Icon Redesign for future 1.0 Release of Sigil

[chrisridd]

The current pseudo-3D icon is indeed quite old fashioned. Of course that in itself is not a compelling reason to change it.

More important IMHO is the usability: the current icon is very thin and does not stand out very well in contexts like the OS X dock or a desktop with a background pattern.

I'm not sure that yet another blue circle icon is a huge improvement though. Having an outline that's a bit different from other things is a better idea. What other ideas can we get from the "sigil" concept?

A lighter colour that better shows the icon highlighting would be great. Try dragging an ePub over the active icon in the dock to see what I mean.

[shorshe]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

What other ideas can we get from the "sigil" concept?

Hi Chrisridd,

Great! Let's start the conversation, then. Maybe find images for a moodboard?

What does come to your mind, when your hear the word "Sigil"? Everyone else is welcome to contribute, too. Maybe we can come up with something awesome.


English is not my native language, so I'm not 100% sure if the general meaning leans more towards "Magic/Arcane Symbol" "Emblem" or "Seal".

I agree on your points about usability/contrast. This is why I proposed a redesign in the first place.

[chrisridd]

There's a third meaning according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sigil#Noun which will be familiar to perl programmers - $var vs @var vs %var.

I don't know which meaning the Sigil author had in mind. There are risks to using the "magical" definition because that will deeply offend some people. Perhaps the seal/signature/signet definition is "right" because of the way Sigil rewrites epub files in a clean way.

It still doesn't really say "ePub editor" to me, nor does it even say "does something with ebooks".

The fat white border version of the logo reminds me of the Skype logo.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by shorshe

Hi Chrisridd,

Great! Let's start the conversation, then. Maybe find images for a moldboard?

What does come to your mind, when your hear the word "Sigil"? Everyone else is welcome to contribute, too. Maybe we can come up with something awesome.


English is not my native language, so I'm not 100% sure if the general meaning leans more towards "Magic/Arcane Symbol" "Emblem" or "Seal".

I agree on your points about usability/contrast. This is why I proposed a redesign in the first place.

A Mark (as in makers, trade, guild) or emblem


I also liked the old General Electric tm

[KevinH]

FWIW, I seem to remember that a sigil was a name for all of the funny proofreading and editor marks/symbols used to by an editor to correct a manuscript for a book or paper prior to publshing. According to the OED, that is still a definition but one way down on the list. In fact the linebreak symbol itself was often called a sigil (a stylzed S hand drawn shape to mean splitting a line).

[Toxaris]

I seem to recall that the original author Strahinja Marković (Valloric) once specified where he got the name from in an old thread. Can't seem to find it however.

[shorshe]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I seem to recall that the original author Strahinja Marković (Valloric) once specified where he got the name from in an old thread. Can't seem to find it however.

I contacted Strahinja via E-Mail.
This is what he wrote back.

I'm not sure I remember anymore!

I do remember posting about it on MobileRead when someone asked me about it.

Roughly though, I think the line of thinking was in relation to sigil-in-magic. A sigil is basically a fancy symbol, letter or seal. So there are two "themes" here of a sort: writing and magic. And "Sigil" thus implies that it's a "magic (ie. good) writing (ie. ebook) editor". A bit of play on words.

Something like that. I think. Also it's just a cool name IMO.

[chrisridd]

Great information from the horse's mouth :-)

Can you do anything using the IDPF's "e" logo as well? Not in a way that would be a copyright problem!

[seanos]

A bit late to this conversation but here’s my 2¢ worth.

There are far too many blue icons out there! Please, don’t make it blue. Far too safe a choice. I’ve always liked the colour as, although it can be a little dark in some contexts, it does makes Sigil easily recognizable.

Talk about how it looks in a drag & drop context in the OS X dock makes me a little wary. If it’s a choice between an icon that looks good in many contexts and one that looks great on a Mac I’d choose the former. Not that it shouldn’t look good on a Mac, just don’t get carried away in one direction.

I’m not using the standard icon in Ubuntu myself. I’m using an icon theme called Vibrancy Colors, but I believe their Sigil icon comes from Sam Hewitt’s Moka icon set. I couldn’t attach the source SVG but you can see it here. (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence)

The Launcher (Dock equivalent) is transparent and its colour changes with the wallpaper so visibility under varying conditions is a plus.

Moka icons dark/light vs. Standard (?) icons dark/light


This icon is probably too specific (flat theme, rounded square) to be generally acceptable, but it’s an example of a simple reworking. The idea of a white border would be a simple fix for the problem with dark backgrounds.