Wanted to open a discussion around the Bitcoin Core logo. Currently there is some inconsistencies in logo style / presentation as well as concerns around the currently used font. Having a more consistent logo assists with branding of Bitcoin Core as well as being important in preventing concerns over core ‘controlling Bitcoin’ as it will help it be seen as distinct from Bitcoin itself. I’ve also been doing some work around creating a Bitcoin Core design system of which branding will be a section covered, however I’ll leave that for a separate discussion.
Icon + colorgraphy
In https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoincore.org/tree/master/assets/images there exists a orange and black version, what would be considered the primary logo to to use to represent core?
I’d personally lean towards using the black version with some white (for dark backgrounds) and minimalist (no circle) iterations, both are shown below. The idea here is to have some branding distinction between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin which the logo is a good way to achieve this. Why? Using the orange logo may confuse some people and think that Bitcoin Core IS Bitcoin - which is not the case. As mentioned above it is important for Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin to be distinct to prevent them being seen as the same entity. The original Bitcoin logo, in my view, should be used to symbolized the network itself not a product (such as the core GUI and related website bitcoincore.org) built on top of that network. Bitcoin core is currently the only product that uses the original logo as part of its branding (though some exceptions may apply such as bitcoin.org but this quite a different kind of entity to Bitcoin Core which ships tools users use).
One concern brought up by the Bitcoin Design community was this approach could make Bitcoin Core be seen as as a bitcoin fork, though I think this is unlikely. Many Bitcoin wallets exist with branding that could be confused as a fork, e.g. Blockstreams GreenWallet, but has not caused confusion from my understanding.
Font
The current logo uses Neue Helvetica font, which is a licensed font - It may be worth switching to a free open source font to avoid issues. I’ve included one example, inter, below but I will be exploring some more.
Here are some quick examples of a window in the GUI that could be changed for more consistent branding.