Aleksey, Let me reiterate that I meant no offense by by comments; in fact, I found it to be one of the better logos (if the slogans were removed). Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:
Jonathan Turkanis writes:
92 - The captions "Plug it in", "Pieces that fit," etc. make the logos look cluttered; otherwise they look pretty good. However, I don't buy the explanation that the logo "at first appears to be a jigsaw puzzle piece" but can also be seen as people talking around a table:
- no one will know that this is the intended interpretation unless they are told. Even if someone notices the alternate interpretation, there's no clue that this is intended
What's the clue in case of the FedEx's arrow?
I guess your point is the logo is okay even if it only appears to be a puzzle piece? I've no problem with that; I just meant to point out that the secondary association you describe won't have much effect on people viewing the logo in isolation.
- the logo will *always* appear to be a puzzle piece; at best it will *also* appear to be people sitting around a table.
Sure.
The problem with this is that "finding a piece of the puzzle" is one of the most overworked metaphors in English. (I don't know if this is true in other languages.)
It's not the metaphors of the logo, though. The puzzle piece is simply a symbolic representation of a pluggable software component.
Unfortunately, "finding a piece of the puzzle" (to me) has the stronger association with puzzle pieces. The other explanation, which is perfectly reasonable, has to be explained. I guess that was the point of the slogans which I didn't like.
If that sounds plain, then it's a symbolic representation of a pluggable software component born in discussions at the table that is also the component itself ;).
Jonathan