Apache Solr: Logo Contest

The Apache Solr Logo Contest has been concluded. This page is being preserved both as a record of the contest, and as background information for other Apache projects that may want to hold similar contests

Logo Criteria

Discussion amongst the community appears to indicate a desire to for an association with the sun. Beyond that there are some general Guidelines established by the Apache Public Relations Committee...

Look and Feel Guidelines

Submissions must include a usable web version (PNG preferred) and a scalable vector, print quality version of the logo

The logo will be used to promote Apache Solr and should evoke the overall Apache Software Foundation brand \[community-centric open source development, delivering the highest quality, standards compliant software\]

The logo must incorporate the full project name: Apache Solr
- NOTE: The word "Apache" may be in a smaller font then "Solr"
The logo should not incorporate images that are exclusively specific to Native American culture. However, symbols that have broad or multiple meanings are acceptable in evoking a Native American theme. Thus, a feather, which has many possible applications, would be appropriate, but a headdress would not be.
The logo should not incorporate any overt cultural or religious symbolism
The logo may incorporate other imagery, abstract symbols or a catchphrase, so long as the full project name is included somewhere in the logo. To this extent, the full project name can be displayed in a smaller font size than the main image, if there exists a main image
The logo must reflect the values of the community
The logo must adapt well to electronic and print media, to reproduction on small surfaces, and to use in color or in grayscale.
For tips on creating logos suitable for print media, please review this or any other web guides you might find helpful: http://www.sorrentomesa.com/education/techtips.html
If the logo incorporates non-standards fonts, you must be able to provide us with the font should your logo be selected

NOTE - Submissions that do not meet the above criteria will not be considered for voting. If there is any confusion if your submission is valid, feel free to post a message to the user group.

Process & Legal Guidelines

Acknowledgment to the winning entry will be provided on the project web site at http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
The Apache Software Foundation reserves the right to select no winning entry, if it deems that the submissions do not meet the needs of the organization
If the Logo is selected, the contributor must assign all rights to the selected images to the Apache Software Foundation
Logo must be free of any copyright or any other intellectual property claims
Logo must not incorporate or extend existing trademarks of other companies

How To Enter

Please attach logo entries to Jira issue SOLR-84. You will need a Jira ID if you don't already have one, which you can sign up for at http://issues.apache.org/jira/. Initial submissions may just be the "web" quality image, but if your entry is selected to be the new Solr Log you must provide the "scalable vector, print quality version of the logo" prior to the selecting being official.

When you attach your logo, be sure to choose the option to grant a license to the ASF:

Grant license to ASF for inclusion in ASF works (as per the Apache Software License)

Multiple entries may be submitted by a single person (but bear in mind: voting will be for an entry, not the person who submitted them so multiple entries will compete against each other). If after submitting an entry and getting feedback from people, you would like to replace it with a new entry, you may do this (using the same Jira login) via the Manage Attachments Jira page.

Supporting "branding" images (ie: favicon, small version, large version, black and white version, etc...) are not necessary, but may be included and considered as a factor by the community when voting.

Voting

Once the Deadline for Submissions has been reached, all of the eligible images will be collected onto a new "ballot" web page for viewing and posted to a new thread with the subject "\[VOTE\] COMMUNITY LOGO PREFERENCES" on the solr-user mailing list.  Any and all members of the Solr community are encouraged to reply to this thread and list (up to) 5 ranked choices by listing the Jira attachment URLs.  Votes will be assigned a point value based on rank. For each vote, 1st choice has a point value of 5, 5th place has a point value of 1, and all others follow a similar pattern.

For example, the following email...

From: A. SolrUser <asolruser@somedomain.tld>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] LOGO PREFERENCES

https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12358530/sslogo-solr3.jpg
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12347444/solr-logo-20061218.JPG

...would earn 5 points for sslogo-solr3.jpg and 4 points for solr-logo-20061218.JPG

Once the Deadline for Community Voting has been reached, Solr committers will consider the point totals for each Logo from the community vote and a thread with the subject "\[VOTE\] LOGO" will be started on the solr-dev mailing list where a final (binding) vote will be held.  This vote will (most likely) use the same ranked preference method as the community preference vote, however the standard "-1" option for vetoing may also be used (since this is ultimately a vote to commit a change)

Time Line

Deadline for Submissions: November 20th, 2008 @ 11:59PM GMT

Deadline for Community Voting: TBD

(At least 96 Hours after the "ballot" URL has been posted in the "\[VOTE\] COMMUNITY LOGO PREFERENCES" thread)

Deadline for Binding Committer Vote: TBD

(At least 96 Hours after the start of the "\[VOTE\] LOGO" thread with a summary of the community votes)
\\

These deadlines may be extended as needed.

Prizes

The Apache Software Foundation will not (in any official capacity) be providing prizes other then credit on the Solr Website, however various individuals in the Solr community have offered to do so...

From Chris Hostetter:
- $50 electronic gift card from Amazon.com (or comparable store)
- dot-com era CNET Schwag including at least one t-shirt and an assortment of stickers
From Mark Miller
- $60 electronic gift card from Amazon.com (or comparable store) (the stock market ate the rest...and then some...)
From Ryan McKinley
- $40 electronic gift card from Amazon.com (or comparable store)
From FooFactory
- 8GB iPod nano

(If you would like to volunteer some prizes please feel free to add them here)

Discussion and Questions

Discussion about any of the Logo Submissions, or questions about the Logo Contest process or rules should be conducted on the solr-user mailing list.

Final Candidates

http://people.apache.org/~ryan/solr-logo-options.html

Results

The winning entry was "apache_solr_a_red.jpg" submitted by "Michiel" ...

https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12394264/apache_solr_a_red.jpg

The key email threads can be found here...

Various other email threads from this time frame may have additional information.

Lessons Learned

This section is for anyone in the community to make notes on any opinions (good or bad) they have about the process used for the contest, or the outcome. These notes may be helpful to other projects in the future.

Something that wasn't anticipated was what to do when a submission turned out to be very similar to an existing logo. The opinion of the PRC was that the logo which received the most points in the community vote was too similar to the logo for Solaris for Solr to use it, so it was ultimately disqualified, but this raised some questions about awarding prizes.
In hindsight, an STV/IRV based voting system for the community preferences would have been a much better idea then the ranked point system we used. (STV/IRV was what was used ultimately used for the committer vote). Using STV to let the community pick a top 10 list from all submissions, and then constraining the committers to those 10 using IRV probably owuld have made the most sense.
the "variant" submissions factor wound up posing a somewhat thorny problem. multiple subtle variations on the same theme did "split the vote" for those themes (as anticipated) but in the end the winning logo came from a family of entries that were very popular. it's not entirely clear whether people voting for all of the variations of a logo they liked wound up artificially overshadowing other logos that didn't have variations since people were only allowed to pick 5. (ie: would some of the other logo themes have have scored better if they had multiple variations). STV based vote counting (in which voters can rank *all* choices) would probably help here ... but future contests may want to consider having people vote on "families" of logos that are similar. (in hindsight: the processed used was somewhat akin to letting people rank their type 5 choices for who should be president, but letting each candidate put their name on the ballot as many times as they want in different fonts)