Re: the PostgreSQL Elephant - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Lamar,

> However, the same blue elephant is used for some baby products.  I'll have
> to check, but I have a stroller I purchased at Wal-mart that has 'our'
> elephant on it.  I have been meaning to send a picture of it to people for
> awhile, more as a humor item than anything else.  But, IANAL, so I don't
> know about logos in unrelated product areas being confused.

It's not really an issue -- at least, up until some large holding corporation
sponsors us, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.  Logos, like
trademarks (at least in the US) are considered contextual; for example, we'd
have no claim on a baby food named "Postgres" if such an abomination should
reach the market.

And, despite being a semi-retired political activist, it never  occurred to me
about any confusion with the Republican Party.   Partly because the two
elephants are so different, and because the elephant is an obvious metaphor
for
our project -- particularly in contrast to the MySQL dolphin.

Things in favor of the Blue Elephant Head (BEH):
1) We've been using it for about 4 years not and it's getting some recognition
as our emblem;
2) It doesn't conflict with any other OSS project or database logo;
3) It's simple and easy to reproduce in a variety of sizes and on a variety of
media, including t-shirts and stickers and 128-pixel web buttons.
(this is a reason why I'd vote against the "elepant-diamond" or
"elephant-breaking-through-wall" images.

Problems with the Blue Elephant Head:
1) PostgreSQL Inc. is also using it as a company logo.  This is obviously
something we and they should have discussed an age ago; we'll have to deal
with it now, I suppose.
2) It doesn't naturally flow into our name logo the way that, say, MySQL's
dolphin does.  The result is that the elephant head and the "PostgreSQL"
end up being completely seperate objects on most designs.

Difficulty of Switching to Something Else:
1) The BEH is already being widely recognized as "ours".  This summer, we'll
be distributing 2000 CDs and 100 T-shirts and I don't know how many
flyers with the BEH on them.  So even were we to adopt a different
logo today, people would still think of the BEH and see it around
for the next year or more.
2) Even if we switched to a different *design*, we should keep the
elephant concept for the reasons mentioned above, and because switching
animals/objects would really confuse people and make them think that we'd had
a project fork or something.  This would mean
that we would need to seek new designs, as the Slony elephant is spoken
for.   Does anyone have a copy of the elephant designs Cornelia submitted
last year?

Overall, I'd prefer to stick with the BEH.  We have too much other
stuff to do to deal with a logo search and evaluation now.  BUT, if we're
even *contemplating* a new logo, we do *need* to do it now because a
year from now the BEH will be really irremovable.

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco