The new face of Webmin
October 9th, 2007After much deliberation (a bloodbath!), Jamie, Kevin, and I (and a little help from some friends) have chosen a new logo for Webmin, from the seemingly infinite great options offered up by our recent logo contest at SitePoint. Without further ado, I present to you the new face of Webmin:
The figure represents the letters W and M, but there is also the additional symbolism of three Ms to represent Webmin, Usermin, and Virtualmin. We agonized quite a bit over leaving behind the spider web themed branding of the old logo, but in the end, decided that a web was simply meaningless in a modern context where everything is web-based. When Webmin began, almost nothing for system administration ran on the web, and it was the defining characteristic of Webmin. Jamie is still justifiably proud of being so far ahead of the curve on adopting the web-based paradigm, but felt it was time to move on. The future of Webmin is virtualization and grid computing, mobile devices, public APIs, clustering, and more. The web-based UI is merely one aspect of a large swath of interesting facets.
We’d like to thank all of the designers who took part in the contest. They were patient, enthusiastic, and really good. We came into the final round of judging with a dozen or more entries that at least two of us loved, and only after two days of debate and seeking advice from friends and family, did we finally come to a concensus on one that we could all love. We’re extremely excited about the new logo, and plan to roll it out to the website, and the default Webmin theme in the next few days. We’ll also be printing some T-shirts, as soon as I find someone good here in the Bay Area to make them for us.
Thanks also to Kevin Hale, of Particle Tree and Wufoo fame for being our celebrity judge and providing adult supervision during the contest. His magical designer-y ways kept us thoroughly on the right path. Jamie’s sister Lara Cameron
also loaned us her eyes and expertise.
See also
Getting a great logo: Reducing the field
Joe Cooper is a Webmin developer from back in the day, creator of many varied Webmin themes and modules, author of The Book of Webmin, rider of tiny little BMX bikes, slayer of dragons, and co-founder of not one, but two, systems management businesses over the past 8 years, all the while flossing regularly and occasionally wearing shoes.
Email this author | All posts by Joe Cooper
October 10th, 2007 at 12:31 am
looks like fedora to me…. shame but still
October 11th, 2007 at 6:07 am
I like the 3 M concept behind the symbol, but i can’t say the same about the Ubuntu font.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Looks more like the Fedora font, to me. But, smooth rounded fonts like this are very popular in lots of places…not just the two most popular community-built Linux distributions.
But, I will mention that the colors will probably be changing a bit–it currently looks a lot like the Fedora blue, but we’ll be shifting it over to the current Webmin blue (or something altogether different).
October 16th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Fantastic. It’s definitely more up to date than the previous logo. Very Web 2.0!
October 18th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Good looking new logo. If it’s any consolation, IMO the negative space inside the 3 M’s looks like an abstract spider web, especially in the flat version. That’s what I thought it was until I read the description. Your software is awesome, BTW.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:41 am
I think its a good logo choice.
I agree that it looks like a simplified spiderweb to me (which is the description I expected to see on this page actually).
Keep up the good work on the software. Bury Plesk!
October 27th, 2007 at 12:57 am
cool design for new webmin logo. i like it.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:36 am
Hi all,
Wow, just looks awesome.
Congrats, i really like this one.
Cheers
November 1st, 2007 at 2:21 am
Hehehe, ulahts, you ought to like it since you made it! You still haven’t told me what size T-shirt you wear and where we should send it.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:20 am
Yeah nice logo actually.. now all we need is a new layout for Webmin/Usermin and Virtualmin as well…
If you guys need somebody with expertise, check my portfolio and chat me up!
so long…