How about a new logo for Plasma 6?

schwarzerkater · October 25, 2023, 3:29pm

My collected thoughts so far (I hope it is OK for the OPs that I copied their logos as examples for this post…):

I do think after 10 years (2014-2024) it is a good idea to have a new logo for Plasma 6 that replaces the current Plasma (5) logo.
Plasma 4 was replaced after 6 years (2008-2014).

Although on the surface Plasma 6 may look quite similar to Plasma 5 (due to the Breeze icons and theme) there will be lots of major changes “under the hood”.

At first let’s look at some history:

K Desktop Environment 1/2/3 → KDE 3.5 → Plasma 4 → Plasma 5 → Plasma 6 ???

In my opinion it is not good to have an additional logo for Plasma 6.
IIRC since Plasma 4 “KDE” has been separated from the desktop environment (I hope I expressed this understandingly).

An additional logo for version 6 would mean three logically consecutive icons: KDE logo + Plasma logo + version 6 logo - that is too much IMHO…

Some history again:

KDE + Plasma 4 (no extra logo for version 4) → KDE + Plasma 5 (no extra logo for version 5) → KDE + Plasma (5) + Plasma 6 ???

Thoughts about the general design of a new logo.
AFAIK Breeze will still be the main (icon) theme in Plasma 6.

I think the general design and the colours of a new Plasma (6) logo should also refer to that (Breeze), as did the Plasma 5 logo with Breeze and the Plasma 4 logo with Oxygen.
I also think that the three dots/planets/blobs/circles/drops should remain a part of a new logo as should their colours (RGB - red/orange, green, blue) to ensure a certain “value of brand recognition”.
Both the Plasma 4 and the Plasma 5 logos contain these elements and colours.
And it must not be too complicated or “fiddly”, because it also should look good when quite small (e.g. in a Plasma panel).

Should the general design of a new Plasma 6 logo contain the number “6”?
I honestly don’t know.

IMHO a consequence of this would be that all logos of future Plasma version then should also contain the version number for consistency reasons and recognition factor.
That would further limit the possible design choices for every new logo of a new Plasma version.
On the other hand I am not aware of any other (major) Linux desktop environment that has the version number as a main part of their logo - a good chance for Plasma/the Plasma logo to stand out a bit more in the future?

So finally let’s take a look at some of the drafts that creative people have posted in this thread so far.