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Yep, new logo
By adamg on Mon, 04/22/2019 - 9:47am
I'm slowly finishing revamping the templates that control how the site works (mainly for mobile users, but also to do something about the poor search-box UI). Figured I might as well spend a little time doing something about the site logo, too - if this is a site about Boston, why isn't the logo? What you see might not be the final version (the type seems a bit too bold to me), but the general idea (some sort of Boston element and the name) will stay.
Caveat: I have the graphical abilities of a gnat, of course.
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Comments
Ahh, the ubiquitous in photos Custom House tower
Good choice, Mr. Gaffin.
Yeah
Not lovin it.
Care to farm it out to one of us for help? :-)
I am sure we have some great graphics design people on here.. maybe in trade for a paid account for a year :-)
On the right track
One reason I like Universal Hub is that Adam is a Do-It-Yourselfer. Not everything has to look like a commercial template -- and I like the personal energy that goes into this site. I think the re-design is on the right track -- and expect, as Adam said, that it will go though some more testing & adjustment for various platforms and browsers.
i like it
that my fav building in boston. very nice
Meh.
Not really digging it. It seems like a downgrade. At very least it needs some more border on the right side. It currently looks pretty amateurish against a black background.
Will help
Graphic designer and loyal reader here. Willing to help out with the new logo.
PHOTO=FINE
text, meh....I like the old text logo better. It's timeless. I want a coffee mug of it actually....
If only I'd thought ahead
When I did that logo, I picked some typeface (two, I think), then futzed around with kerning and even letter shapes (love me some stretch tool). Then saved it as a .jpg, and forgot all about it. So the thing doesn't scale at all, and would probably look pretty bad on a mug.
In conclusion: Don't even think of hiring me for any design work.
how 'bout futura black as a typeface ?
e.g.:
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3...
is there a way to overide so
is there a way to overide so it suggests desktop site on the server side ?
Hmm ...
Apologies if this is a dumb question, but what browser are you using?
I ask because, at least in Chrome on my Android phone, I can select Desktop Site as an option and, boom, I get the desktop site. Then I have to zoom in to read it, of course. Or do you mean setting it as a checkbox you can get from your user profile page here?
opera on lineage-os
it gives me the option to select desktop site; but then, forgets about it the next session.
seems like a bug or limitation in my browser. i was just hoping there was something the server could overide but its not that big a deal for me to manually reset each time.
Have you thought
About using comic sans?
Nah, too much of a cliche
If I were going that route, I'd go with Comic Papyrus (um, Comic Parchment, for copyright reasons).
At least you didn't use
Clearview.
Cool
but where the hell is my smart watch, Adam?
What, you didn't get it?
Oh, my stars and whiskers, I'll check with UPS.
Not great on mobile
I see a big black bar at the top of the screen, then the search button, then the logo which is small enough to be barely noticeable, then an ad, then the headline. Using Chrome on a Samsung galaxy s8.
Yep!
All I changed was the logo. The layout is exactly the same as before; I'm still working out some kinks with the new layout before I go live with it (the new layout will be pretty similar to the old one, except at the very top of the page.
Not great
Adam, there are lots of graphic design sites where you can get a batch of logo ideas for like $20-30.
This site is outstanding, but this new logo is not :)
Phillipines Slave Labor
Adam, please don't degrade peoples talents like this. Finding some artistic desperate soul in Pakistan or Uzbekistan who will do days worth of spec design work for you for $20 or $30 is borderline evil. These sites that promote this are one of the most degrading and exploitive enterprises on the web.
Boston is bursting at the seams with talented designers. No, they don't generally work for $1.25 an hour. But because you are so well-regarded, UHub is so popular and such a tremendous community service, I'm sure that you can easily make connections a qualified talented designer (not a hack) right in Boston (and I guess Cambridge or Somerville would count too) who would be happy to do such work pro bono in this case - if money is the issue.
I Say "Meh"
Universal Hub is so much more and so much better than this logo.
That font is too loud and that image is too "postcard."
I'm also having a hard time seeing the turkey.
A Pro Graphic Designers Opinion
You can really do much much better. The off-the-rack fonts are cringeworthy. It really looks like about 3 minutes was invested in downloading a pic off Google Images and adding Word type next to it. You can easily style the Custom House in a unique way - and make the fonts unique. (And don't use black like this.)
Sorry for the rough assessment, but better that you hear it from a friend . .
More like 10 minutes
And most of that was in figuring out how to do an oval cut and paste in Photoshop Elements (from a photo I took myself, at least). :-).
I hate change
How about a scrubbed-clean-of-any-trademark (Boston) Citgo sign? It's timeless!
I did think of that
There are some cool things you could do by sort of abstracting some of the red "stripes" of the lit up sign that anybody would recognize immediately as being "Boston" without just showing the full triangle. But I thought the sign might be a bit overdone as a graphical element; same with the equally striking Zakim Bridge (it's kind of amazing how many local companies have incorporated the bridge into their graphical identities, from banks to cab companies). In its own way, the Custom House is as Boston as you get, but it doesn't get nearly the attention of the sign or the bridge (for that matter, even the salt and pepper shakers on the Longfellow, which used to be used to represent Boston in movies and TV shows, no longer seem to pop up as much).
Hmm, what other things just yell "Boston" - especially if they're something a local would recognize instantly that somebody from away might not (since the very name of the site is basically a local in joke)? The Dorchester gas tank?
This is what screams boston
So much so, I had it tattoo'd on my arm..
(yeah "something Boston" is why I did it..)
The T gets very touchy, though ...
I briefly sold (or tried to sell) a T-shirt that showed an old token with "Token Bostonian" on top of it. The MBTA got the seller site to disable that real quick.
Dorchester gas tank incorporating UH?
The tank is pretty iconic. Maybe one of the designers offering to help could stylize a UH into the paint scheme?
That would be pretty inside jokey. Or maybe the Citgo sign w/ UHUB instead of CITGO?
Perhaps the design could incorporate
Adam's profile as part of the blue swoosh, replacing Ho Chi Minh?
Hmm, what other things just
A Green Line car with the "A" route sign?
A Green Line car with the "E - Arborway" route sign?
A good retro manhole cover - saying something like Boston Edison, or BERY, or New England Telephone?
A still from some Spenser episode of Robert Urich and Avery Brooks going into some local dive bar - where you've photoshopped it so the name of the bar is The Universal Hub?
A GIF animated logo - start zoomed close in to the logo, slowly zoom out to reveal that the logo is in a snow globe on Tommy Westphall's shelf?
or... really be self-referential and do a blog inside joke. I'm thinking an adaptation of the classic Star Wars poster from 1977:the dominating upper-torso image of the helmeted & cloaked Darth Vader would be replaced by an urban turkey (a little too Robot Chicken, I know, but still...), bare-chested rock album idol Luke would be replaced by Keytar Bear, Han & Leia flanking Luke with covering fire would be replaced with images of O-FISH-L and TrophyWifeLinda, and the stream of little X-wing fighters confronting the Death Star replaced by a stream of U-Hub commentators on bikes confronting a double-parked tractor-trailer.
The actual Hub plaque?
It's still in DTX isn't it?
marathon finish line but says
marathon finish line but says 'universal hub' instead ?
How dare you change something
How dare you change something that I didn't notice you had changed until you mentioned it!?
Being deprived of the previous logo is traumatizing me and disarranging my whole life. I insist you change it back to whatever it was before, even though I wouldn't be able to pick the previous logo out of a police lineup!
Captain
If I may,
The two first posts say it all diametrically, and no vote has ever been truer, IMHO.
When I first boarded as a lurker in 2012, I was attracted to the underground edginess aspects of the site. After seven years, it is clear that the edginess you aim to deal in is not so much of the underground variety, but more of the common progressive rabble edginess. Your ship. Cool.
The problem I have is that the new logo looks like the letterhead logo of an endowment committee.
After reading suggestions in this thread, I feel this is better. It has edge... and probably a couple of lawsuits.....
Not that I think you should use it. I think you can nail it with something else. It is just better.
I like it.
The only change I'd make would be to have the text on the left and the pic on the right. Not sure how that would work exactly, but I think it would look better.
Not a fan
Not a fan
But a simple change to improve it would be to decrease the leading between Universal and Hub
Here are my submissions/ideas...