Icon and Graphics Ideas

[doctormo]

I'm putting this here so it's visible and available to the new project:

unbranded_sound_program.zip

This image comes from your friendly Inkscape project. Forking is hard, but it is possible. Good luck.

[2075]

great graphics! kudos

[ThePip]

[ThePip]

[ThePip]

Note : these are mock ups of the most voted for ideas (obviously my idea hasnt been voted for yet, but that is the first one I posted either way since I had made the design already) and they are in no way final, they can certainly be changed

[ThePip]

[bl-ue]

But "city" shouldn't necessarily be emphasized.

[enslaved2die]

Audacium is the plural auf Audacia (latin for audacity (; ), I think this sounds way better and more similar to Audacity and its way more memorable.
If you want you can even say it with a english tongue and not a latin one :)

Edit: I also tried to create a new logo, I think we should clearly distant the new one from the old one, similar what Libre Office did

[peepo5]

I need some opinions, does this look 💩 or alright for now?
I will attach files if it is usable.

[akleja]

Yet another idea

[unbeatable-101]

It is nice, but I don't think it fits.

[Songtech-0912]

Yeah, back to the "too many forms and colors" issue. No problem, keep going at it!

[akleja]

Ok, I'll try to make some more as long as it's fun :)
I think one of the biggest mistakes I've made in all these iterations was to try to make just one color scheme that would work on both white and black backgrounds, which really limits the options for nice colors and contrast.

[peepo5]

i like it :) complex logos for the win

[akleja]

I grew up on Amiga OS with huge multicolored icons, a heritage which sometimes shines through in my designs :)

[Songtech-0912]

A more unconventional design I made:

And associated variant:

Unfortunately it scales poorly:

Would like feedback on this.

[mc776]

I think you're right about the scaling... "Inacity" at worst, "Ten...grass...ity?" at second worst.

[peepo5]

t pose

[Songtech-0912]

Finally a design I'm mostly satisfied with. The left and right versions are two variants of it.

Both scale pretty well:

[Songtech-0912]

All of these were made in Inkscape, which is more than capable of making logos (mockups are in Penpot). Agreed that the number of lines should be reduced somewhat. I'll make further iterations.

[bitsper2nd]

(mockups are in Penpot)

wow a free and open-source alternative to figma. didn't know this was a thing.

[mc776]

Aesthetically I like the one with the Play triangle better, but not enough for me not to prefer the other one for being less potentially mistaken for a music player.

[peepo5]

I like the right version

[Be-ing]

I really like the one on the right as well.

[akleja]

Here's yet another iteration of my first design:
Simplified and different colors

[akleja]

Thanks @bl-ue!
@caughtquick Sure, enjoy!

Will try to get some sleep now, so no more alterations for today.

[caughtquick]

Thanks @bl-ue!

@caughtquick Sure, enjoy!

Will try to get some sleep now, so no more alterations for today.

That's my favorite implementation of a tenacity logo I've seen. That's my favorite by far ❤️

[DragShot]

Awesome. I think this is your best proposal so far.

[unbeatable-101]

I love it apart from the little 'mini-logo' in the corner, it feels out-of-place to me.

[akleja]

The small logo is just there for presantational purposes to give an example of how the icon looks at smaller sizes

[bitsper2nd]

Here is my feedback as an UX designer. This are just some of my thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as a final decision.

I really love @akleja latest iteration. It's really a representation of a city. It checks every box an artist would want for a icon. One problem though, if we compare it to the old Audacity icon, then this icon is not so obvious at first site about what is meant to be or represent. Tenacity is a fork of Audicity. When an user sees the icon, they will not know what the app is about unless they read the name or see screenshots of the program itself. The user would need to think more. Now onto the other icon that caught my attention.

I don't like this icon. I find it really generic and doesn't stand out that much. This is the artist in me speaking, but from an UX design perspective, this icon fits the bill. It is obviously a visual representation of an audio program. It is modern and align with current design trends like minimalism or the use of gradients. @enslaved2die made the safest choice for a icon. The number of reactions in his comment is proof of that.

Finally, the icon that for me strikes a balance between art and UX design is from @Songtech-0912. The best of both worlds. There is creative flair using the T in conjunction with rectangles to form a sound wave. An user could instantly recognize Tenacity with this icon. It is certainly my pick for best icon.

Again, these are not final thoughts or facts. This is just my opinion. So agree, disagree with me. I can change my mind just like any of these icons can change in another iteration.

[Reaper10]

mic logo.zip

[mc776]

Just one point I want to make about all these proposals with city-themed stuff: "Tena City" is evocative of nothing to do with sound editing.

https://www.tena.us/

[akleja]

I had another go at it again.
This time in the shape of a knob.

[akleja]

And yet another iteration of my initial idea.
I tried to lessen the emphasis on city and increase the resemblance of meters in a mixer and/or a spectrum meter, which was always part of the initial idea, but somehow got lost along the way.

[Songtech-0912]

Consider separating some of the bars with spaces? That may make it feel more like a waveform

[akleja]

Ok so here's one with spaces

[akleja]

And one with spaces and one less bar

[DragShot]

Ok so here's one with spaces

This one looks better.

I still prefer your previous design tho:

[Songtech-0912]

Hey all, I've created a repo at https://github.com/Songtech-0912/tenacity-design for working on general design stuff. We can keep the discussion going here, but let's push our design SVGs to the tenacity design repo so we can build on each other's designs. It will make iterating easier, kind of like "open-source design".

Also, I plan on making a gallery webapp (no JS!) to preview the icons at different scales in the same repo, so we don't have to consistently publish pictures of different sizes, as well as to add possibly a progressively-enhancing rating system. That's conceptual for now, but I think it will make collaborating on icon design/logo design/UI design easier.

[akleja]

Cool, I like the Idea of collaborating more hands on on the designs. Will post some of my SVGs there in the near future.

I'm less sure about the webapp-thingie, i just create linked copies in my SVG and include those at smaller sizes that I deem necessary. Perhaps It could be equally useful with just a design template instead to make presentations a bit more uniform?

[bitsper2nd]

Can we just not make a public to view/comment Penpot or Figma to showcase every design iteration?

[enslaved2die]

Yeah I like the idea but I dont think it will work, me for example work with Affinity Designer and SVG is really the last thing I want to work with, its a delivery format not really something you can work with nicely. So I think creating a figma project or so is the way better way.

[akleja]

Ok so one more idea. Quite basic, a heavily simplified waveform.
Also a hint of a city by the water, even though that isn't the main focus.

[Songtech-0912]

This feels closer to a symbolic representation of tenacity, and is aesthetically a good logo. However, consider adjusting the alignment and size of the text, that feels off at the moment

[Songtech-0912]

Additionally, one thing to perhaps consider going forward is the relationship in color between the text color and the logo gradient color. Consider using harmonious or complimentary colors, or sticking to a predefined color schemes.

[sosasees]

I like this Logo the best.
But I noticed that the tiny version looks unclean.
So I remade the Logo in Inkscape, but using a 16×16 pixel grid as the base:

Size	Preview
×16px
×32px
×64px
×128px

Click here to download the Inkscape source file:
logo16.svg, zipped

---

In the Symbol Preview, I noticed that this version of the Icon looks unclean in ×24px.
So I made a special version just for that size
by adjusting my original ×16px version and saving it into a new file.

This is the comparison:

Version	×24px Preview
×16px Original
×24px Adjusted

Click here to download the Inkscape source file:
logo24.svg, zipped

---

Legal Heads-up: Every Inkscape SVG has a license stored in them.
The final version of the logo shouldn't be proprietary.
For now, this version is labelled as proprietary until we find the right license.

[sosasees]

Which corner radius fits better?:
• The sliggtly bigger one from the original version?
• or the slightly smaller one from my version?

It depends on how exactly the GUI will look like after the redesign, or even if there will be a redesign in the first place.
According to the current design, the smaller corner radius matches the look of the playback control buttons better.

[akleja]

Excellent feedback!
I made a post with a new version which incorporates some of the things discussed here. A different take on the pixel-snapped icon (though without the 1px margin, not sure which one looks better though), and some tweaks to positioning of the text.
Of course it isn't final in any way, but I wanted to make a slightly more polished version than the one I initially posted here which was kinda rushed, for the sake of the voting proposed by enslaved2die.
I think that at this point it makes sense to see if this design has any community support before getting too deep into the nitty gritty.

[enslaved2die]

Woooow so much new stuff here, maybe we should use the vote up function to see which Idea is currently the fav of this community? 🤔
So maybe remove double votes if there is a newer "version" of the idea already, of course dont if you like a previous version more :)
And from there we could work together do improve the icon with the font?
I think all of the proposed ideas are just ideas and can be tweaked further :)

[enslaved2die]

So this is my last proposal, for now without a font but in the style of a MacOS Big Sur Icon, of course this could be different on other Systems.

[enslaved2die]

Reminder: If you like the logo use the vote up on the side instead of reactions, with the vote up we can sort the most like more easily by selecting "Top" as the filter

[akleja]

Ok so here's my latest version for the voting proposed by @enslaved2die

[akleja]

Yeah the color could be tweaked, but before making all the small tweaks I'd like to see how much community support is behind the design in the first place.
I agree that the dark version of the icon is cleaner, and it would work well to use that one on both backgrounds if that is preferred.
I also want to point out that this is supposed to be more of a representation of a low res waveform, not a city (even though it might still look a bit city-like).

[emabrey]

@akleja Please contact me

[Be-ing]

This looks more like an airplane than a waveform to me...

[sosasees]

well…
waveforms can look like airplanes.
It's just not as obvious with the bumps and crevices that a high-resolution version of the waveform would have.

Now we have found 3 things that the logo looks like:

• a waveform
• a city, with the reflection from water
• and an airplane

Maybe the airplane could represent how fast audio editing with Tenacity is.
This logo is accidentally even more genius than I though,
by far the best one in my opinion.

[Be-ing]

That was not meant to be a good thing. I also don't see the city, nor do I understand why it should look like a city?

I think this could be improved with some filling in of the inside corners and rounding of the outer corners.

[emabrey]

A logo and icon have been selected. Thank you to everyone who contributed on this process of selecting an icon and logo. The selected icon and logo was ones created by @akleja. They have kindly sent us the master SVG formatted design files as well as agreed to license their works to the project under the CC BY 4.0 license, which is fully compataible with the GPLv2+ universe of licenses.

[emabrey]

The logos and icons are all available at tenacityteam/assets

[enslaved2die]

Totally deserved @akleja congrats 🥇