To echo Node’s evolutionary nature, we have refreshed the identity to help mark an exciting time for developers, businesses and users who benefit from the pioneering technology.
Building a brand
We began exploring elements to express Node.js and jettisoned preconceived notions about what we thought Node should look like, and focused on what Node is: kinetic,connected, scalable, modular, mechanical and organic. Working with designer Chris Glass, our explorations emphasized Node’s dynamism and formed a visual language based on structure, relationships and interconnectedness.
Inspired by process visualization, we discovered pattern, form, and by relief, the hex shape. The angled infrastructure encourages energy to move through the letterforms.
This language can expand into the organic network topography of Node or distill down into a single hex connection point.
This scaling represents the dynamic nature of Node in a simple, distinct manner.
We look forward to exploring this visual language as the technology charges into a very promising future.
We hope you’ll have fun using it.
To download the new logo, visit nodejs.org/logos.
Very nice !
PS : the link is broken
+1 for broken link, but also +1 for the very nice!
Sorry guys… but frankly horrible!
Logo looks okay but it might give problems if you scale it smaller though. The last 3 examples already have some issues. Like the hexagon in the ‘e’ is bleeding into the rest of the ‘e’.
On the other hand the JS hexagon looks super sweet.
It’s nice but it doesn’t really make me think of nodes/scaling/clusters, something with softer edges, somewhat graph-like would be more appropriate.
Oh noes
Very ugly, sorry. Connotations not working (for me) either.
Very hard to read.
+1
I am ver sorry but I don’t like new logo.
I like much more old logo.
It was very cute with cloud.
But now I am very upset(((
who cares
My initial reaction was ‘hmm i don’t like it’… but after looking at it a bunch of times is kinda grows on you. I can see myself wearing a t-shirt with that design… that’s all nerds care about hahah jk
.
Do you guys have more variations? Did you get an explanation from the designer why and how he came up with this? That would be useful I believe.
If a logo will be mostly type, the typeface needs to have maximum personality. This seems too engineering or concept driven rather than visually motivating.
I think that allowing more “energy to move through the letterforms” is exactly what this needs, but fails to deliver.
Was the design inspired by http://simplebits.com/?
look nice but absolutely unreadable
I think the letters should be more tightly kerned at larger sizes (one triangle of spacing between them) and the hexagon removed from the e for smaller sizes.
Otherwise it looks like this is a foundation which a very solid branding identity can be built upon. Kudos.
I like the colors and style, it looks beautiful.
I don’t think it reflects any aspect of node, worst, It makes it feel more like another quake 3 pro team (with all my respect to those guys).
BTW, I’m not a designer so my analysis is probably wrong
The “o” in node that is ugly. It should have the same color as the other letters and have the same hallow center as in “d”. Other than that, the “font” for the “node” part is perfect. My opinion, of course.
I really like it. Perhaps because I’m a child of the 70s, it reminds me of a geodesic dome.
ugly as hell
I’m not trying to plug myself here, but I actually did a test and it doesn’t look bad at all…. http://geekli.st/about (see logo)
Love it!
I’m sorry but it looks horrible and unreadable when you scale it down, see http://cl.ly/1n1W1U1s141347320K3U it reads like nodc
Logos should be understandable and readable. You can do what ever you want with it, I don’t care you might as well add a pink pony infront of it as long as the words `node js` are readable.
Uh? I thought the old one with the cloud for the . in node.js was pretty cool. But this might grow on me.
It looks like dos.
I miss clod of old logo
Nodejs is elegant, compact and essential. This logo is complex, unreadable and screaming for attention.
exactly !!!
Awful. Simply awful.
No one likes new logos, and design by committee is always a pain. So you shouldn’t be too disheartened by the comments so far.
With that said, I think the idea behind the logo is good – but the execution is lacking. It’s great to use grids and systems when creating a logo for a project such as node.js – but that should never overshadow the end result. If it doesn’t work – then don’t use that idea.
Anyway, apart from the poor kerning (which I guess is part of the “I’m gonna stick to the grid” thinking), low “small” readability, it does have potential. It’s just not simple enough.
Skip the coloring, or use less of it. Question all aspects of it: Does the green ‘O’ really have to be green? Why is it green? The same goes for the dot in the ‘e’ and the end ‘.js’. If there’s no defending it then it shouldn’t be there. Does it have to be multicolored? Then leave a mark somewhere that is clear and visible. Don’t just spread it around wherever seems ‘ok’.
Of course, my comments above are probably just as useless and distracting to Chris Glass as the rest are.
Nice execution.
Please don’t do this.
PLEASE DO NOT PICK THAT LOGO..
no offence but i care about this project and that does not look good. It has no style what so ever. You know.. I don’t mean any offence I come from a design background, it just doesn’t have an appeal.. please spend more time on redesigning the logo.
It’s gotta be the worst brand logo I’ve ever seen. Please, get some professional advice on the matter. Do something in SVG that works as a favicon and take it from there, ie; ultra simple.
+1 for do something in SVG
I find the idea kinda cool but the logo looks fat-ish and is poorly readable. What about reducing the space between the letters and making the letters themselves less thick?
Is this set in stone already? Maybe you could have a contest with a vote?
I concur
+1 for contest
This looks horrible, you guys need to find a better designer who actually understands that complexity does not mean simplicity.
just a two second concept … http://bit.ly/pxhi55
@Austin I like that concept, simple, clean. I see what you did there with the callback.
I agree, they should put it to a contest. I like your design much better! Did you check out their actual download page? They can’t decide what color scheme to use.. too confusing and breaks successful branding rules.
You always supply your logo in different color schemes, so they can be viewed in different settings. Light background, dark background and a black and white version are common version of a logo.
That looks pretty cool nice on Austin
+1 nice work
Not bad @Austin, but I think the serifs distract from the clean look of the logo.
lol, fail
You do realize it’s like MovableType reincarnation (although MT is not legally dead)?
What is the reason for the rebranding? The current logo looks great.
This new concept isn’t friendly or inviting at all. I’ve always admired how clean and crisp the nodejs.org website was, especially with the green highlights.
Not a fan of the new logo.
The e in node is lost in the first place and doesn’t scale well in size or to mono.
Wasn’t a huge fan of the old logo but would settle for that over the new one.
Yeah…that’s pretty ugly. It’s up to you guys what you want to use for a logo, but if it was me; I would’ve just stuck to the old cloud logo. This one just makes me think “crappy 80s rock band”… >.>
I am surprised no one has said anything about their supposed “reasoning” behind the new design. I am sorry, but that is a bunch hooey. Any engineer worth their salt would ask them selves wtf these people are talking about. It makes no sense. Its like the Chewbacca defense of logos.
I don’t like the uni-lateral decision to create a new logo w/o input from the node community. A logo change for a community this size should be a public contest w/ a democratic flavor.
The logo itself is ok, but does not evoke (for me personally) as strong an emotional response as the original.
Anyway, this is not a democracy, so proceed.
Sorry, but you failed to convey all these presuppositions – i.e. kinetic,connected, scalable, modular etc.
And yes, it’s barely legible.
I guess we all understand that Joyent has this desire to turn Node into a marketable brand and the original logo just does not cut it – and that’s OK.
Although, new logo is hardly any better.
I am a huge fan of this. It works on so many levels.
First off, I really hate design by committee, so you should probably just ignore everybody here and turn comments off.
But, to be honest, I *really* do not like the new logo. It’s dated, obtuse and unreadable.
It looked like “nodc” in larger sizes and “nodeo” when it’s smaller. I would shoot for at least one size at which the logo actually looks like it says “node.js”
This should be the new logo, made by SubStack @ http://substack.net/images/node_turtle.png !!!
if(youAgree === true) alert(‘post a comment reply saying yessshhh!!!’);
Ugly. A node should represented by a circle not by a hex.
Looks an awfull lot like the IronJS logo to be honest: https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/80460E/assets/img/7992a707ee0024fe5d29f76c20a6e7baf60abf22/687474703a2f2f69726f6e6a732e66696c65732e776f726470726573732e636f6d2f323031312f30332f6c6f676f2d6269672e706e67
+1
awful
Nice attempt but a little hard to read.
I prefer the turtle with a V8 rocket strapped to his (or hers?) back =)
http://substack.net/images/node_turtle.png
Please make “Node.js” readable.
Also, the new logo doesn’t inspire scalability nor speed in my opinion.
P.S. http://substack.net/images/node_turtle.png is awesome
Have to agree, as a desktop background it’s really nice – as a logo it’s totally off the mark.
The logo for nodejs needs to be much simpler, be something that can easily be reproduced (in print and web media) and is scalable from icons to large posters.
This logo just doesn’t do that
Yeah that logo is not great.
New logos are always hard to get used to. While I think you could get a better logo with a contest on 99designs, people will get used to this eventually.
I think readability issues in previews are from scaling raster images. Smaller size made from vector version will be readable, especially with the black and white (1 color EPS in downloads).
Prefered much much more the previous one. BTW not bad either
This design was the daring direction and we knew going in it would shake things up. Appreciate the comments and opinions, constructive or otherwise. And for what it’s worth, I like the turtle with the with the rocket too.
Everyone seems to think their redesigns are “daring” these days and the “predictable” backslash should be simply ignored. It’s just a new pseudo-enlightened twist on “we don’t give a shit”.
There are plenty examples of successful rebranding – pepsi, apple, microsoft, mtv, starbucks (until 2010), delta, sprint, fedex… what do they have in common? They didn’t drop their heritage completely with a “daring” solution, they just evolved. That’s what you should aim for, not just riding the controversial wave and wait until everyone settles for the new logo but still secretly hates it.
This is exactly what most feared about Joyent taking over. I hope things don’t go downhill from here and the community and node ecosystem ends up broken. You just single-handedly r*ped us.
Oh no! Sorry, but the new design is far less good. Both, the old logo and the website design were better in the previous version.
Feeling kind of GAP logo deja-vu.
Are you guys gonna take action based on your community feedback?
http://craplogo.me/logos/node.js_logo.png
Blue square is the new black cloud
Sorry, but I’m in the “don’t like it” camp. It’s doesn’t appeal to me aesthetically and I think it is so technical, for lack of a better word, that it will scare away potential adopters.
The network topography and the JS hexagon are excellent, “node” needs improvement, specially the letter O.
Chris Glass, you did a great job. The logo just feels right for what node.js represents for most programmers, a minimalistically designed, powerful, performant tool to build network programs. I recognize both boxes and screws, which is underlined by the background color. libuv fits very well in this scheme, too.
I prefer the minimalistic, techy look to the overused fluffy cloud metaphor.
same here, I don’t like the new logo at all….
The new site is awful. And no, I’m not just kicking back because I resist changes. Two friends that have been recently introduced to node commented on “how awful the nodejs website is”.
It has a terrible color scheme. The new logo is not that bad, but not great either. Specially the shape of the ‘n’ is out of place and distracting.
Please at least go back to a more sensible color scheme, like this one in the blog.
Also, I hate boxes. Dude, where is my cloud?
I do NOT like that!
Thanks for all of your feedback, good and bad. Change is disruptive, but an interesting side effect here is the start of discourse about what people see in a logo, in plain view and in negative space, and in the technology. This process is important and giving it time to percolate seems like a good thing.
Please change to previous logo, it was much light to the eyes, and much more according to our time and technology than this new one, I would say please don’t mess up the mark, please check how adopted is the old logo.
http://www.google.co.cr/search?q=nodejs&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=es&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=837
Have you heard the phrase “if it is not broken – don’t try to fix it”, please do go back to the previous one. – pppppleaseeeee
This new one is worst then a kick in the crush…
A logo always has a story behind and it evolves based on the story and only if really necessary, nodejs is still open source and I think asking the community would always give you good results, remember that we as your community are who really trying hard to promote node to our coworker, friends and even bosses, I think you really missed the mark here.
Some points
1 – Nothing wrong with the hexagons but the logo just have too many things competing that makes it really hard to read: first you have the first green O then you have the E with the little dot and two colors then at the end you have the JS into another hexagon that makes it visible but really hard to read, all those 3 elements are competing for visual atention.
2 – Words are just two tick, and it looks like part of an Atari game logo, perhaps too much hexagons.
3 – I don’t really think that a network is represented by hexagons, its better represented by waves or ellipses connecting each other like our world globe, I think roundish is a better way to represent a logo even in this new evolving node era.
4 – I think node really worth a simple, easy, modern, and attractive logo that represent the revolution it is going to cause in development.
I know you guys might already spend money making this new logo trade mark and all of that but please consider your community and the good and bad words, and don’t make it be the first node obstacle.
This is a good inspirational site http://logopond.com/ even do as I mention in my previous post I think the old logo is just perfect.
I hope you listen to your community.
JB
the monospacesque typewriter font on the original logo is much much better. and the cloud as dot adds a very nice touch.
the new logo is not that bad. but compared with the old one, … it just looked like “meh”.
First logo was naive but welcoming. This one is pretentious and scary.
totally agree.
I think my comment was too honest to be approved
Ok, I’ve been getting some feedback from other non-tech people and they say it reads ‘nodeo’ instead of ‘nodejs’. That would be my only issues.
Anyway, I’m not fully against it, I think the intention and vision was great, the execution on the other hand did not match how the community sees nodejs (clearly). Simple, clear, fun to work with and fast.
I don’t blame the designer though, they usually just get direction from people hiring them. If the person doing the design has no experience with nodejs he/she will never push back, they’ll just follow directions (bad combination). If they do have some experience that’s when you get the best results.
Love it, super awesome!!
IMO it’s cold, angular and unpleasant. It’s childish but awful. The old one was childish too, but very pleasant. And the letters standing on their vertices are unstable. The kerning is too big. Perhaps, at least, they should stand up more firmly, and closer to each other, and in equilibrium, like so: http://jorgechamorro.com/node/nodelogo.jpg
My 2 cents…
Cheers,
Jorge.
@Jorge – Agreed.
…
If asked to design a logo, most people would fail miserably. However, that does not mean that those same people are unable to intuitively identify a poor design. Regardless of whatever meaning the new logo is supposed to convey, it still needs to be pleasing to look at. Based on the abundant (and free!) feedback, the new logo seems to miss on several measures.
The node corporation has not involved the node community in the new logo other than to say “here it is, you will like it because it has hidden meaning and a professional design it.” Is it any surprise that the community is feeling left out in the cold? Sure, people will eventually accept it over time, but that is a poor approach to branding and marketing.
Personally, there are some aspects of the logo I like, and some aspects that I think require attention. Do not ignore the feedback that the community has generously supplied! When my company was coming up with a new logo 5 years ago, we had two separate graphic designers come up with several pages of concepts, but none quite hit the mark. A co-worker (and not particularly artistic by any means) made a small change to one of the professionally designed logos and that was all it took to transform a ho-hum logo into something that has served us well.
-1 (very klunky)
This is a horrible logo, and I think it hurts the project’s image. Please reconsider. Please.
why didnt they have some sort of a competition and voting for the best logo?
Who the heck is this Emily, character, anyway? First impressions are everything, and this one… well let’s just say people who talk like this in an interview do not get hired.
> bla bla discourse bla bla I changed the logo.
It’s lame, Emily, just lame. We aren’t starting a discourse about lame logos, we’re saying it’s lame. We’re programmers here, mostly, and we call just call it how it is.
Sorry, hope this change isn’t permanent.
You, my friend, have just said what we’ve all been thinking. No offence to the hippie community, but it reads like someone took a very deep trip and tried to be omnipotent when it comes to developers, except developers are watching. We are logical we don’t deal in the realm of the woo woo. Visual language, organic…. Really? C’mon! Remember, most of us have IQ’s higher than the amount of colorful BS Emily can pour on this pig. Im surprised Ryan would let someone disfigure his child in this manner.
The site redesign and new logo are good if looked at as an initial experiment on the path to completely new designs. Please don’t Ed Wood this. Keep iterating.
You guys totally missed the mark.
Node is, believe it or not, is not about scalability, but rather about an extremely simplistic way to achieve what we all want. We don’t think to ourselves (I want scalability, and sharding, blah blah blah). We think “I just want my stuff to work, and I don’t want to have to worry about the world crashing down when I get too big). I want to build my hot webapp on top of it and share code base with the browser. I want less code, less worries, in order to achieve the next hot app, and I want to build it faster than my competitors. I want LESS technology and fewer moving parts. THAT is your brand. The previous logo captured this. Did you a/b test this? Did you get more opinions. Do you even care about your brand?
WHERE the heck is the COMMUNITY in your design? Also, quite meta, you did not involve the community in the design of your design that happen to lack any invocations of community! Quite fitting.
And by the way guys, ditch the personal attacks on Emily. I’m sure she’s talented, but cut a little slack. It’s quite hard to understand how engineers think without being one.
I don’t like it. I mean, hexagons? Really? When I see hexagons I think of complicated board games. I think of over-engineered, tightly coupled modules. I don’t think easy, fun, or intuitive. Nodes should be simple, elegant circles, like every developer is used to from graph theory (I can see how an artist might miss this). The logo should be a play off of that. There are plenty of circular elements to use (the dot, the empty spaces in the “o” and “d”. etc. I would probably design something around callbacks (see Austin’s example from a couple of days ago), and I wouldn’t mess with the typeface the way you did. The “Node.js” text is simple and to the point. It’s professional. Altering the text to such a large degree just takes away from it.
far too many things going on. revert back to the old and get a comp going on 99designs.
nodeo? == smelly armpits, yuck :/ that was my first reaction. Secondary reactons: cold and complicated. To me node.js is all about simplicity and this the opposite. The old design was simple and felt professional and welcoming. I also like the color scheme of the blog more than the green stuff on the main site…
Disclaimer: I havent yet read the other comments, I didn’t want my first reactions to be affected, so maybe it’s just me, I’m no designer, just a code monkey
This new logo is hideous. Far too rough and sharp for a modern logo. Not to mention the fact that it does not seem to embody any of the things you wanted it to embody.
The old logo was welcoming, modern, and would look good no matter where you put it. It was a damn good logo, and replacing it was an awful idea.
My suggestion: revert back to the old logo. But I do like the idea of giving us EPS files.
The old logo I was planning to shove in the footer on my current project, with a nice “Powered by” thing. This logo? I wouldn’t DARE. As I still do love Node.JS, I will probably end up putting the old logo still, simply out of support to this wonderful language.
As for moving forward:
Revert back to the old logo and get the ball rolling on a design competition. You have a community, you should use them. I would enter, and I’d wager that hundreds of other people would too. I’d suggest trying to stick with the old color scheme too instead of moving to shit brown and diarrhea green.
“We hope you’ll have fun using it.”
Thank you for putting this new logo and the source graphics in the public domain, free for use non-attributed for commercial or non commercial, to use, modify and manipulate as we see fit. The Creative Commons appreciates this generous contribution, and the courage with which you release this new step into the wild.
To all the haters: +10
anything would be better
Check these for the list I created
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-SqqudfU2TAU/TiZsxURICJI/AAAAAAAAALk/-7WuVBrCL_o/nodejs1.png
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-sU5IRCCxMYc/TiZsuwV0nFI/AAAAAAAAALc/dH1OxZImcJU/nodejs2.png
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-P9rHwnwG9bw/TiZsw19CBsI/AAAAAAAAALg/SYG6XIb5e6w/nodejs3.png
You may also want to check the collection posted by the community
https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Logos
Adding two more with variants
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-viTl63ZCfTA/TiZ7SADdW-I/AAAAAAAAAL8/YneI537fxi8/nodejs4.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0yWcSBObsmo/TiZ7R8-vs-I/AAAAAAAAAL4/1UyMi5_nY5g/nodejs5.png
And last but not least, this would be kind of like a node stamp, good for stuff like powered by or for an icon etc.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RuJ8njIvRto/TiZ_XdAr88I/AAAAAAAAAME/RDiO0-FToJc/nodejsStamp2.png
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-UxvwFuho9xI/TiZ_qJD2L4I/AAAAAAAAAMQ/qfppXes8jQk/nodejsStamp2.png
All your logos -
Much better than the official ones.
I kind of miss the little cloud though. Though the cloud is so overused these days, node, if anyone, has earned the right to use it.
Either way, yours are much better my friend.
It seem really clunky & heavy, doesn’t flow. Not what Node is about! The e doesn’t look like an e. The different treatment of the different letters is distracting.
I also prefer the old look – change for change sake isn’t necessarily progress. It is worth investing more time and money to get a look that will grow with the growing community.
Also it is worth having the courage to back off a design that isn’t working and going back to the drawing board.
Perception is an important part of success of a brand and the ‘feel’ this creates does match a powerful, elegant, technology of the future. It feels more like an old atari game of the past.
Love the technology, and love where it is going. The brand needs the same kind of elegance and power that the product has.
I’m sure you’ll get there if you keep working it!
Oooh come-on!
the old one is best forever!
I didn’t like new logo
But anyway thanks for your time!
-1. It’s awful. I love NodeJS and I think it deserves a good logo. Let the community take the decision!