LibreOffice Mascot: Iterating the submissions
tl;dr: Please comment at https://imageboard.documentfoundation.org/posts
The voting phase has been conducted with great success. More than 27,000 people had a look at the submissions and many voted on all items. Thanks a lot for your interest and contribution! There has also been some discussion on various social media channels about the procedure. People asked why we need a mascot at all, why not show all of them at once, and why a particular submission wasn’t included in the voting. We are sorry about the concerns and we try to make everyone happy!
The mascot competition was initiated because the common and well-known logo for The Document Foundation (TDF) must be used exactly as it is. Modifications to this icon, for instance with colors of a country, are not permitted. On the other hand, we understand the interest in a symbol that serves both intentions, identification with LibreOffice on the one hand, and customization for the specific purpose such as the region. And that’s what the mascot should become.
The mascot is a fun design for the community to use – it is not a replacement for the official LibreOffice logo and icons!
In total, we received 300 submissions. Of those, many are not appropriate to the idea of LibreOffice, not usable as a mascot, or potentially copyright protected. We checked every image very closely to not violate other brands. Everything close to a known logo was also removed, for instance penguins, not only because of trademark issues but also to have a unique mascot. Of course, it would have been better to run the voting with all items and let you decide based on clear guidelines. The drawback of this procedure is that the full set is way too long to examine and vote on all items. In hindsight, with so much interest, it wouldn’t have been a problem when everyone leaves the voting after 50 items or so. But that wasn’t clear before.
Design work is typically done iteratively, and the designer presents a first draft so that the customer can give feedback. Since none of the proposals got a clear positive-only voting we want to make such an iteration possible for you as the user of the mascot. The shortlist with 12 items from the voting is presented in an imageboard with a nice overview. We set up a couple of questions as golden thread with “cuteness”, “mascotability”, “suitability”, and “uniqueness” (you have to register and login at the platform to read comments). You can click thumbs-up or -down on these categories, which serves as an overview of your opinions. You can also comment freely and ask the designer to change aspects of the drawing. Please be kind and don’t take the expertise for granted even when the submission looks very professional.
And here is the link https://imageboard.documentfoundation.org/posts
The deadline for this iteration phase is the 17th of December.
With the best seven we will go then into the final election where TDF members will get the chance to select the LibreOffice mascot which is used as recommendation to the board of directors.
Where is Libbie. What have you done with her? It was very obvious from the beginning that she was going to get the most votes, and you just threw her into the trash.
No, Libbie was not one among the top rated.
I find that VERY hard to swallow.
There is a very wide age range of people who use LibreOffice on a daily basis. I’m in my 40s, I dislike anime in general, and I think an anime girl is the stupidest choice possible if you’re looking to give your program a wide professional appeal.
I’m willing to bet I’m not alone. Not every LO user is a teenager. There are plenty of professionals here that would cringe at seeing an anime girl affiliated with their PROFESSIONAL program.
Microsoft Windows has had an anime mascot since win7. Is Microsoft not a professional company?
I’m 21 and I _love_ anime. Now what?
“wide professional appeal.”
nobody who actually works uses this over MS Office (or the place where you work does? congrats for being one of the 0.01% who does!).
this is a completely retarded argument.
There is QUITE the storm of anger and autism coming this way. I honestly hope you guys weren’t trying to avoid that with this lineup.
I vote for Libbie. Anime girls are the best mascots bar-none.
I reject all of these pretend-mascots which stand in the way of a glorious future for LO
“We checked every image very closely to not violate other brands. Everything close to a known logo was also removed, for instance penguins, not only because of trademark issues but also to have a unique mascot.”
Why is there still a penguin and two Duolingo owls in the shortlist then?
And the lack of Libbie is seriously unbelievable. Something stinks.
Holy crap, I didn’t even notice the penguin.
>Why is there still a penguin and two Duolingo owls in the shortlist then?
I want to know this too
What’s the deal with this penguin? Did really more people vote for it than for Libbie?
Why is LiA eating a corndog so cute?
These are all incredibly ugly. It’s like the contest was to design the ugliest mascot one could think of – as these would definitely be winners.
libbie is still the best:
https://imageboard.documentfoundation.org/post/26
https://imageboard.documentfoundation.org/post/25
rekt by /tech/
Comments like “this is the ugliest mascot” will be taken as spam. Please respect the work of volunteers.
Respect is earned, not freely given. It’s obvious there’s certain parts of the userbase that lost a lot of respect for the LO team and its decision-making process.
You don’t have to respect people in order to show respect to them. (Respect should be shown – by default – before it is earned.)
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Please disqualify the penguin mascot, it is traced art not used with permission. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/happy-cartoon-penguin-rockhopper-320621141?src=zj9vsKA6kQ2fwLCHDBLtuA-1-10
The link https://imageboard.documentfoundation.org/posts
has been hacked !
Please fixed it ASAP
Hi, have you checked the pictures’ link? It seems there has been some ugly abuse of the upload system. Moreover, why are the thumbs down buttons there at all? They only bias the voting and promote the creation of fictitious accounts. Please reconsider the ability of an authorized users to upload content and to thumbs down the shortlisted posts!
Thank you.
These mascots are low quality. Low quality doesn’t get you a thumbs up.
You can delete my post as much as you like, but the truth is the truth. None of these mascots were worth bothering with. Why did you even have a public vote if the votes didn’t matter?
I did not notice Libby before, but it looks great!
But now its link is down, so please make it visible for other readers of these replies so they can form their own opinion.
Maybe a non-official poll for Libby alone would be appropriate.
You know, if you guys needed a couple of bucks to pay a local graphic design student to come up with something that would have been infinitely better than the proposed lineup, I honestly wouldn’t have mind chipping in.
This was one of the entries https://twitter.com/TysonTanX/status/913430461866704896 and yet it was voted out for some reason
These are all INCREDIBLY ugly. I’m sorry, but no project should be using any logo as bad as any of these. Who voted for these? Can you release the results?
your decision to sidestep the results of the vote over a simple mascot have undermined my confidence in The Document Foundation as a decision-making body.
What happened to the good ones? Why is the Duolingo mascot in there?
Where are the actual numbers from the first contest? It seems odd that a free software project developed by a foundation that claims to be a meritocracy would feel the need to hide the numbers over something as simple as a mascot contest. I would like to see that actual voting numbers released and the reason why each mascot that was rejected got rejected.
No libbie or lia, SAD!
Can we please have the actual numbers from the initial vote?
I won’t comment on the quality of the final picks, due to having been an eliminated semi-final pick, but I will comment on the fact that this competition has been a complete sham from the start. Here’s why:
– No clear elimination rules (at least not in the beginning), and many picks that disregard those rules, in the semi-final and final round. For instance, the well-loved Libbie is extremely detailed, which would make her hard to print and render. She also looks very similar to Krita’s Kiki, which violates the uniqueness rule. Many of the other picks are also very detailed (many colors, drop-shadowing, gradients, etc.) and considering a two-color version of a mascot was requested during the original submissions, it is completely absurd that such details are allowed.
– No transparency. It is not known who specifically made up the committee who filtered the results, and the voting procedures for the semi-final round were very flawed. I would have appreciated a final tally of *every* design’s votes from the semi-final round just for certainty. There are too many ways to manipulate the results with this set-up.
– Community voting, period. This is easily the least productive way to go about choosing a winner, for *any* competition. There will never be complete consensus among the community, and you cannot always trust the community to choose the *objective* best out of the line-up. Many will pick simply because they or their loved one designed it, or they personally like it for whatever reason. I would have rather had TDF simply pick a mascot, no voting whatsoever, and second and third place. That way, the company itself can choose the mascot they best believe represents their brand and taste, and everyone can go about their lives.
Do I believe the intention was to obfuscate the results? No, but the minute issues came about that were not accounted for, and proved to be vital to how smoothly the competition proceeded, the whole thing should have been nullified and if the applicants really felt that strongly about their submission, they could re-submit into a competition with clearer rules. In your mission to please everyone, you are pretty much pleasing no one. I don’t appreciate having my time wasted. This is not intended to start any arguments; as far as I’m concerned, this is all I need or want to say.
The artist who drew Kiki and the artist who drew Libby are one and the same artist. Of course the artstyles are similar- but even then there’s a clear distinction between the two designs.
I know they have the same artist. Whether or not they look different enough to not violate the uniqueness rule is subjective, so many people may agree with you while many others may disagree. I’m more concerned about the structure of the competition, not the entries themselves.
What happened to the beaver?
It was a pretty good desgin, what happened to it?
The Rockhopper Penguin logo was traced from a copyright stock illustration:
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-happy-cartoon-penguin-rockhopper-illustration-white-background-image60526136
Well, I didn’t like Libbie AT ALL and I’m actually relieved to know that it is not an option anymore.
Considering the available options from the first stage, I do believe that this is one of the best possible scenarios.
Now I’m cheering for the friendly green octopus with a hat. It’s not a Duoling owl, it’s not a penguin, and it’s not some apathic icon. Oh, and it’s not ugly!
You know that the penguin is traced art, right?
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/happy-cartoon-penguin-rockhopper-320621141?src=zj9vsKA6kQ2fwLCHDBLtuA-1-10
Community voting was a terrible mistake. It would have been better if the LO team had just chosen the one it liked the best. Most people have absolutely no aptitude for design and letting people without understanding of design principles judge a design contest seemed like a failure waiting to happen.
For this, you should have sucked it up and chosen the cockatoo. At least it was popular.
Here’s the best idea you’ll see all year:
Don’t use a mascot.
This is an office suite, sowhat on earth possessed you all to have this garbage fire of a “contest”? This sort of me-tooism is embarrassing to look at.
The penguin is literally a recolored version of this stock image: https://es.123rf.com/imagenes-de-archivo/rockhopper_penguins.html?sti=mmevdhe5ub94xzb84z|&mediapopup=46613716
The green owl is literally this company’s mascot: https://www.wetboekplus.nl/voorbeeld-documenten/power-of-attorney/
Of course, the hummingbirds look like any other stock image of a hummingbird because they’re too generic: https://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-vector-hummingbird-logo-627534863.jpg
https://thumb7.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/3394868/371772559/stock-vector-abstract-flying-hummingbird-logo-stylized-hummingbird-art-isolated-on-background-371772559.jpg
I am not a designer guy, actually, I am far from those things but I don’t like any of these mascots.
The ones that have more colors, they seem to be too pale to me.
The ones that have eyes, they look empty and dull faces, not a figure one could like easily.
The two owls look very familiar from other places, like Duolingo or http://www.ebay.com/bhp/owl-bedding.
By contrast, Tux is a lovable, cute, vivid and unique figure.
If I had to show LO to someone, like “look, this is LO I have been loving for two decades (including its predecessors)” then I should add quickly that not the mascot is the one that caused me to liking it, regardless of which of these mascots will win finally.
I appreciate all the people who worked with these figures, I just simply don’t like them (the figures).
Dear LO team,
I’m not sure if the Design team will relay this message, but please, focus on the technical development where you’re doing a great job! Bring us all the tech goodies, innovation, compatibility, remove bugs.
Don’t waste time on the logo… (censored)
In the true spirit of open source, I think both community and foundation members’ voting results should be made publicly available.
This entire contest has been facing many serious problems from the start. No clear criteria for the contestants, selected designs that completely contradict the criteria that were presented later, bad voting system in the first stage (no way of comparing before choosing, no access to the final results), even worse voting system in the second stage (keep the partial results hidden, so people will go for their favorite instead of the one with a chance that is “not as bad”), finalists that are not original designs and do not fit the criteria…
I think there is a lot to be learnt from this experience. In my opinion, it would just be better if you guys from LO picked the one you think is the best (choosing a mascot by community voting is a bad idea) or if you just started over — I don’t think anyone would mind if you did.
Still believe that Cyber Oryx was the best option
https://tysontan.tumblr.com/post/165833582176/libbie-the-cyber-oryx-libbie-is-my-entry-to
Still wondering about vote results
I also believe that Libbie was by and far the best design, and should have at the very least been part of the final vote. It’s baffling to me that she and a handful of other great designs were not included.
Why is there still a penguin?? That penguin is a copy!
You guys should have known that humming bird is part of the registered trademark of ADATA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADATA
Well this is a nothing more than a JOKE.
Seriously but if my former graphic teacher will see these “Semifinals worthy mascots” he will literally die from heart attack.
First of all 5 of these “mascots” are LOGOS. (Well 6 if we can consider pegasus as logo also)
Second, penguin is just https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-happy-cartoon-penguin-rockhopper-illustration-white-background-image60526136 copied, recolored, mirrored and added pen.
Rest… well just lack of words. But just give 5 years old a computer and you will get similar quality of art.
Maybe digimon-thing is an exception.
Another case, there were very quality mascots libbie and “Libre-chan”(that anime girl) they are look like professional work compared to rest. Why didnt they passed? Maybe people really voted for them but LO team decided to throw it to trash for just reasons.
I’m just gonna reinforce what has already been said and throw in my 2 cents:
Libbie was by far the best design.
In the previous comment thread, some suspiciously angry folks were very unhappy (with the odd racist comment thrown in there too) that the creator shared their work on social media. Thus I could speculate that either these angry people skewed the results intentionally, or that some of the organisers listened to this loud minority and decided to omit Libbie in order to avoid ‘controversy’. (apologies if my speculations are untrue)
Any suggestion that Libbie’s design may be ‘hard to print’ or ‘looks like an existing mascot’ is also invalid as far as I’m concerned. The artist’s full proposal includes a ton of variations and silhouetted black & white designs too.
So honestly, Libbie’s design is so darn good that I couldn’t possibly imagine it *not* getting into the final results unless some foul-play or bad decision-making was at hand.
Then there’s the fact that some of these remaining mascots look just like the Duolingo owl or other mascots, or are clearly traced, or are just painfully generic and corporate. I wouldn’t mind so much if these didn’t clearly go against the desired qualities that you yourselves established along the way.
So yeah, while this may be wishful thinking, I think it would be very cool if you reviewed your process, got in touch with Tyson to confirm they’re still OK with Libbie being used. Or just pick a mascot internally because this community vote thing clearly isn’t working.
Since I see you referencing my comment, let me ask you this:
Do you believe that Libbie can be shrunken down to a very small size, say maybe an inch or two tall, and still keep the same fidelity?
Because that is what I mean by “hard to print.” Libbie is an intricate design, I’m not disparaging or even commenting on the quality of the design, I mean “Will this design be able to be printed at a very small size and still be clear and high fidelity?” With all the triangular sections, shadowing, and facial detail, I sincerely doubt it. These are factors that are key to good graphic design, to be able to render the design at *any* size and have it look just as good.
Also, put Libbie, any of her variations excluding the male render, and Kiki side-by-side and they do bear more than a passing resemblance to one another. Libbie is more angular, but beyond that, I’d say they look noticeably similar (others have pointed this out as well, so it’s not just me). The male render was not the main design either, it was a possible variant but was not chosen out of the ones given. Her base design does resemble Kiki to a significant degree.
(I did look at the artist’s full proposal, by the way, and my opinion stands. The B&W version is clearer than the full color versions, but still presents the same issues.)
No one is stopping you from liking Libbie or believing that she should’ve won, but to posit her as being a flawless design is not correct, just based on basic graphic design principles. However, your opinion of her quality is your own.
We can agree, however, that TDF/LO should decide internally versus letting this carry on.
I really don’t know the intentions of LibreOffice design team, so this is my personal wild guess: mascot is not a logo and probably it being not very printer-friendly is not a big deal. In the end of the day, one can have a different image of the same mascot, that is printer-friendly. It’s not very hard to tone down Libbie’s visual noise, I think B&W versions demonstrate that, or just use her head or silhouette.
Java has a mascot and a logo. KDE has a mascot and a logo. Mozilla has a mascot and a logo. PHP has a mascot and a logo. OpenBSD has mascot and a logo. The list can go on an on. In many cases images of the mascot aren’t as printer-friendly as the logo is.
Fair assessment. I think much of the reason why there is so much strife is because TDF said the design could be either a mascot or logo-esque. I personally feel that a logo-esque mascot is most versatile (like SUSE’s Geeko) but TDF really did not make their intentions clear, and that is on them.
Actually, no. TDF said initially that the contest was to find a mascot and that logos would be disqualified. I don’t know when they made the change, but it was definitely after all the mascots were submitted.
Yes, I do think the design works at a small scale – I’m viewing it zoomed out on my phone from a distance, and it reads well for me. And most home printers are capable of going that small without a loss of image quality. It’s not perfect, the Duolingo owl is probably better, but it’s still good.
As for the similarity to Kiki, they’re both ‘anthro’ in style and by the same artist, but in terms of features, proportions, colours and theme, they’re sufficiently different to me that I can clearly tell they are two separate characters. Maybe I’m just particularly fond of these kinds of characters so I spot the differences, but even then, among the current finalists I think there are far worse offenders for being too similar to other mascots.
But yeah, at this point we’re just arguing taste and personal judgement. I’d still be really surprised if you thought the readibility and similarity was so bad that Libbie didn’t deserve to be here among the top 12.
Agreed that there are much worse offenders currently in the line-up, and I definitely agree that of the 63 semi-final picks, Libbie was top 12 in quality. Simply put, TDF’s quality control is sketchy at best, so I think this is more of an issue with the structure of the contest itself in the end.
Her similarity to Kiki is clearly intentional. For one, it’s the same artist. One can assume there was a goal in mind of creating a cross-product family of mascots for popular open source software.
I agree that Libbie does not scale down incredibly well, there’s just too much detail, however most of these submissions probably won’t be the versions used in final either, and only serve as a guideline. Libbie clearly had a lot of thought put into her, which can’t be said about a lot of the submissions. A her flexibility was already apparent from her design.
Hunting down a mascot isn’t just about graphic design, they’re characters that need to be emotive and capable of conveying ideas. Too many of the suggested mascots are just flat icons. Out of what’s left pretty much only the octopus makes sense as a mascot.
Fair assessment.
This isnt that difficult to solve, Libbie is too complicated as is… but the contest was supposed to be iterative. Still by far the most original and interesting of the bunch (and pretty much the only one that isnt a lazy trace job).
Tysontan (creator of Libbie) does tend to do very intricate graphic designs in his work, mainly fashion but you can take a look at his designs on FreedomPlanet2 and some are intricate but he can do simple too, like with Maria Notte.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8gLdk0WsAAGkOA.jpg
Tiny print scale mascots is not something he has done before but IF he was asked, I’m sure he could revise Libbie to simplify the design. It seems like the LO team actually has zero professionalism and didn’t even look into whether the finals were traced or blatantly copyrighted from other companies and just decided to axe Libbie early without looking at it with another revision, (unlike how all professional client work gets done). There’s many easy graphic design solutions one could take, like having Libbie’s ear be the recognizable tiny scale “stamp”. You don’t need to have the full thing on display at all times, and really doesnt sound like you know what you are talking about at all for an argument. Look at Mickey Mouse, Disney’s mascot, but only represented 90% of the time by the iconic mouse ears.
The orange and yellow penguin is an abomination of design, and it doesn’t surprise me that it’s lifted directly out of a low effort imageshack stock piece. Literally any of the others would have been a better choice, it is so ugly that it hurts to look at.
Fair assessment, this contest has just been set up terribly. I bet a lot of the issues people are having would have been solved with clear guidelines in the beginning.
“Do you believe that Libbie can be shrunken down to a very small size, say maybe an inch or two tall, and still keep the same fidelity?”
Print just her face? That’s a non-issue
If the design only contained her face, I would agree. But in the end, I don’t feel like debating over something like this. I’m just hypothesizing as to why she may have been taken out. I don’t plan on discussing this any further, as differences in taste will only create vitriol.
I normally don’t comment, but Libbie being disqualified, along with these new designs being pushed has sparked an unmeasurable fury. I’ve asked a few of my friends which they prefer, showing the most popular mascots, while trying to withhold any bias I might show. Libbie won each time, I don’t think there was any good reason for disqualifying her. “but dude, she’s hard to print small!” why not just draw a simpler version for when you need to print? That isn’t uncommon practice. “but bruh, it looks unprofessional!” It’s 2017, the mascots that are being pushed now are far less professional. Also, take a look at KDE’s and Krita’s mascots.
Why did you bother doing a community vote if you weren’t going to take the community’s votes?
granted, I am being a bit satirical with my “unmeasurable fury”, and the friends I surveyed are all ~18, so the results are less pure than a full-ranged sample group.
Heiko,
I’m going to take a stand and assert that my phoenix was one of the few entries that met all the qualifications of a brand functional mascot. Its simple, scaleable to any size, and will not be found anywhere else on the internet, as it was designed to be completely original. Nope – its not the cutest, but that wasn’t even a qualification from the start.
Its clean, effective, and says, “This is professional, mature software –
not a kid’s program.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ujZbCMk29HP6iPSirbI22Ao-a67qIuq_/view?usp=sharing
Why wasn’t it included?
Your entry is more like a logo than a mascot, though.
I admit, the Libby design was my favorite, but I did vote for this one too. It’s clean and professional- I’m likely just biased because I like Tysontan’s work XD
If anything, both this phoenix and Libby are miles above the junk that is now in the final round.
Vaguely reminiscent of Mozilla Sunbird’s logo, which should have been a non-issue anyway, since that project is dead and buried.
I don’t know, I have no means to know why perfectly good entries were disqualified. This isn’t even about Libby anymore, it’s just disappointment all the way through. Why go through a contest with public voting if you’re going to pick favorites anyway?
None of these are remotely professional looking. They’re also more like an unimaginative styled logo. Did you’s hire some incompetent, out of touch, condescending marketing professionals recently?
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/happy-cartoon-penguin-rockhopper-320621141?src=zj9vsKA6kQ2fwLCHDBLtuA-1-10
Like someone else said, the penguin is semi-traced, flying directly against your claims of checking the submissions for copyright problems and potential plagiarism.
How are you going to do what you did to Libbie – throughout the entire process, you used a poorly screenshotted version of her and didn’t show any of the multitude of iterations Tyson-tan drew – and then let this walking violation get into your top 10?
As someone else mentioned, a few of these hummingbirds will also get potentially get you in hot water with ADATA.
Here’s my advice. Start over, scrap this whole iteration, and this time, give us clear definitions, guidelines, transparency, and do your homework. There is no reason this should be a problem. We should have been informed, involved, and included from the get go. That’s what free software is.
I mirror the sentiment that this could possibly be the worst selection out of the entries. Half of these look like 90’s logo designs, then you have a duolingo owl ripoff, 2 octopuses that look like they came from a flash animation for infants, a penguin with a terrible color scheme, a nondescript thing wearing glasses and a furry creature that looks kinda cute but I don’t see how it represents LO.
The microsoft clippy was a better mascot than any of those.
Why wasn’t the poll held on a well-monitored forum? A public poll with no registration requirements or CAPTCHA protection is too open to abuse from sockpuppets. The results speak for themselves.
This should have been for the community to vote on, not the wider Internet. I love LibreOffice, I use it every day, but this controversy leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Nothing like this happens in the KDE community.
If the LibreOffice team has any integrity, they should restart this poll elsewhere with better protections in place. So many great candidates with artistic merit were left in the cold here, not just Libbie. I liked Chase’s Pheonix and would have been happy if it were chosen!
“Not the open Internet”
You can be 100 % sure that this was entirely made by the FOSS community. Nobody else reported this but FOSS blogs, and very few people would actually vote for a mascot of a product they don’t use.
The difference between KDE and this is that the KDE voting was on the open and everyone could see the votes. Here we got an entire month of silence and then a “second round” with no way to see how many votes each mascot got.
I was referring to places outside of the LibreOffice culture or community. Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan are discussing this contest’s fallout.
That said, I agree the way it was setup had a severe lack of transparency. If this trainwreck goes on without the team owning up to the mess, my respect for them will be measurable in the negatives.
The penguin design is stolen.
http://www.canstockphoto.com/happy-cartoon-penguin-rockhopper-30574817.html
I hate to bring this back, but the cockatoo was the best design by far, and it unexplainably did not make it to the first list. The LO logo was not a part of the mascot — it was just standing on it. It’s even harder to accept now that we know that the finalists have the opportunity to receive changes suggested by the community (in that case, just get rid of the logo, as the rest was perfect).
I recognise that Libbie is well designed, but it is not good for an office suite. It targets a very specific demographic, and that’s not ideal for a software meant to be used for work by people with many different backgrounds, opinions, tastes, and ages. I would personally find it very cringy to have an anime character as the mascot of my office suite, as it would look very juvenile and unprofessional.
The thing is that the mascot was not supposed to appear in the program. TDF claimed that it would be used in marketing and blog posts, and for that purpose Libbie was actually very good.
But yeah, the cockatoo was by far the best design submitted.
There were so many better designs in your line up you could have picked (like at least a good 5). None of the ones selected above give a professional/clean feel to them. They are like when I see a a sign created by clearly an inexperienced relative for a business.
I want to echo the comment that if this is your final lineup you would have been better just hiring a professional.
I am pretty sure this post will not become public, but the important thing is that you guys from the Design Team read it. I’ve been a proud LibreOffice user since 2012, and I am just writing this because I do care.
You may pretend that everything is going just ok, but this entire competition was a disaster from the start and I am pretty sure you are aware of that. Here’s a list of some of the problems: the inclusion/exclusion criteria were not well communicated to the contestants before the submission period, the first list with 63 (!) options contained many proposals that contradicted the very same criteria, the voting system was flawed, the results of the first phase were not made open to the community, the final list once again contains options that do not comply with the criteria, and the voting system, even though different, is flawed again (partial results should be hidden, so people voted for their favorite instead of “the acceptable ones that still have a chance”). I am not surprised that channers have teamed up to troll the competition.
I understand the whole idea of coming up with a competition was to increase visibility and integrate with the community, but in the end LibreOffice became an internet joke, angered the community, and lost respect.
Here are some of your options now:
(1) Recognise that the competition suffered from enough problems to be invalidated and (1.1) restart from scratch, with a decent and more transparent approach or (1.2) choose a design of your liking and ignore this voting that was taken over by trolls. You could also (2) pretend that everything is going just fine, give the prize to the designer that achieved more votes with his design and (2.1) never use the mascot anywhere, completely ignoring that all of this ever existed or (2.2) actually use it.
Personally, I think that the first options would possibly make you recover some of the respect that was lost. That would show that you listen to the voice of the community (honestly, how many people are happy with this competition right now?) and would show that you are able to recognise your mistakes and learn from them. The option 2.1 is not that bad, once people would forget these events with time. But please do not go for 2.2, or this wound will take much longer to heal.
How to get winning mascot for libre office competition in 7 steps
Step1: Go google images
Step2: Search “[put random animal] Clip art”
Step3: Download random image from results
Step4: Open downloaded image with GIMP or other image editor.
Step5: Change some colors
Step6: Add clipart pen
Step7: Voila.
Libbie was the best. Simple as that. It was rigged from the start.
I’m very disappointed with final mascots. The mascot should be designed by an artist, someone with high drawing skill and good at character design. There don’t have this. They are not charming, cure and aesthetically pleasing. They just are simple vector shapes showing really basic silhouette of a character, almost like in cliparts, or are poorly drawn, without any knowledge of anatomy.
I’ve actually downvoted most of the projects at the voting phase. You should have made it clear, that contest is for artists, people who are good at character design.
I don’t have to say which design, that didn’t qualify here was my favorite, already was told by most commenter here. This one was designed by an experienced artist, someone good at character design, knowing anatomy and created something with a unique artstyle.
Can’t believe Libbie wasn’t chosen… seems like the community loved her and leaving her out is a poor decision. Hope TDF reconsiders it.
Frankly, all those finalist designs suck and that penguin/koala/mutant/whatever is a stock illustration. The better designs never even got to the final.
Libbie is the _best_, and you’re just faking the results. If not, then why not show us how many votes she received compared to how many votes other submissions received?
We decided to take the rockhopper penguin out of the set because of potential copyright issue. Some (ironic) comments on the imageboard were so funny and creative that it shouldn’t be lost:
Exquisite! I simply love this fine specimen of mascot vector design! His blank stare into the mass void of modern capitalism screams to me “I will conquer the office world for freedom!” A lotta loyalty to be seen to such a parsimonious community. OH! That subtle pear-body satire of Apple makes me moist. What a snide stab at Apple’s egregious techno-empire with their simple symbol of techriartrical-oppression! You put to shame Tim Cook and his gallery of marble monuments depicting avant-garde Nepalese romance tapestries.
The delicious grip on that pen…our southern rockhumping friend stands proud, a big guy letting every proprietary fiend know that the office space will no longer reside in Bill Gate’s pants. We can feel the penguita man crashing those Areo-lovin, Metro-plane-clicking, Cortana-lewding Micromorons. The designer gave such life, as I die to taking off that pen from that penguin’s cold dead hands. The elements just blend so well.
I appreciate the respectful homage to Piet Mondrian with the designer’s unique and thought-provoking color schema.
How can the other designs compete?
This great piece is the opus magnum of a Indian. Trully genious, see: The yellow represents curry, the orange represents curry, the blue is from the Gange’s water, which also goes into the curry. The gray is from the ashes of their ancestors, which are disposed in the ganges, so end up in the curry too. This Indian polar mammal is not only a mascot, but a work of art. Accepting it will be another step to LO demonstrating they embrace diversity.
I am really glad that this mascot made it this far, and hopefully it will become the new logo of Libreoffice. I actually quite like it. I think that some of the metaphysical imagery is really particularly effective, and there are interesting visual devices too. The elegantness of the Rockhopper Penguin really accentuates the humanity- excuse me, penguinity- of the artist’s compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the image’s structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and into whatever the image is about!
This actually looks like, compared to the other contestants, a pretty competent mascot. It makes me remember the works of the famous japanese designer Osamu Haido, who certainly influenced the artist’s vision. Thumbed up on all fields!
Truly a suitable mascot for a professional, business setting. The colours scream “90’ Post-Modernism” and the image itself reminds the user that he is forever trapped in the void that is his office cubicle.
Out of all the candidates submitted, I think this has to be the best. I’d like to share these lines from the Bible, which express my feelings for our dear penguin.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,
so is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples:
for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head,
and his right hand doth embrace me.
Wow! What fantastic piece of art! This penguin needs to win. It tops the others and excels in cuteness, mascotability and suitability as you can see he is ready to write a document with that massive pen. A fantastic blend of warm and cold colors complementing each other. The expression of his face is cute and professional at the same time. Great vector art that will fit perfectly with my flat design KDE Plasma Desktop Environment.
Could you perhaps use Libbie to fill the spot the rockhopper penguin left? There seems to be fairly widespread community support for her.
If she’s not good enough to be a mascot she won’t get enough votes to advance to the next round, so there’s no danger of it worsening the process.
More than slightly disappointed that it managed to get this far, considering how easily it was to find the art that was traced, and how much you assured us that you checked and checked and checked, but thanks at least for taking it out.
Do better next time.
the libreoffice design team is doing a great job of proving to the world that they are hacks that don’t even know how to run a simple, vote-based contest!
how embarrassing!
It’s disappointing that Libbie did not make it, consider she was my favorite. 30 year old user, here. Krita and KDE’s mascots are adorable, so is AROS’s mascot, and BSD’s. Microsoft Windows even has a cute mascot.
Disappointed, guys. You could have simplified Libbie into something like Konqi, but you chickened out. Shame. She was a good mascot.
could you delete the obvious copys???
https://i.imgur.com/7XkiETz.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/LAxRk5w.png
So in response to all the valid frustrations expressed by users and entrants, we get nothing more than an attempt at comedy…?
I spent 15 hours working on my submission, for this… I think I’ll go back to Word.
Be aware that the imageboard voting and comment abuse is being made in response to the lack of sheer professionalism and respect (for the artists involved and users). This competition should be started again with clear precise rules, and with foundation’s employees votes also made public.
I really hope that the “THE LIBREOFFICE DESIGN TEAM” reply is a joke.
Also, PLEASE consider having someone else take care of this process, the fact that the penguin with copyright problems ever made to the first list shows that whoever is taking care of this isn’t capable of doing so. Did anyone who was related to this competition ever gave Microsoft Office or Google Docs logos and visual identity a look?
Seriously, out of the 11 remaining proposals, the only one which looks halfway professional, is the last one (the hummingbird), which but is ubiquitous. I think I remember far better proposals. All other 10 (and especially that (finally crossed out) penguin) are just embarrassing… sorry, but they all look like they’ve been designed by some random 10-year-old school kid and would be a shame to LO.
I didn’t vote for Libbie, because I found anime not suitable at first – but now I’ve seen all those different (and great!) variants, that I have to say, that this is the best proposal by far!
And Libbie compressed to a few centimeters will still look better than those other amateur “designs” (which should rather be called scribblings, actually). I’d rather take a more complex design which can’t be scaled down that well (but you’ll surely get adjusted ones for small-scale from the author, I’m sure), than an ugly drawing, just for the sake of being able to scaled down well. Krita also uses a rather complex mascot, why should there be any problem?
Any if it didn’t meet your criterias, then why did you have it in the first round – but now make excuses for not being usable? If you told the author this right at the beginning, he surely would’ve simplified it. Remember, Gnome also does special icons for small sizes, and they use detailed ones for normal to large sizes!
The author also stated:
„ Weeks of research. A month to draw all those 40 pictures. 39 of them never showcased by the organizer. New contest rules added later, dismissing Libbie like trash. My passion and hardwork meant nothing to them.
Libbie is now in public domain. You may use her for any purpose.“
You should really be ashamed, LO team! I have nothing more to say.
Ehm, this whole thing looks more than fishy. The website for voting under https://imageboard.documentfoundation.org/posts does not work, even on main stream browsers Chrome and Firefox. And while the average user still wanders why he can’t vote, those who allegedly can vote down all the truly creative ones and those that go by modern design standards also those that evidently have a high acclaim in the community. The only one gets a positive score is the red haired clip art penguin, which *nobody* seem to like except for ‘a majority’ of (anonymous?) voters under on a non-functional/non-accessible website, and which is obviously traced off a Can Stock Photo. C’mon Document Foundation, this has been rigged, either from the inside or from outside. I suggest cancelling this whole thing and go without a logo for the time being. If you insist on the validity of the results then in the best case you will just degrade the image and popularity of Libre Office in the community (because nobody else believes the ‘voting results’ are genuine); and in the worst case you will be sued, required to withdraw the newest version of LO and will loose donated funds to a lawsuit (because potentially some really bad guy has not only planted 3rd party copyright tainted material into this competition, but also engineered (socially or technically) to make sure that material wins)
Removing the worst offender in the lineup isn’t a substitute for an apology. Integrity is gained when there is transparency, not when there is an attempt to avoid honest dialogue.
Standing your ground only reinforces the complaints leveled against this gross mishandling of a simple mascot contest. This should have been fun, and yet here we are facing some of the most aesthetically offensive candidates I have ever seen given serious consideration for an open-source project.
This isn’t about Libbie or any other candidate. This is about LibreOffice’s image to the general public. Thus far, it’s not a pretty picture.
It’s rigged or the voting system is.
Anyone with good hacksec can literally floodvote or at the very least you could hire rogue blackhat or greyhat hackers to massvote a mascot.
Libbie está sobrevaloradísima, no va para nada con LO. Lo único bueno que ha hecho el equipo de diseño es no calificarlo.
So, LibreOffice, what are you going to do with the competition? How are you going to correct how inappropriately it has been handled?
It’s already been ansvered here: https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/11/20/statement-mascot-project/
The best mascot is the Bee…
Also connected to the hexagons a particular task represents
(maybe connected to other tasks). Period.
Unfortunately, I am a terrible cartoonist. But I think octopus is a good idea, but the drawing must be improved, the pet must be tender and friendly with the children and also transmit certain formality. Imagine an octopus widget that rotates on a disk to present the icon of each application on its extremities.
–On the other hand an octopus is not a simple and clean image because it has many arms. I would recommend a Polar Bear with very simple lines in the style of the Japanese manga, similar to Totoro or a bear with a style like the drawings of the movie of the little prince. A polar bear fits well with the cubes that already have the logo of LO 6.0, conveys simplicity and white reminds paper or a clean surface. It is a tribute to species in danger of extinction and the footprint lends itself to placing in each leg one of the applications of free office. Slogans like, leave a mark in what you do, leave your teacher cold with your professional homework done in LO, keep your computer cool with LO and do more, nice watermarks etc.
-A turtle could break paradigms too, but not a traditional turtle but a flying turtle equipped with a pair of jets and a helmet. The turtle can transmit security, fly, freedom, feeling of speed for all with the correct tools, and even with few resources you can do a lot, the hexagons of the shell can become icons of the applications.
Well it’s a brainstorm, I hope you like it. I like work ideas, but draw is not my skill. Greetings from Central America.
Sorry for my english, I helped myself with a translator.