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Brand: virtualsoaring.org vs. SOAR


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Anyone have a view on the relative merit of virtualsoaring.org and SOAR as brands for our society? We're a bit split between the two at the moment and I wonder if it would be better if we said 'Welcome to virtualsoaring.org' rather than 'Welcome to SOAR'.

Ian

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That's a tough one. I like both, but prefer SOAR because it makes me feel more free and a sense of breaking away :yahoo: from the original FSX build.

Scott (sf4JC)

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The name of the organization is SOAR and that is what is on our logo. Also that is how people have always known us. Virtualsoaring.org is just our url (we were unable to get SOAR as a domain name at the time we organized). You have a point though. It never occured to us that the message board would be refered to as "virtualsoaring .org". Maybe an idea would be to put "SOAR Message Board" or something smilar instead of "Virtualsoaring.org" and then add our SOAR logo to the page.

Cheers,

Don

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I'd have to go with Don's suggestion, I do love the SOAR symbol. But I think the virtualsoaring.org kinda sticks out like a soar thumb in the image but I know it was just thrown together to give us an idea. So it needs to either be deleted from the image, or make it smaller and placed somewhere else.

sf4JC

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It seems to me we'd want *either* the SOAR branding or virtualsoaring.org, not both, because they have nothing in common. If there's a preference to use 'SOAR' then I can change the "VIRTUALSOARING.ORG" in the message board header to be "SOAR", and the smaller "virtualsoaring.org" in the message board menu bar and breadcrumbs to "SOAR homepage".

The message board had 'virtualsoaring.org' on it before I added the image header (that used to say "IPB"). It's a tricky subject with 'SOAR' sounding more attractive and a belief that the SOAR 'brand' is already established, but these days you'd find an available domain name and build the brand around it rather than the other way round.

In a few days I'll make the virtualsoaring.org -> 'SOAR' changes so at least the branding is tidied up unless there's violent objection.

Ian

PS I did first try using the SOAR 100 logo as in Don's post above for the message board header but it is too large, and shrinking it makes it unreadable. There is a basic inviolable rule of websites that your logo should appear in the top-left corner of your pages, and clicking on it should take you to the top-level homepage, but the smallest soar logo is a bit big for that. We could do with a page header design incorporating the SOAR logo. The actual main homepage can quite properly have a large version of the logo on it, but you don't want that on every page. The message board *did* have the Invision logo in the top-left corner, and clicking on it took you to the list of message boards, so I think we're already in reasonable shape and can switch the 'virtualsoaring' to 'soar' quite easily.

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Ian,

Don did the logo in vector rather than bitmap so I can reduce it a bit more, if you want and see if it is readable. Then you can play with it and see how it looks. Will do it tomorrow and upload to the same folder as the other size logos.

Oh, building the site around the domain is great, but when Lenny started this, I don't even know what domain they had, if any. I remember it was on a free server until Chris became director and I started helping with the site. Then we had 2 sites, one for the main stuff and one for the races, etc. - both using free servers. We never had enough room for everything so Chris decided to pay for a site, but the domain SOAR was not available so we came up with virtualsoaring.org. It was even after this when he started a message board...........

SOAR has been around for about 9 years now, and back then the predictions were that this type of site only lasted a couple of years............... That is one reason we would like to keep it going under the original name. Just a bit of history.......... :D

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here's the actual image I 'knocked up' for the message board header. Without a lot of faffing around we need to stick to the same format. The *height* (76px) is important but the width can be anything. I think it would be cool to have the SOAR logo overlap the blue/gray bar just like I did with the glider - we don't need to keep the glider of course - that was just my attempt to create a bit of continuity with the SOAR logo even though I couldn't fit it in.

10_banner2.png

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Hmmm, even though the logo is a vector, when it was resized to 76 px vertical, then converted to a gif - it was a mess! The conversion made words unreadable. So, here are a couple of thoughts.

1. I resized the components of the logo, the word SOAR, the word founded in 1999, and the sun, cloud, & sailplanes. They are uploaded to graphics/logos/soar message board project. You can play around with these and see if this might be a way to go.

or

2. Check out http://www.xplanefreeware.net/forums/ They have a taller header. If we went with something like that we could leave the logo intact.

What do you think?? Ian, Don, & I welcome all opinions.

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This is just something I threw together to see how creative a person could be...

But what could be done is put the sun, cloud, & aircraft graphic (which by the way is missing the part of the cloud in front of the sun) in the place of the present graphic, then replace the virtualsoaring.org with SOAR & Founded 1999 like...

____________________________

SOAR --Sun, Cloud

Founded 1999 & Aircraft Here

____________________________

sf4JC

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Yet two more options:

1) The words are too small for a logo in the banner. Leave them out, except SOAR.

2) Send me a larger copy of the logo in 24b bmp, say 3x or 4x 76px x 76 px. I try to see what I can achieve.

I'm a week on business trip from now on, so it can last a bit.

regards,

Peter

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Have uploaded another sailplane, cloud, sun - with the sun behind the clouds. *grin*

Peter,

Have to make changes as a vector, not a bitmap otherwise it gets jaggies. I can send you larger one already converted to bitmap, but you will not be able to alter size as a bitmap........... Do you have Adobe Illustrator or Coral Draw?? Both are vector programs, then you export finished product to a bmp, jpg, gif, etc

Also, Ian has to be able to fit finished image into size of forum header so that is main consideration.

BTW, size of image words can also be changed, but they are also vector to avoid jaggies.

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Also, Ian has to be able to fit finished image into size of forum header so that is main consideration.

Changing the size of the header is doable, but it's not as simple as just posting up an image of a different size - there are other display items that will also need modifying, in particular the graduated blue bar that runs across the top of this page. I'll do another 'impromptu' change so at least the SOAR logo is on there, and we'll move forward from there. It's still my preference to keep the header small if we can.

Ian

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tada.. another 'impromptu change' done. The bit I do care about (the icon in top left should take you to the home page) is still valid, but I'm not going to win any prizes for my graphics. The header bar is now 110 pixels high and I would prefer it smaller but no-one is going to drop dead.

fyi I also changed the left-most breadcrumb to SOAR homepage rather than 'virtualsoaring.org'.

Ian

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