Peercoin Logo Design Contest Planning Thread

I’m going to need your input in setting up this contest. We’re going to have to give instructions to the designers on what to do and what not to do. We’re also going to have to leave this as open as possible for the designers because I’m not going to be able to guide them to the final design by myself like they’re probably used to. The reason is because this is a group project and I’m sure you all wouldn’t like it very much if I alone instructed them to design what I personally liked. Maybe we can make up for this by linking them to a thread on this forum where everyone can comment on the designs or make suggestions, since only one person (me) can control the account. There needs to be a way for all of you to offer input to the designers and that may be a good way.

The below image shows you exactly what needs to be filled out in order to set up the contest. I’ve numbered the important parts that need to be discussed and offered my opinions on them below. Before we start though, check out this sample contest so you know exactly what it might look like when it’s finished.

1. This is a coin logo, so there probably shouldn’t be a name on it, besides some optional text like Peer to Peer for example. I think this field can be left blank.

2. I think this field can also be left blank. BitcoinFridge came up with some slogans a while ago, but they won’t be shown on the coin itself.

3. Here we need to describe what Peercoin is and how it differs from Bitcoin. I think somebody more knowledgeable than me on Peercoin should write this up. It shouldn’t be too technical. Somebody who doesn’t know about Bitcoin should be able to understand it. I think it should start off by saying that Peercoin is a revolutionary new cryptocurrency, briefly explain what cryptocoins are and then explain the advantages it has over Bitcoin such as its energy efficiency. It should probably be about 2-3 paragraphs long.

4. The closest match I could find in the list was Accounting & Financial.

5. Either emblem or pictorial mark is a good match here I think. We just need to make sure they don’t write out Peercoin on the logo. That can be mentioned in the notes. Do you agree with these or do you think others should be included as well?

6. I think we can list the Bitcoin and Litecoin logos here as samples.

7. For this one I have no idea what to put beyond that it needs to be a simplistic design. What should we do here? Go ahead and use Paint to mark the values and explain why you think it should be that way.

8. The overall colors should be gold or silver, like any other valuable coin, but I think we should make it clear that other colors can be added in. For example, if we’re trying to convey eco-friendliness maybe they can do it without the leaf design by adding green somewhere on the logo. So I think we should say the main colors have to be gold or silver, but that they can add other colors to the mix if necessary.

9. At least right now the logo will mainly be used online, but farther into the future it may be used on other types of materials. Which ones do you think I should check? I’m not sure if this section matters too much, but they’re asking so I have to put down something.

10. Are these the only file formats that are needed?

11. In this area I can include the designs we’ve currently been working with, the ones I posted on the donation page.

12. NOTES: This is the most important section. This is where we give out detailed instructions to the designers on what we want and I think it’s something we really need to discuss. We need to come to a consensus about what we’re really trying to accomplish here. Here are some important questions to think about…

A. Should we stick with the current symbol we’ve been working with in our designs with the two P’s superimposed over each other with the line connecting them at the bottom? Or should we allow the designers the freedom to change the symbol? This is one thing that I think we should be strict on. I personally love the symbol we have now and don’t think it can get much better than this. I also believe Sunny wanted it to look this way. This should be a constant in all designs in my opinion.

B. Should we abandon the leaf? The purpose of the leaf in the logo was to convey the energy efficiency of ppc as opposed to Bitcoin. I personally love the leaf and really wanted to keep it in there, but I forced myself to ask some hard questions. A eco-friendly message is great right now because all the other coins are energy hogs, but what about in the future? What happens in the future if energy efficient coins become the norm and Bitcoin is no longer an issue. The leaf messaging suddenly loses its meaning and becomes outdated. If we really want this logo to stand the test of time, I think we should follow the lead of Bitcoin and Litecoin and simplify the logo to focus in on the letter symbol and not anything that would distract away from it. Just check out their logos, very simple and focused on the letter symbol…

If we go this simplified route, should we allow the designers to include any text, which could distract away from the main symbol? All designs should probably be face down shots, unless they want to make angle shots in addition to the face down shots. I think that’s enough to start a discussion. If you can think of anymore questions that we need to answer, go ahead and post them.

Let’s avoid text. As much as I love English, not everyone uses it. The bitcoin and litecoin logos are some good basic examples to include. Also some beautiful physical coins might inspire them to make us something cool.



Thanks for organizing the project :slight_smile:

Preferred theme:

environmental friendly + gold (gold color can be decorations only)

Please don’t use silver/copper, unlike ltc our marketing message is not silver/copper to someone else’s gold.

Currency symbol:

Official symbol is P with an extra vertical bar (to make it look like 2 P’s stacked) with a horizontal bar connecting them. It symbolizes peer-to-peer.

I agree with this and didn’t think too much about it until now. This is supposed to be a global currency, so adding text in a specific language is probably not a good idea. If people want to improve on the initial design as you suggested with the photos you posted of Bitcoin, they’re welcome to do so, but I think all text should be removed with the exception of the PP symbol.

Sunny, can you expand on what you mean by this? I understand you don’t want a silver coin, but what do you mean by decorations? Are you saying you don’t want the coin to be mostly gold like the Bitcoin logo I posted above and instead only certain decorations on the coin like the leaf should be gold? Sorry, just trying to be clear on what you mean.

And also, what do you think about my concern about the leaf imagery becoming outdated over time if energy efficiency becomes the norm in the future? Do you think we should still include it or no?

[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:4, topic:152”]Sunny, can you expand on what you mean by this? I understand you don’t want a silver coin, but what do you mean by decorations? Are you saying you don’t want the coin to be mostly gold like the Bitcoin logo I posted above and instead only certain decorations on the coin like the leaf should be gold? Sorry, just trying to be clear on what you mean.

And also, what do you think about my concern about the leaf imagery becoming outdated over time if energy efficiency becomes the norm in the future? Do you think we should still include it or no?[/quote]

What I mean is you don’t have to make it all gold-like, like basically a gold coin, this is to give some flexibility to designs. But if a gold coin is what becomes the final design that’s fine with me.

I don’t see energy efficiency property to become the norm any time soon. Pure proof-of-work has staying power. We were the first design with energy efficiency in mind (still the only design if ripple is excluded). No need to shy away from our strengths in my opinion. It doesn’t have to be leaf, could be an eco-earth symbol for example.

Ok, so environmentally friendly however they feel they can get the message across in the design, whether it’s a leaf or something else. And the colors can be either all gold or some gold mixed with other colors, for example green to represent the eco-aspect. Also, NO silver or bronze on the coin. Do I understand that right?

I also think a decent hint to the eco-friendliness would be fine. It can be some green colour too. But I really like the leaf in combination with pure gold in one colour variation (not so much in the 3-colour-variant which is used as the logo of this forum which seems a bit “complicated” to me). The other design I like is the simple green-gold-one.

A few ideas:

1 & 2 blank = OK.

3 = I agree, a technical skilled english-native person should do this. Unfortunately I am no native English speaker (as you see :wink: ).

4 = OK.

5. Either emblem or pictorial mark is a good match here I think. We just need to make sure they don't write out Peercoin on the logo. That can be mentioned in the notes. Do you agree with these or do you think others should be included as well?

Perhaps “Letter form” too?

  1. OK
7. For this one I have no idea what to put beyond that it needs to be a simplistic design. What should we do here? Go ahead and use Paint to mark the values and explain why you think it should be that way.

I would only move the bars in the direction of “Luxury” (a bit), “Serious” (a bit), and “Simple” (to the maximum value). It should be a logo that denotes something valuable and trustworthy without much noise. The rest should be pretty neutral, I think.

8. The overall colors should be gold or silver, like any other valuable coin, but I think we should make it clear that other colors can be added in. For example, if we're trying to convey eco-friendliness maybe they can do it without the leaf design by adding green somewhere on the logo. So I think we should say the main colors have to be gold or silver, but that they can add other colors to the mix if necessary.

Here I would vote for green and gold, with gold being probably the most prominent.

9. At least right now the logo will mainly be used online, but farther into the future it may be used on other types of materials. Which ones do you think I should check? I'm not sure if this section matters too much, but they're asking so I have to put down something.

I would check “Online”, “Print” and “Sign”, perhaps “Merchandise” too although I am not sure.

10. Are these the only file formats that are needed?

Perhaps a vector format too? I am no expert in this matter though.

  1. OK
12. NOTES: [...]

A. Should we stick with the current symbol we’ve been working with in our designs with the two P’s superimposed over each other with the line connecting them at the bottom? Or should we allow the designers the freedom to change the symbol? This is one thing that I think we should be strict on. I personally love the symbol we have now and don’t think it can get much better than this. I also believe Sunny wanted it to look this way. This should be a constant in all designs in my opinion.

I also think the current symbol is fine and should not be changed.

B. Should we abandon the leaf? The purpose of the leaf in the logo was to convey the energy efficiency of ppc as opposed to Bitcoin. I personally love the leaf and really wanted to keep it in there, but I forced myself to ask some hard questions. A eco-friendly message is great right now because all the other coins are energy hogs, but what about in the future? What happens in the future if energy efficient coins become the norm and Bitcoin is no longer an issue. The leaf messaging suddenly loses its meaning and becomes outdated. If we really want this logo to stand the test of time, I think we should follow the lead of Bitcoin and Litecoin and simplify the logo to focus in on the letter symbol and not anything that would distract away from it. Just check out their logos, very simple and focused on the letter symbol...

As I stated above, I think the leaf is fine, but a simpler green element would do it too.

Many thanks for all the work you are doing with this! So we can really move forward in the marketing/corporate design aspect.

Sentinel, when you submit the logos that you ‘like’ go ahead and give them all of the latest designs that we had come up with prior to opening this project with the designers…it’ll give them some basis to work on, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

I’ll just echo what Sunny said, it should convey some aspect of ‘Green’, it doesn’t need to be the color green, mind you, though it can be. I actually would disagree with shying away from silver just because if they use the color green silver works way better than gold with that, it could just as easily be platinum as silver, my vote then is for ‘green’ and some precious metal. But ultimately there will be lots of candidates for this bounty and some will go one direction, others in a different one, which is exactly what we want.

Honestly, just uploading all of the logos will send the designers in a better direction than the questions anyway, but err on the side of technical and youth…masculine and feminine doesn’t matter though its worth noting that by any statistics I’ve gathered the cryptocoin community (and its all from bitcoin users) is 90%+ male. More serious than playful, more quiet than loud, more simple and more obvious.

  1. Could just grab it from the wiki or .org or reddit: (though I’d touch it up a bit)

PPCoin or Peer to Peer coin is the Crypto-Currency with the third highest market cap. It is the first known iteration of a combined proof of stake/proof of work coin.

It is designed to be energy efficient in the long run, have a steady inflation rate of one percent per annum, and(through proof of stake) to be free of dependence on miners.

Guys, just a heads up. The money deposited into my account today, but if possible I’d like to wait until the weekend to actually put this thing up. I’ve just been very busy lately at work and last night it took me a while to write this thread up and I didn’t get that much sleep. I haven’t even had the time to write proper responses to your posts yet.

Hey just wanted to say there is no real rush for this so do not kill yourself… a few days extra will make no difference, so take the time, do it right and first get soime sleep :slight_smile: much better to do excellent job few days later than rushed poor job earlier

FuzzyBear

Sorry for taking so long guys. I had to wrap up a lot of things that I was doing on the weekend and feel I am ready to work on this again. The following text is something I wrote up in order to put in field number three. You’re supposed to describe the organization or product, in this case Peercoin. Let me know what you think and go ahead and offer any improvements you can think of.

[i]"The logo to be designed is for a cryptocurrency called Peercoin, also known as ppcoin, ppc and Peer to Peer Coin. Cryptocurrencies are a form of digital currency that generally have a hard limit set on the amount of coins produced in order to prevent massive inflation and devaluation. Peercoin differs from other coins in this area by removing the hard limit and replacing it with a steady inflation rate of one percent per annum. Cryptocurrencies provide people with the ability to send coins to anyone anywhere in the world at any time without having to worry about large transaction fees. They also provide anonymity in transactions, take banking out of the equation, as well as many other benefits.

Bitcoin is currently the most popular cryptocurrency, although we plan to change that over time. The problem with Bitcoin is that the security of its network is maintained through a process called mining using a proof of work system where many computers work together to protect the network through computation. There are literally rooms full of electronic equipment dedicated to mining Bitcoin. This leads to a problem where a massive amount of energy is being expended in order to guarantee the security of the network. This problem can only get worse as it becomes more accepted as a mainstream currency, making Bitcoin fundamentally unsustainable in the long-term.

Peercoin attempts to solve this energy problem by combining the proof of work system with proof of stake, which provides the security of the network through a different process and reduces energy expenditure significantly, also allowing for interest to be generated on your accumulated coins. Peercoin is therefore the world’s first energy efficient environmentally friendly cryptocurrency."[/i]

I updated the above text a little bit. Please tell me if I got anything wrong or if improvements can be made.

Good text! Although I think the part about the “hard limit” and inflation is not necessary, it could be to complicated for a graphic designer. At least I would move it to the bottom of the text, behind the proof-of-stake description.

Ok, I modified the first paragraph a little bit to make it simpler to understand. Is that better?

"The logo to be designed is for a cryptocurrency called Peercoin, also known as ppcoin, ppc and Peer to Peer Coin. Cryptocurrencies are a form of digital currency that provide people with the ability to send coins to anyone anywhere in the world at any time without having to worry about large transaction fees. Unlike dollars or paper money, cryptocurrencies cannot be printed out of thin air. This revolutionary feature helps to prevent inflation and devaluation of the currency, helping to maintain its value. Cryptocurrencies also provide anonymity in transactions, take banking out of the equation, as well as many other benefits.

I think that’s fine, Sentinel. The reality is that any designer, well, most of them won’t care what it is at all…but if there are some that do, they can contact you and you can update the OP on their site if necessary. In some cases more is less…in my experience (which is vast with designers) they care about design and only design, they’ll try to keep true to the idea of the project, but frankly only because they feel its what the buyer wants, they’ll try to please you to win the money, some are good at that (and following instructions) and others are simply bad. Its really the difference between a great and a poor designer.

Now the text looks perfect to me. Thanks!

These were the suggestions made for the sliders. Is this good or should some of them be moved?

So you want me to upload all of the work that has been posted so far? Even the logo that said cP, dP and the one with the Chinese letters?

I’m with you that silver and green looks better than gold and green. I liked that one silver and green coin your designer posted. But, I also understand where Sunny is coming from. People have this mental block which tells them that the color silver is inferior and less valuable than gold, regardless of whether it makes for a better looking design. We don’t want people to automatically think of Peercoin as inferior to Bitcoin just because of its color. So because of that reasoning, I’m willing to go along with gold.

I don’t know about all of the logos, but didn’t we narrow it down to like 4 or 6 at the end? I’d give them all of those at least. (You may have already done that).

And again, once you get started with this the project will guide itself, so don’t worry too much about planning it…just get it going and give consistent feedback to the designers, It’ll work out great.

I actually don’t prefer green color on the logo, if green looks bad with gold, a mainly gold color scheme can be used. What I am saying is that the main gist of the design should be gold+eco.