You don't need a designer. You need a marketeer.
That's what my brother said to Yanni last week sometime when we were discussing his online radio station as he was lamenting that not many people were listening to his station. That got me thinking about Habari. It's been going on for a while now, and yet I don't feel like the software has hit a critical mass, which is a shame. I think there are several reasons for this, but I'll start with the first part in trying to help the guys and gals move forward.
Branding
I'm not actually surprised that a proper branding and logo were not agreed on, past the h-dumbell thing. Yes, you can kind of see the H in there, and if you really really try (after someone points it out to you) you might see a bell in there as well, but what that doesn't have much if anything to do with the software, what it does or what it is?
To be completely blunt, from an aesthetic POV it's not terribly elegant and doesn't really convey anything about the actual software, the community, etc. That eyesore has to be sorted out for the good of the software (I'll be going into this in more detail in a future post). Rather than just bitch and moan about something, and not actually do anything about it, I thought I'd take up the challenge. The thing is I did attempt to do this 3 years ago, and I came up with this lovely collection:
Yeah, shut up. I can actually see my thought process, but I guess at the time I was more interested in making something that appealed to the people that had originally started the work (the original Cabal). Thankfully, now I'm just out to make a good logo, that people can use in a plethora of applications, is memorable as the Habari software and is nice enough for me to want to include said mark on my website as well.
Obviously the logo should reflect the software itself, which I have repeatedly been calling it elegant, both in code and in design.
The Question
So I sat down at my desk last night, thinking I'll spend a couple of hours on this tops, and I wrote down:
Habari
What's the news?
Then I paused. Why the hell didn't I think of this before? Habari may by definition be a noun, but it's also a question. What's the news? Habari is also the answer, a method to provide the news online. The simplest answers are sometimes staring you in the face. The logo should be the question mark. For some reason I instantly knew how that question mark was to look like, at least in my head, but first I thought I'd try seeing what it looks like with some typical typefaces, Helvetica, Gill Sans etc. This is what it looked like:
Convinced that the actual idea had legs and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that this as an idea is a good one I started sketching. The thing is I didn't need to sketch for long, because like I said the second I had the idea, the logo was fully formed in my mind. There would be no harsh lines. The reason for this is because that's not what Habari is about. It's about elegance, not sharpness. It does things slightly differently than other to smooth your general experience (this is evident from the installer through to the admin panel and beyond).
So here's my proposal for the new Habari logo:
I've also included this set of iterations, which show the logo in both dark and in light colours, on white and on dark backgrounds. The logo remains distinct in all these incarnations.
This next set shows the logo at different sizes: 100px, 75px, 50px, 25px and 16px - click here for the full size of the image. 
There have been other attempts at looking at this in the past, all of which have failed, so I don't think that this time is going to be any different, because it's a very touchy subject (which is why it's not moved forward in 3 years). I don't really expect anything from this exercise to be honest, except that I for one want to at least know that I tried to help in this regard and gave a viable (and hopefully useful) alternative.
And if anything, it would make an awesome t-shirt as well:
First thoughts, I'm my keen on the question mark concept as a logo. Seems very non-descript and un directed (as I guess a question mark is likely to). Exectionwise Im also not keen - reminds me of The Joker.
Good effort though none-the-less, logos are hard and should survive as unchanged as possible for as long as possible.
I like the idea if punctuation as the logo.
Matthew, the inherent problem I guess is the fact that something like designing a logo is pretty subjective which is probably why it hasn't been resolved. What you might like, I might hate and visa versa and ultimately I can't prove you wrong, because it's a matter of taste.
Sometimes it's obvious what's wrong, sometimes it's not so obvious.
One thing that I've taken from both your comment and from a couple on IRC is that as an idea, people seem to like the 'thought process' but not so much the execution. That's a massive start. Maybe if others can take the initial idea and run with it a bit and come up with a few variations on the same theme then maybe we can have something that everyone's happy with?
I have to say that looking at a question mark as a logo for Habari I think "To be completely blunt, from an aesthetic POV it's not terribly elegant and doesn't really convey anything about the actual software, the community, etc."
I know I'm in the minority, but I like the current logo. I think it's recognizable as an "h" which ties into the name, and perhaps the bell idea needs explanation, but I don't really see that that detracts from its function as a logo. What does the Nike "swoosh" mean? How about Flickr's two little circles?
Perhaps instead of looking to change the existing logo, we should put more effort into building more identity around what we've already got.
Morydd,
Obviously from the above, I don't agree and the subjective nature is one of the reasons why it's never been resolved. However in my next post I'll be explaining why this lack of decision is ultimately hurting the development of the software. Too much to go into in a comment though.
I've never really liked the current logo. It feels unfinished and it feels "unbalanced". That it's supposed to look like a bell is the first time I hear.
The new proposal might not be "connected" to habari but if it's used it will eventually be connected to habari. There's many examples of logos not directly connected to the product that's still strongly associated with it. I like Khaleds suggested logo, it's not perfect but it's way _better_ than the current.
However I don't think it's smart to introduce a new logo without actually voting about it and actively changing the logo on all places. Having multiple logos will most likely hurt Habari more then having a bad one. Trying to improve the logo is a great initiative and something well needed. But if we're going to change the logo it should be done once and for all.