New TEAM17 logo

[franpa]

I've noticed for a while now that there is a new logo, any reason behind the change? Also it's background doesn't blend very well/should be made transparent.

[BethanyTeam17]

I've noticed for a while now that there is a new logo, any reason behind the change? Also it's background doesn't blend very well/should be made transparent.
We've ramped the logo and brought the name up-to-date a bit.

Can you try refreshing the forum for me now please, it admittedly wasn't coloured matched exactly earlier but it should be appearing okay now. Thanks :)

[Phantom]

I liked the old one better, it was more... cartoonish...
This one is too retro and I am not really a retro fan. :X

[franpa]

We've ramped the logo and brought the name up-to-date a bit.

Can you try refreshing the forum for me now please, it admittedly wasn't coloured matched exactly earlier but it should be appearing okay now. Thanks :)

Yep, looks... good. I'm not a fan of the italics but whatever.

[StepS]

cool logo :) but yep, maybe italic isn't needed :D

[Star&Moon]

Interesting... I like the old one better though.

[Squirminator2k]

FYI, the new logo isn't showing on the Retro theme yet.

[MtlAngelus]

FYI, the new logo isn't showing on the Retro theme yet.

Shhhh.... >_>

[Squirminator2k]

In fairness, the existing logo on the retro theme isn't technically retro, either - it's the post-Worms 3D logo, which isn't what we had when this forum first launchI'llshutupnowsorry.

[Cyclaws]

FYI, the new logo isn't showing on the Retro theme yet.

No? I use the retro theme and I can see it, though it looks like it's slightly further right than it should be.

[thomasp]

New logo does appear on the retro scheme (at least Retro Fluid). However the background colour on the images doesn't match the page's background colour

[Squirminator2k]

It's appearing now, though it wasn't previously, even after a cache clear and a hard refresh.

[bloopy]

Looks great from where I'm sitting. A revamped version of the old logo.

[Extremist2]

Spiffy. :cool:

[Xinos]

Looking good

[BethanyTeam17]

New logo does appear on the retro scheme (at least Retro Fluid). However the background colour on the images doesn't match the page's background colour

I've got 'Retro Purple' (or the default 'Team17'). Both are using the same # colour codes as the images so it should be appearing okay.

[Pooka]

I like this one. It reminds me of the older Team17 logo (this one (http://pooka.knightmare.org.uk/sfrog/team17.gif)). Looks more like a computer game company than, well, than a cartoon studio.

[raffie]

Not wanting to sound too negative, but, being a designer, I think I can safely say you guys did this in house. The original T17 logo looks cool, the idea was good :-/

[thomasp]

I've got 'Retro Purple' (or the default 'Team17'). Both are using the same # colour codes as the images so it should be appearing okay.
Using the DigitalColor Meter app on my Mac, the background of the logo comes out as #7D9BB9. The background of the forum is #849CB8.

Strangely, open the logo up in Photoshop and the background matches the forum. Weird...

[StepS]

Using the DigitalColor Meter app on my Mac, the background of the logo comes out as #7D9BB9. The background of the forum is #849CB8.

Strangely, open the logo up in Photoshop and the background matches the forum. Weird...

maybe different "colour profiles"...

[thomasp]

Possibly. The same happens on Chrome and Safari on OSX 10.6.8, so could be how Webkit renders JPEG images.

[GranPC]

Why not just make it transparent?

[Plasma]

Why not just make it transparent?
Efficiency reasons. Since it's a (relatively) large image that loads with every page, it'd be a bad idea to go with a transparency-capable image format and increase the filesize when a non-transparent image works fine for everyone but one person (so far, anyway).

[Melon]

Efficiency reasons. Since it's a (relatively) large image that loads with every page, it'd be a bad idea to go with a transparency-capable image format and increase the filesize when a non-transparent image works fine for everyone but one person (so far, anyway).
Most browsers cache frequently used images. I had to do a cache refresh (ctrl + F5) to see the new logo in the first place, I'd have never known if it wasn't for this thread, I was still seeing the old one. So the bandwidth impact of the image is tiny.

Having the logo saved as a png or gif with an alpha channel would still let it have a tiny file size while being transparent. You could probably get away with indexing it to 256 colours and still have unnoticeable quality loss and a smaller file size, it's not a complicated image and has few colours.

Here, I even went and did it, it's not transparent but has an alpha channel included anyway, and has less than half the filesize of the original (14,356 bytes vs 38,810 bytes), and should look practically identical to the human eye. It could be slightly smaller were it not for the slight jpeg artifacting in the original image that I converted.

http://i.imgur.com/eNWEi.png

[SupSuper]

PNG transparency tends to be kinda fussy between browsers though.

[Muzer]

png transparency tends to be kinda fussy in terrible browsers though.

ftfy .

[GranPC]

Sorry, I don't think anyone still uses IE6.

[Vader]

So, does this mean I'll need to provide a new favicon? :P

[Scrubber]

New one looks... old?

[Plasma]

The webpage icon looks... kinda bad though. It doesn't even look like a 17.

But I'm not sure what would look good, with that italics. The only thing I can think of is the T on its own.
Anyone think they could come up with something?

[Ed Webb]

Here, I even went and did it, it's not transparent but has an alpha channel included anyway, and has less than half the filesize of the original (14,356 bytes vs 38,810 bytes), and should look practically identical to the human eye. It could be slightly smaller were it not for the slight jpeg artifacting in the original image that I converted.

http://i.imgur.com/eNWEi.png
Melon makes a good point, here. The palette contains very similar colours that can't be discerned perceptively; which can be reduced without noticeable quality loss.

Using Paint Shop Pro 8 to reduce the palette to 192 colours, and PNG compression software, the following two images are very similar to the originals; yet have a combined file size of 17,802 bytes, compared with the current 76,511 bytes.

[Ed Webb]

Feel it's important to elaborate on what's out there for compressing images for online use (specifically, PNG files).

punypng (http://www.punypng.com/) (requires signup) and Smush.it (http://smush.it/)
If you have any interest in making your website more responsive with minimum effort, then use either of these. Just drag and drop any PNGs you want smaller into your browser, and download the condensed versions.

TinyPNG (http://tinypng.org/)
Similar to above; except that this is a lossy compressor. The results should be akin to the compressed Team17 logos above, and provide a further reduction in file size; but ensure you keep the original, lossless PNGs.

You'll have to check the resulting image to see if its file size has been sufficiently reduced (for lossless); or without noticeable quality loss (lossy). That's it, if you're happy with online tools. You should bookmark these sites for future reference. Now. Stop reading! Do it. Seriously, do it.

If the sites above aren't producing the results you want, then you should look at the offline tools below.

pngquant (http://pngquant.org/)
If you have a 32-bit RGBA image, try pngquant. It will create an 8-bit, lossy RGBA image, retaining alpha support: perfect for images with limited use of alpha.

There are a few GUIs that can be used with pngquant. Another one (not listed on the page) is Color quantizer (http://x128.ho.ua/color-quantizer.html), which I haven't tried.

PNG Test Corpus (http://www.css-ig.net/png-test-corpus.html)
A comparison of various programs' compression capabilities. They're usually significantly better than compressing with standard image viewers; but, are predominantly command line based (some support basic drag and drop of images onto the executable files).

There are a limited number of dedicated GUIs for PNG compression. They include:

PNGGauntlet (http://pnggauntlet.com/)
PngOptimizer (http://psydk.org/PngOptimizer.php) (supports APNG compression)
PNG Monster (http://www.vbgore.com/PNG_Monster)
RIOT (http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/) (also for JPEG and GIF)
PNG Compressor (http://www.shpakovski.com/png-compressor/) (Mac)
PNG Squash (http://www.pngsquash.com/) (Mac)
Trimage (http://trimage.org/) (Linux)

I haven't tried all of the programs in this message; so, caveat compressor. (If you're unsure about a program's contents, use VirusTotal (https://www.virustotal.com/), and/or a local antivirus.)

TweakPNG (http://entropymine.com/jason/tweakpng/) (Windows)
An important tool for examining the underlying structure of a PNG. Not strictly necessary; but useful.

You might also be interested in a few articles about image optimisation in general:

How to Optimize PNG and JPEG without Quality Loss (http://www.splashnology.com/article/how-to-optimize-png-and-jpeg-without-quality-loss-part-1/2071/) (part 2 (http://www.splashnology.com/article/how-to-optimize-png-and-jpeg-without-quality-loss-part-2/2568/))
Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/01/clever-jpeg-optimization-techniques/)
Ultimate PNG Compression (http://artyst-tyrant.com/blog/the-ultimate-png-compression-method/)

And a few image viewers that have PNG compression and palette reduction options include:

XnView (http://www.xnview.com/en/index.html)
XnConvert (http://www.xnconvert.com/)
IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/)

[BetongÅsna]

Must agree, I did prefer the old one as well. Are you taking the company's image in a new direction, perhumps?