capitalized

transparent

Fira Sans, lowercase

transparent

GRASS GIS sticker

Objective

GRASS GIS users may need to display a short information about the use of the software in their projects. It might be useful to propose a normalized sticker for that.

Proposals

Usually these tags are composed with freehand lettering, we propose this sticker:

Proposal #1 for "powered by..." GRASS GIS sticker

But one can prefer keeping close to the more sober identity and compose the slogan in garamond:

Proposal #2 for "powered by..." GRASS GIS sticker

The following graphics could be used on map compositions:

Proposal #1 for "mapped with..." GRASS GIS sticker

Proposal #2 for "mapped with..." GRASS GIS sticker

Additional (derived) graphics are gathered in this array:

Proposals for GRASS GIS stickers

Selected startup banner

On Feb 6, 2015 (commit r64480 the banner was uploaded to the source code. Related files:

• gui/images/startup_banner.png
• gui/images/startup_banner.svg
• explanations