Creating the Fedora Mentor Summit Logo

I first discovered the ticket on the Fedora Mentor Summit logo in January when I first started working on Fedora Design tickets.

Issue link here: https://pagure.io/design/issue/805

So, the brief was to create a logo for the Fedora Mentor Summit and for it to be also suitable to print on merchandise such as bags, t-shirts, etc. It was in the planning phase so nothing was solidified so I just had to go by the title.

My first iteration of the logo was of a handshake. I wanted to keep it the theme of Fedora's branding and the handshake symbolises meeting new people and helping others as well! I created the initial sketch using Procreate on iPad.

First iteration of the logo created on Procreate

I first brought the logo into the Fedora Design group chat that we have for contributors. The colour palette in this sketch was very rough and the fonts weren't even right so it was a very rough sketch. I was also deciding what kind of colours I would like to use for the logo as well. At this point, I was very determined that this was the final concept of the logo with a couple tweaks and that's that but I quickly came to learn that Rome wasn't build in a day and feedback is crucial!! I got some feedback about the colour of the logo so I wanted to incorporate that into my next iteration of the logo.

I then brought this logo to the Fedora Design meetings that happen every Wednesday to show it to my team and ask for feedback. The Fedora Design meetings are hosted my Red Hat employees but anyone form the public can join in and contribute to the Fedora Project which is what I really like about Fedora.

I got some feedback from my mentor Máirín Duffy about how to go about the logo and to change some things as well. She mentioned how changing the position of the hands and trying a different pose and make it more of a helping hand rather than a handshake. She also pointed out to me about the Outreachy logo and how the steps are a symbol of opportunity and steps to a something better.

Outreachy logo created by Marie Nordin

Outreachy is an organisation that provides paid and remote internships in open source projects. With Fedora being an open source project, it gives people that are underrepresented in communities a chance to get an internship with a big open source project.

In the next meeting then, I showed my 2nd concept of the logo which was more of a helping hand rather than a handshake as the Fedora Mentor Summit is all about helping others and I wanted to symbolise that with the helping hand imagery.

Second iteration of the logo created on Procreate

I again brought the new iteration of the logo to the Fedora Design meeting and I got more feedback about the hand gesture and maybe to explore more with my designs as I was sticking to the one idea and not exploring other options. I think at this point, I was quite stumped when it came to inspiration. However, one of my colleagues Madeline Peck came up with some amazing thumbnails for me to work on! One great thing about Fedora is that anyone can work on the one project which is what I love and collaboration is encouraged.

Madeline's various iterations of the Fedora Mentor Summit logo

With the inspiration from Madeline, I got some great ideas and started vectorising! I brought them into a software called Inkscape which is a design tool that lets draw vector graphics which makes the graphics scalable without losing quality! I think its really cool and its also free!!!

Vectorisations of some of my favourite designs that Madeline drew

I vectorised my favourite logos of Madelines that she created and added them to the ticket. My mentor got back to me with some really valuable feedback and information and this is where I really understood the Fedora guidelines and the different colours and there is a significant change between the logos above and the next logos.

One of the main things that stood out to me was line quality. Fedora logos mostly have thick lines whenever there's linework in their logos and are usually very geometric rather than organic. There's also not normally outlines on logos as well so that was another factor that I found interesting. Colour palette was another big thing as well, Fedora have their own colour palette that they stick to and specific shades of grey in between black and white. Gradients also link to that as there's not much gradients in their brand design although they would like to incorporate more gradients in promotional material. Shape-wise, they like to keep things simple and rounded and also make them so that they could work in one colour as well. with fonts too, Montserrat is the main font that they stick to when it comes to logos that include the Fedora logo.

Fedora Colour Palette

The Fedora Family

With that, I got feedback on the logos to see which ones we like most and which ones we don't. The speech bubble idea was too like other logos within the Fedora community such as the Fedora Discussions logo and the Fedora Chat logo as well. the mountain summit idea was really good as well and was kind of reminiscent of the Outreachy logo as well but the issue with it was that the peak looked a bit too high and maybe some people would think that being a mentor is too difficult? So we dropped the speech bubble idea and the mountain idea and we chose to further the development of the hands concept and the lightbulb idea. The lightbulb idea was the favourite among the two of them as it symbolised two people coming together and producing an idea which is what mentorship is about. The second favourite was the hands idea as we liked the energy of the logo but it needs to be more Fedora-y.

Fedora Discussion Logo

So, I went back to Inkscape and started cleaning them back up again and adding that Fedora flair that was missing from them. I first started on the lightbulb one and I started with the two circles, one using the New Fedora Blue colour and the Dark Fedora Blue. I wanted to create the Venn diagram by having the darker circle blend in with the lighter one and have an effect in the middle where it the darker circle was more transparent so you were able to see the blend. Myself and my mentor figured out that this wasn't the best approach at this method and to use 3 different shapes; the two circles as well as a separate shape for the bit it the middle as when it comes to printing, the printers could come into some issues if certain objects in the file were transparent. Having 3 solid objects with no transparency effects would make printing a lot easier. It would also make re-colouring the logo a lot faster and easier as well as now you have 3 pieces to work with.

The logo with the blending option using Inkscape

For the lightbulb, I wanted to incorporate a little Fedora Easter egg in it somewhere. I created a lightbulb shape using the pen tool and the using the pen tool again, I created this swirly shape the resembles the swirl in the new Fedora logo. For the cap of the swirl, to resemble the threads on the cap, I created two simple likes using the rectangle tool. I rotated them and subtracted them from the existing rectangle using the Path > Difference tool by selecting both objects and the shape on top makes a cut out on the bottom shape. I used this technique for the filament shape as well that's in the lightbulb. I also added a little rectangle at the bottom to resemble the contact point of the lightbulb.

Logo with the 3 different shapes creating the Venn diagram and the first iteration of the lightbulb

With this iteration of the logo, I went back to my mentor to ask for her opinion and the feedback. Everything was perfect bar the cap of the lightbulb which I also felt it looked a bit off as well. another thing was the intersection of the two circles as it was too narrow and to give the lightbulb in the centre some breathing space.

With that, I redesigned the cap using a rectangle with rounded corners. I also rounded the threads and didn't extended them all the way to the edges. I also rounded the contact point as well. I made the intersection of the Venn diagram bigger as well to allow the lightbulb in the centre to breathe and give it room as well.

Close up of final graphic

Final iterations of the Fedora Mentor Summit logo

Everyone was really happy with this iteration when I asked for feedback in the chat so I moved on then to designing the hands version of the logo.

With the hands, I created them from scratch to make them look more Fedora-y. I got some inspiration from The Noun Project which is a great resource for open source logos. I used the grid on Inkscape to make sure when I was using the Pen tool that the fingers would be an even size as well as proportionate.

Using the Grid in Inkscape to create the hand for the hands version of the Fedora Mentor Summit logo

I then started to put the hands together and was experimenting with colour at this point. In the first iteration below, I wanted to have one of the hands really defined and then have the other more so like a shadow of the other and then bring the sparks from the original sketch into it but round them out a little bit. With feedback, I put a stroke on the dark blue hand do define both the hands.

Two iterations of the hands

Myself and my mentor after seeing these designs to add an outer outline to the hand on the left to separate the two hands and make it more clear generally. to use the outer outline, you have to make a copy of the shape of the outline, in this case the left hand, and click Path > Outset which outsets the shape.

Showing the intersection of the outset and copy or right hand

The red outline is the outset underneath the hand layer, the yellow transparent hand is to show that in order to get just the section that we want to create a cutout for the right hand. In order to do this, we make sure that the outset is an object rather than a stroke, use the intersect tool to cut out the intersecting part of the outset that is intersecting with the transparent yellow hand and you get this:

This will allow us to be able to separate the two hands so it looks clearer! We originally wanted it to make it the same colour as the stroke on the right hand to allow separation but we tried it in white and it looks so much better! It almost gives the hands a 3D effect which worked out really well and brought into the final design.

I fixed the issue with the offset as well that either end shows a little bit of the underneath stroke on the right hand by fixing the nodes to the edge of the hand.

Final iteration of the hands version of the logo

We decided as well for the one colour versions as well to just have the outlines of the hands without the offset as both hands will be easy to determine between.

Final Mentor Summit logo sheet

Here is the final iterations for the logo and between the two versions, the lightbulb logo was chosen! I am delighted with the choice and I have learned so much for doing these two logos as my first big project. I had so much fun creating this new logo and also using Inkscape. Here is the logo being used in a blog post on the Fedora Community Blog: https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/fedora-mentor-summit-is-here/