Two years in the design oven, now Fedora is finally ready to share its new logo with the wider world.
A recent Fedora community council meeting played host to Fedora’s Máirín Duffy, who talked through the new Fedora Logo, its journey, and a timeline for its roll out. You can watch the meeting in the hero area above (or via YouTube if you’re reading from an RSS feed or scraper site).
Fervent fans of the distro needn’t panic unduly; the new Fedora logo mark and companion logotype are firmly in-keeping with the iconic “infinity” logo many are familiar with:
But while the new design isn’t a wholesale revamp it manages to avoid making the list of rebranding disasters. A refreshing improvement; the new icon is “less fussy” than the logo it replaces and makes a better representation of the nimble and flexible Fedora project it badges.
Talk of a new logo started in 2018 and tentative designs were produced in 2019. The aim: to solve a number of cited “design deficiencies” with the incumbent glyph, such as the inability to produce the logo in a single colour, and its companion word mark, like the ‘a’ looking more like an ‘o’.
Now, having been refined enough (and okayed with the relevant legal checks) the new design is ready. The upcoming release of Fedora 34 will feature the new logo but it won’t appear everywhere right away.
Instead, the plan is to roll the new logo out over 12-18 months. Major user-facing sites, promotional material, and social media accounts will adopt it first, with lower-ranking sub-sites, hidden pages, spins, blogs, and associated projects, etc getting it thereafter.
To help get the community on board the Fedora folks are talking about creating a special bug tracker where Fedora fans can report sightings of the old logo.
Fedora’s choice of logo isn’t strictly related to Ubuntu (i.e. the name of this blog) but it is the second most popular desktop Linux distribution. A refreshed, revitalised, and renewed Fedora brand leans in to Ubuntu and the wider Linux distro community.
Besides, the Ubuntu design team is in the process of grappling with a logo rejig of its own. Work on “brand hierarchy” is underway in an effort to align disparate parts of the Ubuntu product family and related offshoots.
h/t Anise