[Hamara-devel] Fwd: Re: No Profile picture for HAMARA facebook page

[shirish]

What do people think of below ?

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: No Profile picture for HAMARA facebook page
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:37:11 +0100
From: Anant <anant at hamaralinux.org>
To: shirish <shirish at hamaralinux.org>, Vikas Tara <vik at hamaralinux.org>

at bottom :-

On Thursday 11 June 2015 03:33 PM, shirish wrote:
> at bottom :-
>
> On 06/11/2015 06:21 PM, Vikas Tara wrote:
>> On 11/06/15 13:41, shirish wrote:
>>> at bottom :-
>>>
>>> On 06/10/2015 11:54 PM, anant wrote:
>>>> Hi Shirish,
>>>>
>>>> I have just checked out your post on
>>>> "https://www.facebook.com/groups/jmilug/" and notice that there is no
>>>> profile picture on Hamara facebook page. Though, I have set it up in
>>>> past. So is there any reason you have disabled it ? As it doesn't look
>>>> good without profile picture.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Anant
>>>
>>> I didn't do anything. What I think happened was that it was asking for
>>> the profile picture at two places and somehow rather than just the
>>> user having the profile picture it got transferred to the other page
>>> (don't ask me how, that's the way it is.)
>>>
>>> When that happened, it got me thinking but didn't blurt out as I like
>>> to let ideas ferment a bit before spitting them out, shouldn't we have
>>> a mascot for hamaralinux as well? The Gnu guys have their GNU, Linus
>>> has the cute panda, BSD's have their lovable demon-child (forget it's
>>> name each time) and Debian have their two logos. I was wondering if we
>>> should also have some sort of cute mascot designed for hamaralinux.org.
>>>
>>> If you ask me why, then simply would state that what we would be
>>> selling (at least in the beginning as a product) would be the
>>> educational distribution. If we have a cute mascot then it would vibe
>>> with children and parents as well (I am thinking of kickstarter also)
>>> and could be re-used as a prop if we were to do something similar on
>>> the lines of the Dummies guide or Idiot's guide or even just present a
>>> webcomic (similar to what Google did when they launched chrome)
>>>
>>> For now, we could put up that picture again there and see if any
>>> conflicts happen but if we go the mascot way, that would be cool.
>>>
>>> If already a mascot has been thought of, please let me know.
>> We have a logo - which is the image of the hand - but we don't have a
>> mascot.
>>
>> Open to suggestions for that!
>
> Hi all,
> Before coming up with suggestions, we probably need to ask few
> questions for ourselves and this would be for all.
>
> a. What kind of mascot do we want, should it be an animal or an
> arbitrary image that goes with the thought of hamara ( a sense of
> belonging) -
>
> One thought would be to show a multitude of hands, each carrying some
> cultural motif of a specific religion and all reaching towards the
> Tower of Babel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel . I do
> reject the idea myself as there is hardly be few percent who would
> know what the Tower of Babel stands for and the scene I envisaged
> would have lot of image clutter, mascot should be simple.
>
> b. Mascot should be male or female? In most of the mascots that you
> see even in the FOSS world almost all the mascots are male especially
> where animals are used. I do not know whether that is done on an
> unconscious level or a sub-conscious but it also sends a message that
> girls are not welcome in technology. This, I also was not aware about
> and came to realize when I attended a session by women on technology
> (the likes of which I was talking to Aparna the other day) . This is
> jut an open question, not meant to sway one way or the other.
>
> c. Should we have a coloured mascot or a black and white mascot. And
> if we are using colours, which colours should be in the palette ?
>
> d. Another idea is to use some endangered species as mascot which
> helps raise awareness about that species, shows our environmental
> badge as well. How do we add the bit about hamara is something that I
> can't figure out atm.
>
> This has both costs for us as well as subconscious feelings that we
> evoke in our customer/partner's process.
>
> There are many more questions but I don't think I'm qualified to
> really ask them as that's more or less the domain of logo designers.
>
> One of my ideas for a long time is to go for a rabbit because other
> than the loveable or mischievous bugs bunny there hasn't a rabbit as a
> cultural item in popular space. We would need to have the rabbit in a
> much different look than bugs bunny so as to have no copyright issues
> at all. We could have the rabbit wearing Dhoti Kurta or Kurta Pyjama,
> something which makes it distinct and ensures Indian values, ethos. As
> clothes are a cultural motif they would be easily identifiable. Also
> the rabbit looks asexual so we could also drape him/her in a sari with
> a small deviation in feature as well.
>
> If we have our own designer, talk to him and see what he has to say or
> talk to third-parties.
>
> Either of the ways is ok with me.
>
I think, we should discuss this over the mailing list, So that we can
have other's views as well.