[HN Gopher] CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapu...
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       CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapurple`
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 737 points
       Date   : 2024-11-17 04:18 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (michaelcharl.es)
 (TXT) w3m dump (michaelcharl.es)
        
       | empathy_m wrote:
       | Eric Meyer's posts about his daughter's illness, and the family's
       | lifelong process of grieving afterward, are heartbreaking. It's
       | arresting, gripping writing. It's wonderful and awful. Hug your
       | loved ones tight.
       | https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/category/personal/rebecca...
        
         | 29athrowaway wrote:
         | Those posts are definitely not for everyone. It is a deep dive
         | into the emotions of a grieving father for over a decade.
         | 
         | I really hope that man can find peace.
        
         | kaelig wrote:
         | "wonderful and awful" is such a brilliant way to capture this.
         | Thank you
        
         | arrowsmith wrote:
         | Ouch. As a father, that was a gutpunch. Dark, haunting,
         | dripping with grief and pain, but beautifully written and very
         | haunting.
         | 
         | I can't imagine anything worse than what that guy has been
         | through.
         | 
         | I'm holding my sleeping baby as I write this and I just hugged
         | him even tighter. Thanks for sharing.
        
           | adastra22 wrote:
           | As a father of two girls, I'm not clicking that link. I don't
           | think I could handle it.
        
             | heartbreak wrote:
             | I don't blame you. I haven't cried like that in a long
             | time.
        
         | ericwood wrote:
         | Thank you for linking this. I read bits and pieces of this as
         | it was happening but it never fully registered for me at 24.
         | I'm sitting here 10 years later at 34 having lost our son at 23
         | weeks. His due date was this past week. It's affected me in
         | ways that still surprise, befuddle, and sometimes scare me. I
         | cannot even begin to fathom what he's been through; the most
         | recent blog post has me in tears.
         | 
         | I have really strong memories of learning HTML, CSS, and
         | javascript in high school, and spending time in the school
         | library picking apart css/edge. It felt like the dawn of a new
         | era, I was in awe of the things I saw there. I built more than
         | a few sites trying to get my head around the complexispiral
         | demo, and spent countless hours diving into resources I found
         | there (like A List Apart! I will never forget the suckerfish
         | drop-downs). This is one of the few moments I have such vivid
         | memories of that were directly responsible me for pursuing
         | computer engineering and ultimately going so far into UI/UX and
         | the web. I've never written it out this explicitly but: thank
         | you for everything, Eric.
        
           | Cordiali wrote:
           | I hope every day is a bit easier than the last for you.
        
           | ten13 wrote:
           | Thank you for sharing, Eric. It's been a few years now for me
           | since we lost our son before I ever had the chance to meet
           | him and I'm not sure it's any easier. Stories like yours and
           | that of others help us all know we're not alone in our grief
           | though so I encourage you to keep sharing and telling your
           | story.
        
             | ericwood wrote:
             | Hearing other people's stories helps so much, even though
             | it can be a reminder of the long road ahead dealing with
             | grief. I'm so sorry for your loss.
        
           | iambateman wrote:
           | Thanks for telling your story, too. Grateful.
        
           | endorphine wrote:
           | We lost our daughter a few months ago, 30 days before her due
           | date. We decided to terminate due to a rare genetic
           | condition.
           | 
           | The pain feels too strong to handle some days. I find myself
           | in tears after some seemingly random trigger: seeing another
           | baby in a stroller, listening to a beautiful track named
           | "Never Known", our first daughter saying she wants to play
           | with her friend's small sister, seeing a painting she made
           | with her to-be sister, writing this comment etc.
           | 
           | I have accepted that the pain will always be there.
           | 
           | Thanks for sharing your story.
           | 
           | P.S. there are subreddits where people share similar stories
        
             | ericwood wrote:
             | I really appreciate you sharing your story. Getting to the
             | point of accepting the pain of the loss is a huge
             | milestone, even when so many days feel like one step
             | forward, two steps back. I'm deeply sorry for your loss.
             | 
             | A few days ago I completely broke down hearing "Daughter"
             | by Four Tet. The triggers that don't even make sense are
             | the hardest. It's really tough to hear other people having
             | felt similar pain (nobody should have to endure it), but
             | it's comforting to not feel completely alone in it. Wishing
             | the best for you and your family.
        
         | whatever1 wrote:
         | How can the game be so unfair for some? People don't deserve
         | this.
        
           | mewpmewp2 wrote:
           | Makes you think how life so easily and randomly can be so
           | different irrespective of who you are or what you do to
           | affect you forever.
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | it's indeed strange to realize that life / universe can
           | crunch everything brainlessly in some spot while everything
           | else is colorful around
        
           | efilife wrote:
           | That's the consequence of procreation
        
           | pglevy wrote:
           | Was just reading this on the pain of parenting in Medea by
           | Euripides this weekend:
           | 
           | "Suppose that the children have grown into youth And have
           | turned out good, still, if God so wills it, Death will away
           | with your children's bodies, And carry them off into Hades.
           | What is our profit, then, that for the sake of Children the
           | gods should pile up on mortals After all else This most
           | terrible grief of all?"
           | 
           | I try not to think about it too much.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | This might be a topic too heavy for this venue. The thumbnail
           | sketch is "Consult the history of human philosophy and faith
           | and you will find people wrestling with this question ever
           | since we could talk and write."
           | 
           | (Personal opinion: fairness is a human construct. The
           | universe does not care. _We_ are the ones who make it as fair
           | as we can.)
        
         | czhu12 wrote:
         | Having never had children myself, his writing moved me in a way
         | that I struggle to comprehend. I spent my 2 hour commute
         | reading through all of his writing on his time, and subsequent
         | grief of his daughter, starting here:
         | https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/06/18/welcome-2/
         | 
         | I found this piece particularly moving, and brought me to
         | tears:
         | 
         | https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/06/10/so-many-nevers...
        
       | graypegg wrote:
       | It'll be interesting to see where we end up using this. I don't
       | honestly see the CSS3 shield this is meant to replace very often
       | anymore.
       | 
       | Probably the place where it'll be seen the most is in IDE file
       | trees, where I'm a bit worried it'll just look like a little
       | purple blob
        
         | kijin wrote:
         | File Browser / Finder maybe, but the text inside the boxes are
         | too small for IDE file trees.
         | 
         | VS Code shows "JS" in yellow text without the box, against a
         | dark background. CSS is just a blue hash symbol. Maybe they'll
         | change the color to rebeccapurple, but I don't think there's
         | room for a box around the symbol.
        
       | voat wrote:
       | For some reason, I was under the impression that the blue shield
       | was the css logo.
       | 
       | But after looking at it, I realized that it was just for CSS 3
       | and I'm not sure if it was even official?
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | It's a nice purple.
        
         | usbsea wrote:
         | A simple one too - it would be on a 216 colour pallete using
         | six values for each of R, G and B.
         | 
         | R = 1/5
         | 
         | G = 2/5
         | 
         | B = 3/5
         | 
         | Edit: of course that makes sense it is probably a "web safe"
         | one
        
           | kijin wrote:
           | If it's such a simple combination, I wonder why it wasn't
           | officially named until 2014. CSS has had names for all sorts
           | of weird colors since forever.
        
             | duskwuff wrote:
             | Most CSS color names were inherited from the X11 color list
             | [1], which, in turn, sourced its colors from a weird
             | mixture of Crayola crayons, paint samples, and
             | idiosyncratic personal choices [2]. It's a mess.
             | 
             | [1]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/blob/mas
             | ter/di...
             | 
             | [2]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-
             | style/2014Mar/0272....
        
             | labster wrote:
             | Maybe it wasn't named so that long after people like me
             | pass from memory for good, people will still speak of
             | Rebecca and of the love we showed her.
        
           | jwilk wrote:
           | It's R = 2/5, G = 1/5.
        
       | otteromkram wrote:
       | > Update 22 Jun 14: the proposal was approved by the CSS WG and
       | added to the CSS4 Colors module. Patches to web browsers have
       | already happened in nightly builds. (I'm just now catching up on
       | this after the unexpected death of Kat's father early Saturday
       | morning.)
       | 
       | Mr. Meyer certainly had a rough 2014.
       | 
       | Kudos to him and all his CSS contributions over the years. I hope
       | he has been able to find some solace since then.
        
         | aryonoco wrote:
         | I would say he hasn't, considering a few months ago he wrote "A
         | Decade Later, A Decade Lost"
         | https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2024/06/07/a-decade-later...
         | 
         | And I can't blame him. They say no parent should see their
         | child die, and that's certainly true; but especially no parent
         | should see their 6 year old child die of brain cancer. Humans
         | are not built to withstand that.
        
           | sureIy wrote:
           | > Humans are not built to withstand that.
           | 
           | What's that supposed to mean? Humans _grew up_ being
           | slaughtered by wild animals. Safe housing is an extremely
           | recent invention and many humans still don 't have it.
        
             | aryonoco wrote:
             | In case it needs stating, watching your child die in
             | increasingly agonising pain over a year while your glimmer
             | of hope for their survival dimishes every single day, with
             | moments of false dawn, is a very different experience to
             | watching your child being killed by a wild animal.
             | 
             | As for your imaginary hunter gatherer:
             | 
             | 1) Yes I'm sure when a child died in agony over a prolonged
             | period of time in hunter gatherer societies, their family
             | was also traumatised.
             | 
             | 2) The modern nuclear family has changed our sense of
             | emotional attachment to our children. Whether that's good
             | or bad is a separate discussion, but our relationship with
             | our children is different to what it was 500 years ago, let
             | alone 5,000 years ago.
        
       | pstuart wrote:
       | I didn't expect a logo update to bring tears to my eyes.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related. Others?
       | 
       |  _Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186932 - Dec 2022 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4 (2014)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9565503 - May 2015 (33
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Adding 'rebeccapurple' color to CSS Color Level 4_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924677 - June 2014 (25
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _In memory of Rebecca Alison Meyer_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7863890 - June 2014 (68
       | comments)
        
         | brianzelip wrote:
         | An official logo for CSS -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42124786 - November 2024
        
           | pbhjpbhj wrote:
           | I imagine your submission, which you link here, wasn't
           | included as it has no comments. I think dang posts these so
           | people can read the comments made on other submissions.
        
       | WD-42 wrote:
       | I really don't like these logos that are boxes with text in the
       | lower right. The post cites a "common design language" with other
       | tech but this has to be the most low effort language imaginable.
        
         | kijin wrote:
         | I think Adobe started this trend. A box with "Ps" inside for
         | Photoshop, "Lr" for Lightroom, etc. for all their products.
         | 
         | An entire generation of web designers grew up with their heads
         | stuck in the Adobe ecosystem, so this must look like the gold
         | standard to them.
         | 
         | At least Adobe made an effort to make their logos look like
         | symbols on the periodic table.
        
           | hxii wrote:
           | To me these made sense, as I was able to quickly, visually
           | distinguish PhotoShop by the "PS" letters instead of trying
           | to decipher a 32x32 logo.
        
         | usbsea wrote:
         | You prefer these?
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5#/media/File:HTML5_logo_a...
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CSS3_logo_and_wordmark.sv...
        
           | ohmahjong wrote:
           | Not who you are replying to, but I started learning HTML/CSS
           | right when HTML5 and CSS3 had just come out, so I do have
           | somewhat of a soft spot for these
        
           | wruza wrote:
           | Is this the only choice we have?
        
             | niutech wrote:
             | How about this? https://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-css-v.svg ;)
        
           | NBJack wrote:
           | They are certainly more colorblind and vision impairment
           | friendly to be honest.
        
             | HL33tibCe7 wrote:
             | What is color blind unfriendly about the new logos
             | precisely? Which variant of color blindness will not be
             | able to read them?
             | 
             | Which visual impairment exactly will find it easier to
             | parse the previous logos (which are a mess of design
             | scarcely related to the actual technology name) than the
             | current ones, which contain thick bold text indicating
             | exactly what the technology is called?
        
               | NBJack wrote:
               | Here's a good starting point:
               | https://www.sfgov.org/designing-visually-impaired
               | 
               | > Do not rely on color alone to denote information
               | 
               | > Use additional cues or information to convey content
               | 
               | The old icons were certainly ugly. But they had a unique
               | shape (cue) and didn't rely on color. The new logo has
               | text which helps, but this is where visual impairment
               | becomes an issue (lack of focus to read said text).
               | 
               | I have no intent to take away from the meaningful choices
               | made in this logo's design. But even just picking a
               | unique shape for each component would go a long way.
        
           | geoffpado wrote:
           | Yes.
        
           | WD-42 wrote:
           | Yes.
        
           | brailsafe wrote:
           | Absolutely prefer these
        
           | cyborgx7 wrote:
           | They're so much nicer.
        
             | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
             | They remind me way too much of dark-arts virus checker,
             | disk cleaner BS.
        
           | rafark wrote:
           | 100% yeah
        
           | rozab wrote:
           | Yes, I've always thought they were excellent logos. Makes me
           | nostalgic about the optimism of this time.
           | 
           | Also people actually use them, a while back every CS student
           | inexplicably had these stickers on their laptop. I can't see
           | these new logos being ever used as stickers because they're
           | just... nothing.
        
             | syncsynchalt wrote:
             | As someone coming back to frontend after ten years... the
             | optimism was justified! Writing UI code is amazing now.
             | 
             | Don't let the warts of the real implementation get you
             | down, it's a delight how everything I want to do is just
             | part of the vanilla stack now, one way or another.
        
         | readthenotes1 wrote:
         | the design language is really "keep it inside the box, don't
         | worry about your self-imposed solution constraints"
        
         | lemagedurage wrote:
         | They could've added some character by letting the text overflow
         | the box :)
        
           | geon wrote:
           | The rounded corners was a suitable reference to css, I think.
        
           | cantSpellSober wrote:
           | That's been the unofficial "logo for CSS" for years:
           | https://i0.wp.com/css-tricks.com/wp-
           | content/uploads/2017/06/...
           | 
           | It appears this option was discussed: https://github.com/CSS-
           | Next/css-next/issues/105#issuecomment...
        
             | Lerc wrote:
             | The overlapping CSS suggestions had the most thumbs up, but
             | did not seem to make it into the candidates.
             | 
             | They use the words vote and community, but actually taking
             | them seriously means accepting the Boaty McBooatface when
             | it happens.
             | 
             | I liked the offset logos because they served just as well
             | as logos and were a good humoured nod towards CSS issues
             | that it would be worthwhile keeping in mind for a bit of
             | humility.
        
         | tannhaeuser wrote:
         | You're absolutely right, especially considering the canonical
         | CSS-in-a-box logo has long been established [1], and they
         | should really embrace it if they had any sense of humor.
         | 
         | Perhaps those brutalist logos were designed specifically such
         | that they could be rendered using CSS itself? Though I could
         | understand why they'd want to distance themselves from the old
         | "shield" logo that turned out to signify shielding "browser
         | vendors" from broad implementation of CSS renderers and to keep
         | a niche of job security at W3C, Inc. due to rampant and
         | unwarranted complexity, but in any case was burnt by being
         | placed next to vulgar metalhand vectors, not to speak of being
         | culturally discriminative when viewed in a "woke"
         | interpretation.
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.13378023.4114/raf,750x1000,0...
        
           | thiht wrote:
           | > especially considering the canonical CSS-in-a-box logo has
           | long been established
           | 
           | Is this a joke? I've never seen it in my life, not even sure
           | where you're pulling it from
        
             | nativeit wrote:
             | I've been using it for years. A lot of years.
        
         | somat wrote:
         | Disagree, but then again my soulless engineer's heart has close
         | to zero tolerance for design for design's sake, so what do I
         | know?
         | 
         | The most important part about convoying that an item is CSS is
         | including the letters CSS. So while I am a little disgusted
         | they wasted time on an icon at all, I will admit that many of
         | our design language structures demand an icon. So I am somewhat
         | relieved they managed to dodge the design for design's sake
         | crowd and picked the best possible one. A non-descript box with
         | the letters CSS in it.
        
           | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
           | "Non-descript" is unfair - it has 3 rounded corners!
        
         | kalleboo wrote:
         | They should have centered the text in it both vertically and
         | horizontally
        
           | reddalo wrote:
           | It's impossible to do that with CSS :)
        
             | matsemann wrote:
             | Could've used this classic CSS joke as the logo https://i.e
             | tsystatic.com/21468781/r/il/426363/2712010149/il_...
        
               | mattrad wrote:
               | There was a submission like that :)
               | https://github.com/CSS-Next/css-
               | next/issues/105#issuecomment...
        
         | egypturnash wrote:
         | Yeah these are programmer art.
         | 
         | Or clones of Adobe's lame branding.
        
         | fenomas wrote:
         | I once saw an interview with an apparently well-known logo
         | designer, who said something to the effect of: "When somebody
         | sees my work and says 'that's nothing, anybody could make
         | that', that means they instantly got the logo, understood its
         | structure, with no distraction. That's what it's meant to do,
         | so to me it's a compliment."
         | 
         | Whether that applies here is naturally subjective, but hearing
         | that changed how I look at logo designs a bit.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | There's a limit to that. By that token, every logo in
           | existence could be a white square with black text on it.
           | Clearly they are not, because people understand the need for
           | some differentiation. Even in this case, the logos benefit
           | from having colour.
           | 
           | And they're not even consistent. Three of them are squares,
           | two of them are different shapes, and despite the simplicity
           | even something as trivial as the font size and spacing isn't
           | uniform.
        
           | vundercind wrote:
           | I dunno, a _lot_ of professional design these days of extreme
           | flatness looks like stuff I'd have done in the '00s while
           | developing something just to have _some_ kind of design and
           | structure, then everyone would see it and be like "the
           | program's great but of course we'll need to get the designers
           | on it, ha ha, programmers and design, so bad at it, am I
           | right?"
           | 
           | A lot of it would still get that reaction, I think, if a
           | programmer presented them instead of a designer, and these
           | look to me like they'd be among them.
        
             | fenomas wrote:
             | Eh, having worked halfway between coding and design my
             | whole career, I'm ambivalent. Design is just one of those
             | things that everyone is confident they have an informed
             | opinion about, even if they've spent a lifetime total of
             | zero seconds thinking about what the criteria for a good
             | design should be, let alone how to apply them. I think most
             | every designer learns early on to ignore all the "but
             | that's just..." comments, and rightly so IMHO.
             | 
             | That said:
             | 
             | > A lot of it would still get that reaction, I think, if a
             | programmer presented them instead of a designer, and these
             | look to me like they'd be among them.
             | 
             | Weren't the logos in TFA made and voted on by programmers?
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | > that means they instantly got the logo, understood its
           | structure, with no distraction.
           | 
           | We didn't get that it was supposed to be a _logo_ or a
           | _brand_ though.
           | 
           | Labels like this look like placeholders. They leave you
           | feeling empty and convey a sense of amateurishness.
           | 
           | These do provoke a visceral response. It's not an "Oh!", nor
           | even an "oh?", but rather an "oh..."
           | 
           | The "brand guidelines" will be broadly disrespected since the
           | mental threshold for brand awareness is higher than the
           | entropy of a square.
        
         | spiffytech wrote:
         | While they aren't snazzy, they do have some benefits that often
         | go unconsidered:
         | 
         | Logos are sometimes printed on shirts (in monochrome, or where
         | rich coloring costs extra), or embroidered onto hats, or read
         | at a distance (like conference booth posters), or printed to
         | B/W official letterhead, or scaled down for an icon pack. A 3rd
         | party will include a logo on something with a preexisting
         | style, and it should look okay there.
         | 
         | A logo which is structurally simple and uses few colors can be
         | easily adapted to these scenarios -- printed in black-and-
         | white, or as an outline without solid colors.
        
         | kibwen wrote:
         | Logos do not exist in a vacuum, so evaluating them requires
         | considering their context.
         | 
         | CSS is not a technology that needs eye-catching marketing. The
         | existence of branding is mostly just for the purposes of giving
         | someone something to put on a powerpoint slide, or a sticker to
         | put on a laptop. It's allowed to be boring.
         | 
         | In addition, it exists as part of a family of web technologies,
         | so giving it consistent branding with the other web
         | technologies makes sense. You can argue that whoever first came
         | up with this simple sort of branding was unimaginative (I think
         | the JS logo was the first?), but just because something is
         | simple doesn't mean it's not capable of being iconic.
        
         | niutech wrote:
         | I preferred the old HTML/CSS/JS logos:
         | https://banner2.cleanpng.com/20180920/kl/kisspng-javascript-...
        
         | bradley13 wrote:
         | Sure, but it's good that it's low effort. We don't need fancy
         | branding for languages. Few people will see thrm. These aren't
         | paid products with marketing campaigns. They are just tools of
         | the trade.
        
         | shadowgovt wrote:
         | My only critique is that I wish they had left-justified the CSS
         | logo with all the other logos right-justified. As a joke. ;)
        
         | 0xTJ wrote:
         | I don't see the problem with low-effort. It's clear and
         | concise, while also having more character when just an un-
         | styled word mark. This is a technology used by people who
         | already know what it is, I would be far more annoyed with
         | adding more complexity.
        
       | asddubs wrote:
       | >The design follows the design language of the logos of other web
       | technologies like JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly.
       | 
       | and yet it's 5 logos with 3 different font sizes and at least 3
       | different font faces
       | 
       | 3 of which are perfect rectangles, and 2 of which are slight
       | variations on rectangles
       | 
       | i guess it perfectly represents the ecosystem, no notes
        
         | globalise83 wrote:
         | This is the evolution of "Design by committee" to "Design by 3
         | committees"
        
         | Maken wrote:
         | To fully represent HTML, they should be displayed with sightly
         | different fonts and kerning in each operating system.
        
       | langsoul-com wrote:
       | > The color was originally going to be called beccapurple, but
       | Meyer asked that it instead be named rebeccapurple, as his
       | daughter had wanted to be called Rebecca once she had turned six.
       | She had said that Becca was a "baby name," and that once she had
       | turned six, she wanted to be called Rebecca. As Eric Meyer put
       | it, "She made it to six. For almost twelve hours, she was six. So
       | Rebecca it is and must be."
       | 
       | Wasn't expecting tears over a colour
        
         | jvm___ wrote:
         | ..in 2014 in honor of Eric Meyer's daughter, Rebecca, who
         | passed away at the age of six on her birthday from brain
         | cancer.
        
         | davrosthedalek wrote:
         | The last two sentences of that quote hit me so hard.
        
         | xelamonster wrote:
         | Yeah wow, I love that this is forever encoded into the standard
         | now. A lovely tribute. It's always been one of the few CSS
         | default colors I actually like too (alongside
         | "cornflowerblue").
        
         | toxican wrote:
         | I'm sobbing like a baby while my 5yo twins are watching TV
         | nearby. That is _such_ a 5-going-on-6 decision to make, which
         | just drives the whole thing home for me and I can 't handle it
         | right now.
         | 
         | I've always loved the existence of "rebeccapurple", but I
         | somehow missed that part of the story. Her color being
         | immortalized in the CSS logo (even if it changes years from
         | now) is so incredibly beautiful to me.
        
       | shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
       | I will never ever forget this color name and the story behind it
       | for the rest of my life.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | I had read about it in
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34186932 (or some other
         | earlier HN submission) and had since forgotten it. I wouldn't
         | be surprised to forget about it again.
        
       | Crazyontap wrote:
       | I think we're stretching the definition of "logos" here. Just
       | sticking text in a square doesn't make it a true logo.
       | 
       | Think of Apple or Nike, those are real logos. The recent logos
       | and icons, including apps like Photoshop's, seem more like we're
       | prioritizing metrics over creativity.
        
         | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
         | Tell Gap (and all the rest).
        
         | striking wrote:
         | What about those of IBM, Facebook, Google, Netflix, or Uber?
         | They're just words, with gentle stylization. Sometimes their
         | logos take on the shape of a single letter in a box, which by
         | your standards might even be less creative.
         | 
         | But there are reasons for this. Plain wordmarks are high-
         | contrast and easy to read almost by default, and they work
         | great with groups that aren't already aware of your brand. Or
         | as Netflix puts it
         | (https://brand.netflix.com/en/assets/logos/),
         | 
         | > The Wordmark remains an essential identifier of our brand.
         | While our goal is to lead with the N Symbol, we enlist the
         | Wordmark to ensure brand recognition in low-awareness markets
         | or when production limits the use of color.
         | 
         | CSS doesn't have a ton of brand awareness. Making something
         | akin to the Nike Swoosh for CSS won't catch on, it's not like
         | they have the money to flood your Instagram feed with it and
         | force that brand recognition on you.
         | 
         | Going back to Netflix why would they use a single gently
         | stylized letter where possible? Well,
         | 
         | > In high-awareness markets, we lead with the N Symbol. There
         | is power in owning a letter of the alphabet: it's universal and
         | instantly identifiable as shorthand for our brand.
         | 
         | That's right. Netflix wants to own the letter N. I think "CSS"
         | is in the same position: owning a combination of three letters
         | is a power move. That's the most valuable thing about the "CSS
         | brand," if ever there were one, so why not lead with it?
         | 
         | But maybe your opinion is still that all of these designers are
         | full of it (apparently including Paul Rand).
        
         | thiht wrote:
         | This is definitely a logo, by all definitions of the word. It's
         | not just "text in a box", it's:
         | 
         | - text, with a specific font, position, size, weight
         | 
         | - a specific color
         | 
         | - a box radius in 3 corners
         | 
         | - some variants
         | 
         | By your definition, the Coca Cola logo is not a logo because
         | it's "just text"
        
         | nineteen999 wrote:
         | WTF does a markup standard need its own logo for Pete's sake
         | anyway. Imagine if we had a logo for every bloody RFC internet
         | standard. Little colored round-cornered squares with
         | HTTP/TLS/SMTP/IMAP/LDAP stamped in each of them.
         | 
         | The web community is obsessed with this "neat, tidy" shit while
         | the all the standards involved (HTML, JS, CSS etc) are a dog's
         | breakfast.
        
       | QuentinCh wrote:
       | I am in a train and I stopped reading because I was crying too
       | much. The fact that the reminder of this story hides in plain
       | sight, in the form of a named CSS color, makes it even more
       | touching for some reason.
        
       | Ecco wrote:
       | Without even judging the overall design (personally I don't mind
       | the simplicity), why on earth do they use such inconsistent
       | fonts? 3 different font sizes (and maybe also mismatching
       | horizontal spacings) for 5 assorted logos??? This is insane...
        
         | cachvico wrote:
         | It's incredibly ironic
        
         | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
         | You want them to be even _less_ distinctive? Personally, I
         | think they should lean into that more and embrace the context:
         | e.g. sans-serif for CSS, monospace for JS, serif for HTML.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | The current logos are both uninteresting and badly
           | constructed. At least either make them consistent (less
           | distinctive but you can appreciate them as thought out as
           | part of a family) or wildly different (more distinctive but
           | not as clear they're part of a family). This middle ground is
           | the worst of all possible options.
        
           | niutech wrote:
           | Old logos were more consistent yest still distinctive IMO:
           | https://banner2.cleanpng.com/20180920/kl/kisspng-
           | javascript-...
        
         | usrusr wrote:
         | Because they are still logos, not one list of short acronyms
         | that just happens to be rendered in a specific way?
         | 
         | I really think it's fine: the web assembly gets to play with
         | its parallels between W and A, JS gets to mirror the J's
         | bottom-bend in its S (TS tagging along because those two really
         | are more than just accidental neighbors), whereas CSS can
         | indulge in summetry with its twin S by making them internally
         | symmetric themselves. A logo that contains an acronym isn't
         | really a logo when the characters are just picked from some
         | font instead of tailored as part of the logo.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | > Because they are still logos, not one list of short
           | acronyms that just happens to be rendered in a specific way?
           | 
           | Consistency still matters. If you're going through the
           | trouble of making logos similar so they are understood as
           | part of a family, don't give up half way.
        
       | pino82 wrote:
       | Why does it include TS? I would never have called it a 'web
       | technology'. A lot of people use it in their tech stack, but
       | fortunately, the browser does not even understand it, right?
        
       | qark wrote:
       | Is there any link that explains why this particular shade of
       | purple was chosen to represent Rebecca?
        
         | felbane wrote:
         | Purple was her favorite color. #639 is shorthand for about the
         | purplest purple you can make with RGB. Jeff Zeldman proposed
         | the color name on Twitter and in a blog post shortly after she
         | died, and it understandably caught on.
        
       | npteljes wrote:
       | I used rebeccapurple a lot as well, unknowing of the touching
       | story behind it. I coded CSS by hand (back in like 2010), and for
       | placeholders, I used the simple colors I knew, like "green" or
       | "blue". And "red", of course, too. But when typing "re" for
       | "red", I noticed that it autocompletes to "rebeccapurple", which
       | amused me, since I thought it's kind of a nonsense to have a
       | color named like that. Over time, I used it a lot, and it became
       | a kind of a favorite of mine.
        
         | watusername wrote:
         | For the record, rebeccapurple was ratified in June 2014 [0] and
         | was added to mainstream browsers late that year [1]. I imagine
         | it wouldn't be "web-safe" until 2015/2016 at the earliest.
         | 
         | (Not doubting your anecdote - Just felt like doing some
         | sleuthing on the timeline)
         | 
         | [0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-
         | style/2014Jun/0312.... [1] https://caniuse.com/css-
         | rebeccapurple (use "Date Relative")
        
           | npteljes wrote:
           | That's actually later than I remember doing all that frontend
           | work. It wasn't for production though, that's for sure, so I
           | used it as soon as it appeared instead of my usual "red".
           | Thanks for the clarifications.
        
       | gedy wrote:
       | This would have been quite funny instead:
       | 
       | https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1851735303.3881/flat,750x,07...
        
       | atlih wrote:
       | <3
        
       | pmkary wrote:
       | The bar for a logo has become so low. I don't understand how we
       | reached here and everyone are happy about it.
        
       | kmeisthax wrote:
       | GNU Rebecca Meyer
        
       | laserstrahl wrote:
       | https://github.com/vic/rebecca-theme I thought it derrives from
       | this.
       | 
       | Haha
        
       | kibwen wrote:
       | For your name to recited by the machines for all eternity is a
       | form of immortality.
       | 
       | GNU Terry Pratchett
        
         | niutech wrote:
         | Like Linus Torvalds' Linux or Phil Katz' PKZIP.
        
       | lenkite wrote:
       | Like Rebecca, I also like #639 - its a wonderful color. Looks
       | great on a web-site as a solid color that you can built a palette
       | from and the hex code is simplicity to remember. I really wish
       | CSS had _more_ color names - would have been great to have named,
       | Pantone colors or another named system.
        
         | niutech wrote:
         | HTML/CSS has a lot of color names:
         | https://htmlcolorcodes.com/color-names/
        
       | miiiiiike wrote:
       | Eric's CSS: The Definitive Guide really is the only way to learn
       | CSS. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/css-the-
       | definitive/9781...
        
       | bdcravens wrote:
       | It's great that Rebecca's name will be find its ways across
       | codebases for as long as we are using named aliases for colors in
       | HTML/CSS.
       | 
       | It's nowhere near the significance of her's and Eric's story, but
       | the piece of land where my grandfather built his home in the
       | 1940s or 1950s has his name on it: the "Paul D. Cravens
       | Addition". Even though that home is long since gone (in a fire)
       | and the land is owned by someone else, every deed and building
       | permit henceforth has his name attached it.
        
       | biesnecker wrote:
       | I don't click on HN articles expecting to cry, but here we are.
        
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