Gnu Emacs logo (by an emacs noob)

[Raffael Mancini]

Hi,

This is my first post to this mailing list so please be gentle  :) .

I think a big problem that prevents the popularity of emacs among my
generation (I grew up with Windows 95 and have now using GNU/Linux for
some years now) and in general Ex-Windows users is its reputation as an
antique and difficult to learn piece of software. I myself never dared
to learn emacs for a long time. I tried to learn emacs with the tutorial
for several times until I sticked with this great editor. I've now used
emacs for e few months and kind of fell in love with it. I now know that
it was not the tutorials fault not the fault of strange key bindings
that prevented me from learning emacs, but rather that I didn't practice
enough. I now know that the included tutorial is great.

Well the point I´m trying to make is that if GNU emacs had a better
appearance it would also have a broader acceptance among newbies and
skeptics.
There are some movements in the right directions like the gtk+ based
interface, the xft based font rendering, the emacs wiki. But I think one
 important element is missing: a great logo, one that everyone will
remember and recognize, something modern.
The emacs wiki logo (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs_logo.png) would be
something I would approve. The emacs icon included in the cvs version
(etc/images/icons/*.png) is even better because it is very simple. Will
it become the de facto GNU Emacs logo?
If yes, I would suggest to use it as often as possible, for example also
as splash screen. Otherwise one could start a logo competition to get a
new and fresh look for emacs which after all is a modern editor. What I
have said is also applicable to the GNU emacs website.

To sum everything up, I think the first impression of emacs is very
important (and currently often very negative) so we should invest more
energy in it.

I would be glad to help in this process and would like to thank all the
developers for their great work.

Greetings,

Raffael Mancini