Worrying attitudes to the branding of the D language

[David Nadlinger via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 1 July 2014 at 21:15:10 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> In the past i worked on purely traditional packaging so 
> everything you saw in the supermarkets i had a hand in. Food, 
> clothing, magazines, etc.

I just asked because I was genuinely interested in your 
background, not because it would be particularly relevant for 
this discussion. However, please understand that when your answer 
to a question for design references is "everything you saw in the 
supermarkets" and a shop you do software engineering for, I have 
somewhat of a hard time taking you seriously. You probably 
wouldn't talk like that to (former) colleagues, would you?

> Believe me branding is everything do not take this stuff so 
> lightly.

I'm not taking it lightly. The big issue I see with the current 
state is that D simply doesn't have a consistent brand at this 
point, and never had (D Man, anyone?). Frantically clinging to 
the current bits and pieces doesn't help us at all, and neither 
do alarmist and inflammatory sweeping blows directed at a honest 
(and only partially related) volunteer effort.

Instead, we should try to channel what we currently have into a 
appealing and recognizable brand. Even if that means slightly 
touching up the logo to adapt some of the elements that might 
have been hip a while ago, but would seem rather quaint in a 
current design. I completely agree that this can't be a matter of 
somebody toying around with Inkscape a bit (no offense!), but 
discouraging everybody from addressing the issue at all while at 
the same time not bringing anything to the table yourself also 
isn't particularly productive.

David