Good evening… given its cleverness, innovativeness and potential, I agree that devising a visual treatment, and the semiotics in general, for the Grin token should be accorded due consideration. That is not to say that it has not been to date, and, as is evident, several suggestions have been made relating to different aspects of the visual treatment. However, the focus has understandably been largely on proving and implementing the technology itself. To help progress the aspects related to the symbology, it may be worth considering them more rigidly from the point of view of the main different use cases (and apologies if this has been done already but I don’t see it). I think the main areas of usage are:
- A 3-letter currency code – for use by exchanges will almost certainly be required and one will be foisted upon the token if none is officially put forward by the project leadership.
- A symbol for the currency analogous to the $ for dollars, £ for pounds etc. – for making the token easier to denote in a single character i.e. the original reason such symbols evolved in the first place; while it may not be imperative, it would support and strengthen the eventual ‘brand’ for the token for PR purposes and raising awareness in general.
- A logotype – for promoting the concept in a more visually appealing way on website livery, promotional materials, stationery etc etc; it is generally accepted that about 65% of people are primarily visual learners and to reach a wider (i.e. not just tech) audience the requirement for visually memorable and appealing representation should not be underestimated.
This thread seems to deal with the 1st and 2nd of these. I see there is a separate thread dedicated to the logo (logotype) so leaving that to one side I have jotted down a few thoughts on the former 2 cases. I am tending towards the principle that complexity does not necessarily equal profundity, and also trying to use a set of criteria as this may help provide an objective basis for ruling concepts in or out.
1.A 3-letter currency code – for use by exchanges will almost certainly be required and one will be foisted upon the token if none is officially put forward by the project leadership.
Possible criteria? 3 letters, not used by an existing token/currency, as self-evident as possible i.e. one could probably guess at it if one did not already know what it represented.
Possible solutions? The most obvious solution would seem to be GRN
- A symbol for the currency analogous to the $ for dollars, £ for pounds etc. – for making the token easier to denote in a single character i.e. the original reason such symbols evolved in the first place; while it may not be imperative, it would help in giving the token a strong brand for PR and raising awareness in general.
Possible criteria?
- Easy to write in 1 – 3 strokes maximum
- Sufficiently different from an existing token/currency
- Has some symbolic reference to the word or concept of Grin
- Distinct enough to be quickly recognizable
- Is easily reproducible
- Part of an existing character set (?) – the point to which the previous posted made ref.
- Others?
Possible solutions? Obviously the 2nd last of these criteria limits the possibilities considerably and was not a constraint for bitcoin but would help to ensure more accessibility and usability; if this is not considered necessary, many of the existing suggestions could be viable candidates. Many of these suggestions were based on stylized treatments of the letter ‘g’ in some shape or form, which seems sensible. However, I think several breach one or more of the above criteria.
For example, variations of G/g with vertical bar(s) seem too reminiscent of bitcoin’s symbol and may smack of “me too” or moreover, fail to attribute the originality to Grin that it deserves so opposes the criterion to be sufficiently different
Alternatives applying a horizontal bar(s) have also been suggested but the lowercase ‘g’ versions I saw seem to lack distinctiveness and do not retain the echo of a grinning face that the uppercase G does.
An alternative version I saw with an uppercase G looked difficult to reproduce – any unusual or highly stylized typeface will have this problem. Furthermore, the full length horizontal strikethrough can make the G loose its recognisability and/or resemble the euro (€) symbol.
Retaining the concept of the horizontal bar, a possible tweak could use a shorter floating horizontal bar and examples can be easily enough derived from a standard typeface also which would help to standardize it – here are a few rough ideas:
On the other hand, if it was desirable to retain the criterion of using a character from an existing character set, one possible solution could be to use Ğ. This is the latin capital letter G with a Breve; Unicode hex character code: 011E; the breve obviously resembles a smiling mouth, thus providing an extra connection to Grin.
Those are my two grins’ worth for now … I am interested to hear what other contributors think on this not insignificant topic, and particularly if there are other criteria that should be considered, or indeed, if some of those suggested are considered invalid…