The evolution of a canary
We’re building an awesome product for hosted continuous integration. Yeah, unless you already know what that means, it’s probably not for you. But our logo design process was really fun and here’s a peek at what we did. The product, by the way, is called Canary CI, and it’s going to do for continuous integration what Heroku did for hosting Rails applications.
1) Before we had design resources to throw at the project, we just bought a stock illustration off iStock.
Pros: The bird is happy, cartoony, fun to look at and is obviously a canary.
Cons: Someone else could buy the same image.
2) Here’s Colleen’s first swing. While we liked that it looked friendly—continuous integration is so dry that we wanted to make the app itself fun—it felt a little too heavy.
Pros: Fun, lighthearted, cartoony
Cons: It looks like it’d have trouble flying, and we need our bird to connote speediness. And if it were purple, it’d look like Grimace from McDonalds.
3) This one is prouder and can fly, but there’s just something about the wings. It made us feel a little like we were looking at an Egyptian hieroglyphic: the head is in profile but the body is shown in full.
Pros: This canary looks like it could fly! Look at its happy face. It makes me feel proud that I haven’t broken the build.
Cons: Could this bird really fly with those wings?
4) Ta-da! Yes! That’s what we want! Perfect. Sleek, fun, cheerful, speedy, awesome.
Another win for Colleen.
And put it all together for…
