UPDATED (December 24) Blender site design

Question

I’m Courtny, senior product designer at Stack Overflow! I’m super happy for this community, because we have started on your site's design.

Your Site Design

The idea of the design is a reflection of the Blender site's subject and culture. This will help brand your site as unique, even while you share common elements with other sites as part of the bigger Stack Exchange family.

Design Concept

For the Blender site design and branding, we wanted to integrate a number of the great community ideas as well as give this site a unique presence on the network. We looked for inspiration that was simple and true to the Blender brand and product. We've gathered some artwork we found online for setting up a mood board.

Moodboard

Color Scheme

Overall, we wanted to stay true to the Blender brand colors that the community is familiar with.

Logo

For the logo, you can see that we have created a glyph and word mark combination inspired heavily by the official Blender logo (Shout out to gandalf3 for suggesting such a good concept!). The original logo is iconic to the community, and with the additional tweaks we've converted the "eye" glyph into a question bubble. Truly a mashup of the Q+A / Blender metaphors.

For the word mark, we decided to use an entirely new typeface. Not straying too far from the Blender branding, we chose Open Sans Condensed.

Primitive Pattern

One design component we really wanted to integrate into the community branding of this site were the core primitive meshes. These meshes are used by millions everyday in Blender to create amazing things. Of the 10 core primitives, one in particular stands out: Suzanne the Monkey. This would also make a nice holiday gift wrapping paper...but we're getting ahead of ourselves!

Swag

Here is how the community branding would be applied to a sampling of swag items.

Site Design

And last but not least, the site design! Click on the image to view at full resolution.

We believe the design and branding work very well for this community. We’d love to hear your feedback! If there are no major design changes, we’ll launch the new site design.

Congratulations!

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EDIT - December 24th, 2015

Thank you for all of your input. We've made some changes based on the community's initial feedback.

Logo

There were enough people who weren't in love with the logo execution that we decided to revisit the design. We know that we won't be able to please everyone, but at the same time, we want you to feel good about the site and the community you've worked to build.

We explored a few different directions and landed on the execution below for the following reasons:

• Clearly indicate that the logo is for the Blender.se community.
• This concept still maintains character of the familiar Blender official logo.
• Integrate the concept of Q&A speech bubbles, without overtly recycling the Stack Exchange master bubble.
• No more socket, yay!

More to come after the new year. Have a great holiday everyone!

Answer 1

I like this a lot. Here's my quick feedback

CC

• At the core of 3d, we work with raw polygons, everything seems too round, logo (I slightly prefer the original here), ask button etc
• The header seems a bit bland but that could just be me
• Other than the subtle background and the logo addition, nothing much seems to have been changed really

What I'd like to see

• Custom upvote/downvote icons, really like the idea of using Blender's +/- icons for this and perhaps the checkbox for accepted
• Custom badges (monkey heads anyone?)* These seem to look like Suzanne when viewed with perspective, use the orthographic front view which will make it appear not as long near the bottom
• Special <pre> styles that match Blender's buttons (if possible, not sure SE's current stance on samp), another useful post Guidelines on the usage of StackExchange Markup and style
• Custom tags* (tags matching the above ^ style would be nice as well)
• Less rounded edges
• Perhaps some more triangulation for the header and footer background, the overall look just feels.. a bit empty

*Blender site design ideas - input welcome!

Other than that, I like the direction this is heading. +1 for the minimalistic look and color palette.

Answer 2

STATUS UPDATE [12/17/15]

Hello everyone. This is Courtny again. I wanted to provide a quick update on status.

Overall, the community has some excellent feedback that I believe will make the design stronger. It seems like the chatter has died down mostly, so I've combed over all suggestions and comments. I wanted to list the highlights that I will be taking into consideration and incorporating into the next design round.

Logo

Probably the biggest amount of feedback was on the logo itself, and rightly so. It's almost too similar to Blender's official. Here is what I'm looking at doing:

• Make the stem on the bubble more pronounced; visually make it appear more like a speech bubble.
• Plenty of people seemed to like David's first design idea. I will take a stab at trying to more closely associate with the SE bubble concept.
• Don't use Blenders condensed typeface
• Adjust the socket drastically, or simply remove it entirely.
• Incorporate "Stack Exchange" into the word mark. This will be a similar execution as was done over on the Salesforce SE site.

Header Background

• Adjust the feathering on the header to be mo' betta. This would likely mean increasing it's width horizontally, or creating a polygonal pattern that will actually repeat (ideal).
• Enhance the vibrance/hinting on the triangulation in order to bring out the mesh work more.

Miscellaneous Site Elements

• Badges: Revise the Suzanne glyph per gandalf3's suggestions. Basically, want to have a more recognizable/visually appealing representation of Suzanne at small sizes.
• Badges: Attempt to pixel hint the badges [SVG].
• Badges: Use different glyphs for each badge type: (Bronze Cube / Silver Sphere / Gold Suzanne)
• Tag Styling: Don't round them off, make them more "Blender" like. Consistently size them everywhere (design oversight on first round, sorry!)
• Buttons: Not rounded.
• Primitives: Going to play with updating a these to maintain accurate perspective. Original was a stylistic choice on purpose, but I'll see how a new batch looks per suggestions.

What's the timeline on the next round? I'm going to try and get a second pass of the design concepts up by the Holiday break. Expect to see something (late) next week!

Answer 3

I'm so happy this moment is finally here!
Having already expressed my initial enthusiasm for the design, I'll jump straight to the nit-picking ;)

My 2¢

Header imagery

I agree with iKlsR's comment about the header, I too feel like it's slightly barren.

There was talk of having a "render of the week" meta post (photo.se style). Or some kind of contest, if not quite that.

Perhaps the winning image could be put in the header on a weekly basis and shown off to everyone?

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Suzanne icon

Regarding the perspective/orthographic Suzanne badges, there was some question as to whether the Suzanne icon is recognizable enough.

Here's a comparison between the new, perspective Suzanne badges, and my orthographic concept badges (just ignore the poor colors on mine :P)

Note the perspective gives the slightest hint of the eyebrow things (which are not visible in the orthographic version), but almost entirely loses the ears.

The orthographic version doesn't have any hint of the eyebrows, but shows the ears nicely. That said not everyone saw ortho Suzanne right away either.

_{Apologies for picking on you @PGmath, but it seems you are the only existing B.SE user with all three classes of badge to be themed with the new site theme so far :)}

Just for a larger-than-tiny reference, here's a perspective Suzanne and an orthographic Suzanne both shaded and flat:

Perhaps since many Suzanne images have Suzanne sitting on a surface (and therefore rotated backwards so as to sit flat), the silhouette would be more recognizable if there was a slight backwards rotation.

Here's Suzanne rotated 20° backwards and at a longish focal length (40mm from about 4 meters away) so there still with some perspective, but not quite as much as the wide-angle shot from before.

With some rotation both the eyebrows and the ears are nicely apparent.

Now the question is which is most recognizable as Suzanne at icon size:

1. 

2. 

3. 

I personally find 1. more recognizable, but 3. more aesthetically pleasing (however I'm not sure I could tell it was Suzanne if I didn't already know).

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Tag style consistency

I noticed the "related tags" at the bottom don't match the normal tags.

It might be confusing to have tags styled differently in different parts of the site.

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Pattern perspective

I noticed that the perspective on objects in background pattern seems inconsistent. The cube, plane, and suzanne appear to have some perspective distortion, while the rest look fairly orthographic.

I realize these are probably intended to be more stylized than accurate, but to me it feels rather strange. So I had a go at making a mock-up of all-ortho primitives, and added some flat lighting for fun:

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The logo

Many have already commented about the logo, but here's my own thoughts:

• I find the point perhaps too rounded. While the arms on the blender logo are indeed quite round, most speech bubbles seem to have sharper points. Combined with some vague resemblance to the letter q, I like having a more pronounced "stem".

• Maybe it's just me, but the socket seems rather "puffy" (too much padding). I personally like it better when the padding is less thick than the white circle within the logo itself.

• Regarding distinguishing from blender.org, it's true that it really looks just like the blender logo when placed in the socket with text saying just "blender". However I think this is more the fault of the text, and not something that can be easily remedied by changing the logo.

  To an outsider there is no real concrete indication of what this logo represents, aside from the text. Especially when seen in contexts outside of the site itself, e.g. here.

  I think attempting to communicate that this logo refers to the Q&A site through the logo alone isn't practical, especially when it's placed next to text which sends an ambiguous if not contradictory message.

  Would it be completely out of the question to change our site name to something more distinctive, e.g. something like "blender QA" (as suggested by @iKlsR) or "AskBlender" (like AskUbuntu)? Or if not actually change the site's name, could a tagline or some other little extra text be worked in to avoid our "brand image" literally reading exactly like the blender logo?

  

Answer 4

I really like what you guys have come up with, it looks really great! I think this theme represents the community and the program very well. I like the polygonal backgrounds for the headers and footers, and the idea of having the mesh primitives as a background I absolutely love.

A few thoughts:

• The logo text feels a bit cramped, a condensed font might not be the best choice
• The blue might be just a tad too saturated
• The background almost feels cluttered, maybe a little less contrast or a fade would help
• The view count and date posted text seems to clash with the style a little, the contrast of new minimalistic and all-caps boldface seemed a little odd to me

I agree with most of the What I'd like to see points iKlsR made as well however I kind of like the non-capitalized Blender text.

Answer 5

I waited a bit till my opinion settles a little, so here are my feelings:

• the design won't offend, but also won't enthuse. It's very basic like other SE sites. But other SE sites have something unique to give them personality, the polygon background is very generic. The only personality we get is from the grey pattern, which is similar like chemistry's SE background and not very noticeable.

• logo is nice at first impression, but the longer I see it the less I like it. Mostly because of the font and how aligned/mis-aligned things are.

  Icon is like Blender had a baby with 9CHAT:

  

  I don't think Blender's logo is a miracle and for example the perspective distortion shouldn't be copied. That's a bad design thing in a logo.

  The font is a no-go for me. Optically the text is not placed well. It works for the bl part, not so much for the ender part - too much white around and too much on top of text. Makes the left-side of logo seem fuller and the right-side seem emptier with text too much at bottom (the right-side is not centered around the half-circle). If you see the original Blender logo the letters have not that different height and there is bigger white margin at bottom than on top, which works better. I blame the chosen font.

  

  The logo is also very similar to Blender's logo which is not a bad thing on itself, but combined with a generic and simple background it gives an impression of Blender Foundation site and not a Stack Exchange site. I don't think you want that. Rather tone the Blender logo similarity down a bit, and give the other design elements more personality (like the primitive pattern has).

• The Suzanne badges don't work at all. They are too small for the silhouette to work. They look like some crooked displaced T's. Something I don't want to have as a badge (Suzanne yes but this is no Suzanne).

  The colors also don't work. What about some shading, stroke and a bit of pixel-art highlights to make it look more expensive like this:

  

  I think this can be accomplished in a 12x12 icon.

  Fair point would be not to make it look too arcade-ish. Also line-art looks good with single color, but not shapes with large body in my opinion.

I am probably just missing some stroke around the Suzanne badges though:

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Now what I would love and probably won't have is a darker color scheme. All the software I work with is dark themed. When I open SE site it is shock for my eyes, not a pleasant one.

I know you have to follow SE white design for consistency, but this site is for people who work in dark themed programs's mostly. Give it a thought and please give us the darkest design you can. For example when I go to BlenderArtists it's much easier on my eyes than SE.

For the text I imagine something like the bottom left. And the site background and header being a darker tone. The site doesn't have to be white text on dark, but as it is now the bright white is too painful.

Answer 6

_{I'm not one to mince words, so I am being blunt with my criticisms. I think the designers did an excellent job on this and I am just nit picking.}

The polygon background seems to fade off on the sides:

I can see why this was considered a good design, however, I think the background should either extend all the way, or at least have a wider feather, extending out more. This one is minor and quite subjective.

I also want to point out that the font spacing could be a bit wider.

Alot of other people mentioned this, but the logo is two rounded. I think it could be pushed more towards the shape of the stack exchange logo, specifically using a pointed end. In combination with the fonts it looks slightly childish.

The coaster/mouse pad thingies (if they are mice pads, they should be square, a round mouse pad will be annoying).

The big thing with them is the un-motivated gradient. It makes the corners feel chopped off, and would work much better for a square. I think the better options would be a) ditch the gradient or b) change it a little.

I first thought a centered radial gradient, going out, would work, but that might look odd. How about a radial gradient, but a little bit closer to the bottom, like the one on the left:

These might need a bit of tuning, but the idea is there.

Note: Reject suggestions 2 and 3 on the image if you guys go for square, they only help with round.

Answer 7

My thoughts

• The header and footer are great! Good colors in the pattern. (I do agree with GiantCowFilms' thoughts in the pattern edges.)
• I'm very curious to see what the mock up for the meta looks like. I would be in favor of a desaturated blue for the header and footer, instead of the common grey scale.
• The overall colors of the text, links, vote buttons, and tags are great! I'm very happy to see a better contrast for the hover color. What does the hover state look like for the main links? (pictured below)
• I do not like the shape of the badges, perhaps we have taken the "almighty" suzanne too far. I for one want to be able to say I have 6 gold badges, not gold suzannes. What if (for example) we use a different primitive for each badge?
• What font is the body text? (I find it less readable then the current Arial)

A some what minor point: I don't like the site background "Primitive Pattern." It looks too childish with the the thick lines. The good part is the grey on lighter grey it is not too noticeable. :) (However it looks great on the T-shirt.)

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The logo

My big sticking point is the logo. I do not like the logo, at all.
It looks like just a odd blender logo copy. We are very much a part of the blender community, yet we are separate from blender. We should have our own distinctive logo.
Look how similar the two logos are. Especially when it is wrapped in the white outline, it looks

Instead, here are some example logos my brother and I made:

This first logo stays true to the shape that was already defined in our mock up logo, and found in many other sites across the network. The horizontal stripes pay homage to the SE logo. The colors are taken from the blender logo. A modern logo that mixes the familiar blender colors with a bold SE styled shape.

This logo is fully inspired from within blender. The icon is an adaptation of blender's familiar material icon. Again the colors are taken from the blender logo.

This logo is what happens when you take the the blender colors in the shape of the material icon, and spin it, as if it were in a kitchen blender. Which makes a fun an unique logo.

Here is a variant in the blender type white outline. Yet this may be straining too far towards another familiar blender logo.

I can upload the SVGs for the logos if anybody is interested.

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So all in all I quite like the way you are headed with the overall design. (For me this is rather similar to how movies' logo played out.)

PS while we are talking about our new site, might we be able to get blend file hosting?

Answer 8

Since I think the site logo as it stands is very close to the Blender logo, and doesn't really convey the Stack Exchange aspect, I took a shot at making something to more effectively communicate both ideas.

Against a blue preview background:

Download the .blend

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With no background (transparent):

Download the .blend

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With a third dimension:

Download the .blend

Answer 9

Nice job! Overall, I like it.

I think I mostly agree with everyone. I've already expressed that in a few comments.

The logo

I quite like the logo idea, but it's just too rounded. As some others have said, it feels a bit childish. Kind of like it's a safety logo.

I prefer the original:

Some people say that it's a bit too similar to the Blender logo, and are afraid that people will come here and think that this is an official Blender site. While they have a valid point, I think that it should be fairly easy to tell it apart just based off of the content.

I think they're also forgetting that when you aren't logged on, there are several sections that explain what the site is about.

Home Page

Question

I think that's enough of a disclaimer.

To me, the most important thing when it comes to that, is that people don't expect to be able to come here to download Blender. That they can immediately tell that this is a Q&A site, and not the official Blender web site.

Weather it looks like "official" Blender isn't really important, imo.

Now, I did make a logo based off of @Davids first idea based off of the SE logo. It didn't really turn out all that great, but I thought I'd post it just in case it gives anyone any ideas.

I'll probably experiment a bit more with it also.

Badges

I definitely want Suzanne Badges. I also like the idea of having each type of badge be a different primitive. Like I already said, something like having bronze be a cube, silver a sphere, and gold be Suzanne. This isn't important though. Just a fun thing to have.

Answer 10

With respect to the word mark, I don't have any particular preference for any of those suggested, and have the same problem with all of them: I think the label should specify that the word mark is for "Blender Stack Exchange", and not for "Blender" by adding the words "stack exchange", or the SE symbol to the word mark.

Answer 11

I just thought about a logo variation, quickly sketched in two slightly different styles, here, if this can help somehow:

added another,

Answer 12

I love it! I think we should add something about fluid simulation to the mood board. I know it might go against the minimalistic theme, but I think it would very cool!

Answer 13

Just another logo idea...

Download the .svg