An icon establishes a brand, something to recognize. Changing an app’s icon makes that absolutely futile, especially after it’s already been established for almost a year; everybody would have to re-learn it again. It’s like stomping on small plant that just broke through the topsoil; just crushing what just became alive.
The mental connection between the head and upper body of a wizard / druid of celtic legend offering a package and something like “package magic” is quite easy to make. But abstracting that even more to some generic celtic symbols? I’d have to explain that to absolutely everyone in person (nobody reads and docs these days; 7 seconds attention span etc.). I admit I kind of like the Triskele above, but still I’d have to explain it a gazillion times.
Magic wands are just too abstract, especially if downsized to normal icon size; it might be a screwdriver, a candle or any other stick-like object.
The last one looks good (it would look even better with the Triskele inside), but the wizard’s hat in the center is barely recognizable even in this huge size.
And finally, what I definitely do not want is some icon designer abstracting it even more, making it completely flat and removing all color, thus vanishing in today’s modern design nondescript pixel garbage in menus and on the desktop that all look the same, giving up on distinguishing and recognizing icons completely.
If anybody manages to make a more stylyzed version of the existing Myrlyn icon that still keeps the elements that make it recognizable (wizard’s hat, long beard, package), I am open to suggestions.
Maybe a compromise might work: Something like the Triskele for the application icon in title bar, menus and on the desktop, and the large Myrlyn on the start page while repos are loaded, and in the “About” window.
With the caveats above, what do you think?
Feel free to discuss in that GitHub issue above, or here.
The whole connection with celtic culture means nothing to most people outside the community of British (maybe also American) users. So the starting point of naming the product as it is (and the icon related to that) means already nothing to many.
Thus changing something that isn’t understood to something else that also isn’t understood is useless IMHO. Only an icon that shows what the product is for would be an improvement.
BTW, people can still configure the YaST icon to be shown in their desktop menu/panel/elsewhere. Thus the automatic click on it to get what they want to run will still work
To add to this, the term wizard in software has been around for years to describe guided software workflows, and often use icons like wizard hats, wands, or starbursts to represent “magic help”. IMHO, the app icon doesn’t always need to be universally self-explanatory; it needs to be unique and memorable, so that users can quickly associate it with the app itself.
Ultimately, the name Myrlyn and its wizard icon are part of the author’s creative vision, and that should be respected. Over time, users will learn to associate this wizard with this app, which is exactly what a good icon should do. Similar philosophy with Gimp’s well known mascot/icon.
digitaltrails said: “The headshot of Merlin seems a bit 1980’s”.
Actually, the Triskele is so “monochrome” from the 60’s.
I hate the flat colorless icons that everyone likes because they’re so “clean”. I’ve spent a lot of hours building a 3D color icon set from available icons with a few custom icons by me. One is Cooler Control. They changed their icon to a flat white or blue icon with what looks like wrenches (for water coolers?). I made a 3D fan blade that is better than their original fan icon.
Why do we buy $500 4K monitors only to have flat, colorless icons?
The Triskele would be so easy for them to use as an icon on their own machine if they want to. That’s what Linux is all about so they’re free to do just that. It wouldn’t take 30 minutes worth of reading to learn how to make it easily installable in case of a system crash or distro change, and it would override Myrlyn updates.
I really like the Myrlyn Icon. Also, your eyes gets trained to the color of icons and and you can click the one you want by just glancing at the colors, no mater how small it is. If they’re all flat and the same color, you have to slow down and figure out which one is for what, by the shape alone.
For the above reasons, I say keep the original Myrlyn icon.
The app name and icon are the choice of the author and we should respect his choices.
Myrlyn is a pun on Merlin and we don’t need to be of Celtic culture to recall the magician (as well as King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Excalibur…), maybe we just watched a few related cartoons when child; or do we need African ancestors to use Ubuntu? So I basically like the name and the icon.
Whether the current icon is visually effective is another matter. On the wall printed in 12"x12" it is wonderful, but at 72x72 pixel (the largest format currently shipped in Leap 16) it is barely readable, not to speak of the smaller formats; compare for instance with the Firefox icon, still readable at 22x22.
So I would happily accept a rework by a visual artist if I were offered one.
As an example I would remove the ribbon and price label on the “package”, most black lines or markers on the cloak and hat, including the borders on the golden “medals” in the hat, as they just clutter and blur the image at lower resolutions.
(But since I am not a visual designer I’ll stop here)
I think you underestimate how many US citizens (rightly or wrongly - not going to debate that here) send DNA samples to companies that will tell them their heritage.
SCA is super popular over here (which isn’t always historically accurate, but it often is). Just as an example. My goddaughter’s wife wears a kilt when he’s at sword practice IIRC, and I have a friend who is full-blood Scottish and sits on the board of the local clan group - which has a very extensive membership just in Washington state.
(ETA: Here’s a pretty comprehensive link found with a simple search of Wikipedia - List of works based on Arthurian legends - Wikipedia - not everything is from the US, but a great deam of them are, and those that aren’t are more or less well-known (opera probably less than TV and movies, but I wouldn’t event venture to claim that because of the surprising number of heavy metal bands that use themes from operas around the world.)
Please stop assuming that US citizens are stupid and out of touch with the rest of the world, Henk.
I guess you misunderstood me. I am not thinking that anybody is stupid, I am only assuming that many people around the world will have no idea about Merlin (specially when it is misspelled) and the connections with, which then seem to lead to it being software management tool.
But that is all to late now. The product got it’s name and it has to live with it, for better or worse.
I didn’t misunderstand at all. You explicitly said:
That is blatantly untrue and misinformation. Not just of Americans, but others around the world.
Hands up, everyone who has seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, for crying out loud. Not non-fiction, but very, very widely known in all cultures.
Yeah, nobody ever does that in open source communities (and not “misspelled” but “takes creative license with the spelling” - perhaps you’ve heard of “Linux”?)
It is only my idea about this. Why are you so upset?
I assume you immediately got the idea behind the name and it’s purpose. I didn’t. So I assumed there are more like me. Like there are of course more like you.
Because you start with “nobody understands this” when you don’t understand it. As @knurpht said, if you don’t understand it, that’s on you. That’s not on a global community, and certain not “an American audience”.
Arthurian legend is well-known to be well understood by technical audiences. Monty Python is a classic that has world-wide appeal. Films like First Knight, Camelot, Excalibur (which actually uses music from a Wagnerian opera, and Wagner also touched on Arthurian legends - so a lot of people who saw Excalibur researched and learned about the opera.
And, of course, every geek on the planet knows how to use a search engine.
Your assumption that people are clueless and unable to learn is just flat wrong.
I think such an assumption without any research is an outright insult to the ones concerned. Think about your replies when others wrote about “assuming this, supposing that”, please. Maybe read the Code of Conduct again.
The folks I know who live in that part of the world talk about both written and oral tradition. But most importantly, Merlin (by any spelling - and those old languages would use a variety of spellings) is pretty well known in technical circles. C.f. everything I cited previously. It doesn’t actually take knowing the oral tradition to understand the members of King Arthur’s Court.
Fun fact, there’s a more than equal chance that I’m in his family tree. (My maternal great aunt married a MacPherson. Not directly descended most likely (given my relationship to her and the fact that it was her husband who held the name), but still.
Not non-fiction, but very, very widely known in all cultures.