Make our badges Apple shaped

Question

Different sites have different shapes badges according to the theme:

• Travel has a map pointer

• Android has an Android icon

• English Language Learners have bookmarks

So why shouldn’t our badges be shaped as some sort of Apple Logo?

I understand we might not be able to license the exact Apple logo shape, but please put up a design or drawing so we can all vote for options we like (or dislike) and see if there is a design the community would support.

Answer 1

Personally I say no, we shouldn’t make any change unless there is a very well designed mock-up or someone could get Apple to say on the record “have at it” and we use their logo with their permission.

Barring that, I don’t think we should have “some sort of Apple shaped logo” since it’s going to infringe on Apple’s intellectual property unless it’s totaly different design and then, what’s the point?

Everyone is free to modify the css and have whatever badge design they wish, so im all for knock ourselves out and even sharing images of what you’ve made and possibly share the code (but check with your Lawyer before you license or sell logos or your work).

Unless someone does a mock-up to show exactly what the design looks like, this feels like water cooler talk and not something we can vote on or consider other than, no - this needs work and a design to be considered.

I’m not saying that there can’t be a good design, but no one has done the work to design it and then see if it could be licensed or would be distinctive enough to not infringe on Apple’s trade dress and logo.

Sorry to be negative, but the realities of a major internet site appropriating a well known and iconic corporate logo just to badge this site is likely complicated and potentially costly.

Answer 2

We probably can't do that due to infringement, but what about an alternative?

⌘

The command symbol (⌘), also known as 'place of interest', has an important place in the history of Apple as being one of its most used modifier keys. In addition, the design won't get Stack Exchange in trouble.

Answer 3

Here's CSS to do this for you, using the  Apple logo character.
This won't show correctly on Windows.

.badge1::before, .badge2::before, .badge3::before {
    content: "";
    position: absolute;
    width: 6px;
    margin-left: -2px;
    margin-top: -2px;
}
.badge1::before {
    color: #F7CE46;
}
.badge2::before {
    color: #B5B8BC;
}
.badge3::before {
    color: #CAA889;
}

This CSS patch can be applied as a user style without userscript extensions, in Safari preferences for example. You may need to prepend more specific selectors if you use the global user style sheet and have conflicts with other sites.

Answer 4

Blockquote Unless someone does a mock-up to show exactly what the design looks like, this feels like water cooler talk and not something we can vote on or consider other than, no - this needs work and a design to be considered. Feb 10 at 20:41 bmike♦

In the interest of perhaps ruling-out or ruling-in further consideration of an apple-shaped badge, I decided to do a coarse image survey of existing generic un-branded clip-art / stock-art / line-art illustrations of an apple fruit and was surprised by a plethora of such art easily findable on the web. I also did a cursory image search for "Apple sues logo trademark infringement" just out of curiosity.

Here then, simply FYI, are what I view as the best of the lot from the clip/stock/line art apple illustrations I found. I will also post the same set at a much smaller size — someone mentioned they must be capable of reading at 12px height? (One thing that is very clear from this quick & dirty exercise is how well Apple's logo is designed, such that it reads clearly at 12px height.)

And here again at about 12 pixel height. (Please note! Pro logo designers spend a lot of effort to tweek logo versions for this specific kind of tiny usage making line weight adjustments, as well as further separating elements that clog-up at such tiny sizes. No such refinements have been made here. Which means that readability for any of these samples could be improved a pretty good amount when redrawn and optimized specifically for this size.)

Just wanting to make this a fair experiment, here, for example is the same 12px sized samples blown up 500% so you can could imagine the pixel adjustment possibilities if drawn by someone really pro at this (I am not !)

Last, I did take the one illustration version that was mostly all white with crude pencil-like drawing (seen here at its full quality original size at site called publicdomainpictures.net) , made it solid, then did some simple futzing with the stem, moving it further away from the core image, and just tried to see if I could make it read as an apple that would, in the eyes of people other than at Apple Inc., seem to be significantly different from Apple's trademarked logo, begging the test question "Is there brand confusion here?". I was in a goofing around curious mode for this entire exercise, so there is no attempt to sell anyone on anything posted here. But at least you can now form some kind of conclusions whether the basic concept of an apple shaped badge seems suitable or not.

And again at approx 12px height:

P.S. As a newbie here, it took me over an hour just to try to find an example anywhere on this site of such a badge usage. Looking at the tour and its discussion of badges, I saw no graphical indicators only — just text. Eventually I did find this which I think indicates how the Travel site uses a GPS icon as a type of badge?

Is this correct? If so, how would most people ever even understand that such a Community-based badge system even exists let alone what that 12px badge tells them about a person?