hey folks, quick update to say you’ve probably noticed our new community icons.
these icons were lovingly crafted by @UrLogicFails@beehaw.org, who posted them a couple of days ago over in Creative. we took notice of them and obviously–because they’re our community icons now–really, really liked them.
thanks to his generosity in working things out with us, we’re pleased to announce we can use his icons under a Creative Commons license for the site! until further notice they’ll be our site icons, with credit to him on our sidebars. we’ll also be adding attribution to the community sidebars over the rest of day as time permits.
we’re also pleased to report that, thanks to your generosity, we’ve been able to reasonably compensate him for all 33 of the icons he’s made for the community! the agreed to rate is $5 per icon, for a total of $165 that’s been paid out to him as of today. this expense has been reflected on our Open Collective. (we’ve also agreed to, as possible, commission him for any future community icons until further notice, which will be subject to that same rate.)
hopefully you enjoy the new icons, and please thank UrLogicFails for the work here! thanks for using the site again folks!
And to add a little more: the icons contribute to making the Local timeline for Beehaw to become overly “busy”, since every post has a very stand-out yellow icon under it, usually signifying something important (hence why it should stand out). The icons become to prominent, especially considering the websites dark background color. I can see the appeal of being able to easily identify Beehaw-communities in Subscribed or All timelines, but to be quite honest, I find that the overly attention-seeking color choice of the icons clutter up the Local timeline to a point where they are more of a nuisance rather than conveying any kind of distinguishing information about the community. My Local timeline now looks like this:
Don’t get me wrong, I think they are beautifully designed, but the color choice is very much working against conveying any useful information at a glance (except what instance theyy belong to…). There is a reason that not all traffic signs have the same colors.
On the other hand, I think it’s really nice that they are distinctive from the logos on other instances. It tells you at a glance that you are clicking on a post from Beehaw.org and to abide by Beehaw’s mantra, whether you’re a user from another instance subscribed to a Beehaw community or a Beehaw user looking at your Subscribed feed.
We want to draw attention to the instance itself and that’s one of the only places we can do so in people’s feeds. I do a decent amount of graphic design and know far too much about visual theory (also a neurobiologist), I disagree that the color choice is wrong outside the scope of violating another licence.