Within the next hour or so I'm going to be changing the look of Brothers of Briar. When we had requests for merchandise we ran into the problem of our current logo not working well with printed items. It's a beautiful design that was graciously donated to us but when put on something like a t-shirt it wasn't easily read. So we had another logo created that reflected our current board and that was print ready.

After the new theme goes up I'll probably tweak with some things over the next few weeks to get it just right but I think it looks pretty good already. Soon after I will post a link where you can purchase Brothers of Briar merchandise with the new logo. I'll try to keep the stuff as cheap as possible. Any money earned will be banked (after I recoup my investment) and will be put towards future board projects.

Stay tuned!

Looks good, very clean.
Dan

Can't say that I like the new look. But that is just me.

Man! I loged on and said what the #*@&?! am I at the wrong site?! Whoa!
Then I came here and saw this.
I do like the clean look of the logo, but maybe not the color scheme in the forum, I'm just not sure about the peach color borders.
Change is hard!

Maybe I just don't like change, I understand the reasoning, but I don't really care much for the colors.

I can adjust the colors. I'm not found of some of it myself and those are some of the minor changes I was looking to adjust. In the design area of the back end of the board software you only have a little preview area to see what you are doing. It's much easier to work with it when I can see it full screen and see how things look for real. We'll work on it.

Yikes. Coming from the client side of things I see your issue as far as printing concerns go and merchandising.

However, coming from the design side of it (I am a graphic designer by profession) I am not very fond of this new look. It looks very, er, World Wide Web circa 1998. No depth, no dimension, no character. I am not really in favor of the color palette either. Nothing really about this shouts "Pipe Forum". It no longer has the comfortable vibe of the browns and tans, but seems more in your face. I'll agree the logo needed a slight updating but I am not sure if this direction was the wisest to go. You can always create BoB merchandise without having to change the website. There are many options and directions which this can be take in order for a successful end result. This should maybe be open for discussion a bit more.

Just my $.02 from a concerned designer/piper.

Jason,
While your tinkering around with the forum set up, I have a suggestion and/or question. Can you add buttons at the bottom left side so when one has scrolled down to the bottom of a page you could hit a 'top of page' and/or a 'home' (or forum as it's now named) button???
Just curious, it seems I'm always having to scroll up the page to go to the home page button.
Thanks dude,
EJ

I'm definitely open for suggestions. Keep in mind there is a design limit on what we can actually do here. I don't have full design control due to the limit of the back end software and don't have direct access to the files so manual editing of them is out of the question.

Jason,

Just an idea here, consider it if you will, do with as you like.

ASP has had 'design contests' for ASP lighters and other merchandise with really great results. There are some talented folks here, I myself possess modest design skills. Why not throw it open to the talent here? Just a thought.

I've opened it for design submissions before and got no one but feel free to submit anything you'd like for consideration. The one problem with submitted art is ownership.

Everything can be changed. I really do want a vector graphic for the logo hence the change in the first place. Perhaps you guys could suggest a color palette for the current logo that would be a little warmer. The rust and the blue in particular could be changed and then use complimentary colors for the board layout. Anyone up for that?

Here is a very nice and simple color picker app that's FREE !!!

Color Cop

I've used them before but really I'm not much for color design that's why I thought you guys might be able to come up with a good palette.

Changing the colors is simple as pie:

Another Sherlock Holms theme? Perhaps something more original can be concocted. There are a few members with background in art that may be willing to contribute something more modern and that reflects better what we are.