In light of my recent attempt at aRt, Tal from R bloggers suggested I submit a T-shirt design for this contest. That got me thinking that R needs a logo freshining in general, so I dusted off my technical pens and drafted something. I’ll explain why I think this makes a good logo for R, but before I defend the “Rtichoke”, perhaps you could come up with some of your own reasons why it works? I’ll give you a moment….
OK. Here’s my justification for the logo:
- Like R, an artichoke can be a bit prickly on the outside, but is absolutely delectable on the inside. Getting into R can be the same way.
- The structure of an artichoke is layered and complex, yet its design is created with a very limited set of underlying principles.
- All programing languages need a mascot. Perl has a camel, PHP has an Elephant, JAVA plays with the coffee connection, Python has… well, you can probably guess.
- It includes a part of the old logo, and adds the all important brackets for R.
My submission doesn’t quite meet the T-shirt requirement (it’s more that one color), but if folks like it I can create a one-color version and submit it properly to the contest and the general R community for considering. Cheers.
UPDATE:
I created an all-blue version so you can get a feel for what it would look like with reduced colors:
UPDADE 2:
I made the lines a bit bolder and made a minor tweak. I think this is the best “all blue” version yet. Opinions?
Having an R mascot is a great idea! (if it should be an artichoke or not is a good question).
And very nice logo – good start 🙂
BTW, if you want the post published on R-bloggers, you’ll have to tag it 🙂
Cheers,
Tal
Haha, nice artwork and justification for the artichoke! I would buy that t-shirt! I prefer the blue one anyway, I think it’s still pretty clear that it’s an artichoke.
Awesome! The rtichoke I love it. A vegtable that’s good for you and delicious.
hmmmm don’t like artichokes. Sorry :-). I saw R logo before more with “pirate” spirit in it (pirate hat and wooden leg). I would love to have pirate version of R logo, ARRRRRrrrrr mateys!!! Pirates are cool!
I think this is magnificent! I have long been a fan of the artichoke, and very recently I’ve been diving into R. Who knew the two could be so intimately related? I so want this T-shirt.
Have you ever heard of the grocery store game called “Artichoke”? The idea is that you try to get people to buy as many artichokes as possible by sneaking them into their cart when they’re not working. One of my friends got someone to buy nine! I feel like that’s pretty similar to the tactics I’ll need to use to get my co-workers to switch to R…
@Ethan:
Nice. I’ve heard of “shopping for others” but never with the artichoke twist. I can just see it applied to programming…. Why won’t this damn thing compile? Wait, that’s not JAVA code! Who put that there?
I like the green and blue version. Mind if I use it as a sticker?
Sure thing! Send me one when you’ve got it.