₲ang des gobelins,
At some point it will probably be useful to have a standard symbol to represent grin, for wallets and such to have some consistency. The symbol for the Paraguayan currency, the guaraní, came up early on, ₲, but being already another currency, and also upper-case when so far people have been fond of calling it grin with a minuscule G, it did not seem ideal to me. Maybe neither of those things matter, as the guarani symbol is quite handsome. Alas, the sun rains down upon naked bicycles.
I spent some time looking to see if there were some stylized lower-case G symbols out there that might do the duty and, lo, there were a few. I encourage anyone who cares about this at all to peruse wikipedia and/or other sources to find interesting alternative symbols we might use. My eyes were drawn to three in particular.
- ɠ aka g-wth-hook
- ꞡ aka g-barre
- ǥ aka g-with-stroke
Not all of these are created equal however.
-
ɠ - common character and shows up in many/most font sets. Renders on most devices. That hook is a little bit harry-potter-esque.
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ꞡ - uncommon, does not appear in most font sets, and does not render on many devices. Interestingly however, it does not have an English wikipedia page… only a French one… Elvis strikes again?
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ǥ - common character, shows up in many/most font sets. Renders on most devices. As Igno said, however, the symbol on many devices looks like a lower-case g with a bit of dust on your screen… not ideal, but also not a unique lssue, as the other symbols (even the guarani currency symbol) look hideous on many devices as well.
I think that aesthetic quality is not so much as important as universality… as long as it is not unintelligible it can be ugly as hell so long as it can be consistently used and rendered clearly across the world. Heck having it be a G in any form at all is not really important… but convenient for human relatability. Heck we could get funky with alchemical/astrological symbols… 
︎ aquasius… looks like a mw to me… 🜓 cinebar… those look like cross througgh g’s to me… the shed is now two stories tall.
What’s nice about 2&3 (and the guarani as well) is the line across the letter can represent the cut-through process that happens in mimblewimble txs. A stroke of luck for us in the bikeshed biz.
- Alternatively we could just call it XGR or XGN (or XD since it looks like a laughing grinning emoticon), but that isn’t nearly as fun.
I created a poll on twitter to test the water, but it only contains these three options.
Looking forward to running future polls with more options if anyone discovers something very good. Hopefully not too many polls.
With the 3rd option winning out so far with 44% of 50 votes (I have no idea who is voting and whether their opinion is valuable, so I encourage forum users to partake) I also did some rough up of a design that takes the form of the G-strike symbol. These you can see on the logo discussion post here: Grin Logos for Community Consideration - #52 by 0xb100d
A sample from that post, which shows our third option from the poll, in the courier font, with a few stylistic freedoms:
These are just ideas and inspirations, I’m sure there are many other diverse options to choose from I have not considered and look forward to hearing about. I am not particularly biased toward any of the symbols, but I hope at least in some part my legwork can make the decision happen more easily and with minimal additional BS (bike shedding).
Yours
0xb100d
like harry potters lightning bolt
mw looking
… slightly smiling face… that one renders really well
slightly frowning
ooh this one is good… its the dark version of the smiley
yin yang… mimble wimble
a little watch… time is money
hourglas… time is still money… 9,000:hourglass: please!
**wow! sun with face… that one is pretty good.**
skull and cross bones… theres a grin in there somewhere
*WOW symbol for face without a mouth!!!
helmet
