HP, I’ve discovered, is using the Python Powered logo in their HPLIP Toolbox (Linux printer management app), and boy are they whiffing it:
It seems clear they did the transparency themselves, for all of those logos, and they did it from white-background files without any regard for the possibility of them being placed on dark backgrounds.
I’ve been to the logos & trademarks section of the website, and I’ve read the FAQ, so I know that both outlined and color-altered variations of the logo(s) are acceptable without approval. I figured I’ll just whip something up and hand it off to HP in the hopes I can convince them to replace that abomination with something that doesn’t suck. (Ideally, in the original SVG format, since they’re using PyQt5 for the GUI and Qt has excellent support for SVG icons; there’s no real reason to ever use bitmaps in a Qt interface unless for some wrong-headed reason you actually want to.)
I’ve already downloaded the Python Powered logo SVG. While I can easily drop out the white background to make it transparent, that won’t solve the problem that the gray “Python” will look horrible over the “Adwaita dark” theme’s default window color. I can also easily swap the the “Python” word color from gray to white, although then it’s a dark-theme-only logo which I’d rather avoid. so, a transparent version with an aesthetic, white outline (one of the explicitly never-needs-approval options for using Python logos, per the FAQ) is probably the way to go.
Two things I thought I’d mention here, though:
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Since dark-mode UIs are currently in fashion again, the PSF might consider expanding the set of official ready-made logo options made available. Either:
- Including dark-background versions as alternatives (where the “python” gray has been swapped to a light color), or
- Adding a white outline to the official logos so that they’re compatible with a wider range of background colors.
Right now, the only official options are the 3-color renderings against a solid white background. Everything else is left to the discretion of the downstream designer, which kind of invites horror-show situations like the HP use.
The PSF is more than welcome to whatever I end up submitting to HP once it’s done, if you’d like.
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The color issue aside, can we get some clean SVG files for these logos? That Python Powered logo SVG I linked to? That’s a 176K file, and despite the metadata claiming it was saved from Inkscape, it’s absolutely lousy with proprietary Adobe Illustrator vendor cruft! Not to mention, there are entire layers of invisible crap just dumped into it. Including at least two separate copies of what appears to be a spot-color chart; one sits awkwardly on top of the graphic (partially obscuring it), the other is completely outside of the page area. There’s even an embedded copy of the entire Verdana webfont in an internal CSS stylesheet. #ForSomeReason! Despite all of the visible text being rendered as paths (and not typeset with Verdana anyway).
Dropping out the invisible layers, the proprietary Adobe crap, and all of the other cruft, I exported an Optimized SVG from Inkscape that brought it down from 176K to 13K, despite there being zero visible changes.
(Here, have that SVG, complete with background transparency enabled. I left the snakes’ eyes as solid white circles rather than knocking them out, because that felt more in keeping with the spirit of the logo-usage guidelines.)
(Edit: Dammit, Discourse! Well, that’s unhelpful. But at least there’s a link.)
Of course, an Inkscape Optimized SVG export also jetissons file metadata that would be better to preserve, like authorship credits. Which is why I’d prefer an official source… but with files that contain a more curated set of options, and not Adobe’s kitchen sink.