Also throwing my hat in the ring... Designed it quite a while ago, never really got around to do all the changes. Background color is blue 500 from https://www.google.com/design/spec/style/color.html#color-color-palette

Same here; made a quick adaptation a while ago (without tweaking for better details). I stayed as close as possible to the original logo. My background colour is light blue 700 from the Google colour palette.

For reference: the current logo

Actually I think a combination of the three could be very nice, combining the following elements:

• from @stevomit's version:
  • the two almost full-circle radio-waves
  • the single support-bar in the middle
  • the MD shadow
  • the thick lines & big circle
• from @mfietz's version:
  • the small angle of the legs of the antenna (45 degrees?)
  • the legs of the antenna being straight
• from my version:
  • the fade-out waves
  • the alignment of the elements slightly from on left

Concerning the background colour I think I could pick something in between @stevomit's and my proposal. Maybe light blue 900 from Google's colour palette?

And what do you guys think of two different levels of MD-shadow: darker ones for the antenna and lighter ones for the radio waves (and extra dark where the overlap). Or maybe no shadows at all for the radio waves. Examples: Gmail 1, Gmail 2, Talon

@stevomit would you be willing to share your source file, so that I can try to make a combined proposal, based on my the things I described above? (A)

the two almost full-circle radio-waves

I fear it looks a bit too much like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doubleiq.podcast

the small angle of the legs of the antenna (45 degrees?)

Actually not sure. Took a real A from Helvetica or something like that

Maybe light blue 900 from Google's colour palette?

I took 500 because in material design, 500 is the primary color (action bar, buttons etc.)
Maybe it is just me, but I find it rather odd to have a different shades of gr... blue in app and icon.

the fade-out waves

To be honest, I still quite like the idea of combining the antenna with the RSS icon. Not obvious enough?

Hi guys,

Long time listener, first time caller...

First of all I'm envious of you all for your design skills!

If it was to come to a vote right now I think I would pick mfietz's one, I like the point he made with the radio waves being a nod to the RSS icon. I wouldn't mind seeing it mocked up with fading colour as they move away from the antenna though, that could be a neat idea, but I think that would make more sense if there were three waves - which takes you away from the RSS icon.

If you shortened the antenna and moved it slightly to the left, as suggested, I think you could fit a third wave in.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Regards

Thanks for everyone's effort. A redesign is certainly welcome. I'm somewhat leery of design by committee so I'll keep my feedback brief.

Personally, I prefer @stevomit's logo (seems kind of retro), but @mfietz is probably right in using a material color. Additionally, there's something strange about the change in angle going on in the antenna from @stevomit's logo.

For completeness, the extra supports in @mfietz's design seem unneeded, but @keunes's take is too spare.

Of course, I'm not exactly sure how we'll come to a final decision on this.

Background colour:

I took 500 because in material design, 500 is the primary color (action bar, buttons etc.)
Maybe it is just me, but I find it rather odd to have a different shades of gr... blue in app and icon.

To be honest I really dislike this tone, it's too much in your face or something (hard to exactly pinpoint what I don't like). I think we should try different tones and see whichever suits best. I think we should stick to the material design colour sets, but I don't think logo's necessarily have to be a primary colour; I think the application's colour tone (shade) can be different from the logo's main colour.

Radio-waves:

To be honest, I still quite like the idea of combining the antenna with the RSS icon. Not obvious enough?

🤦 Didn't recognise it, but yeah: now that I know, I really like the idea :)
I agree with @barrykeegan it'd be nice to have fade-out waves, but that it makes no sense if we stick to two waves, following the RSS logo. I don't like the rounded corners in @mfietz proposal, though, so I'd change that.

Antenna:

the extra supports in @mfietz's design seem unneeded, but @keunes's take is too spare.

Agree. In that sense, I think @stevomit's take (one support bar) is the best of the three.

Process:
Actually I think most of us seem to agree on the proposals and the things that should be changed, so coming to a decision shouldn't be that hard. I imagine we take a consensus-based approach:

• make new proposal based on all our comments here
• get some ideas/feedback from actual designers
• adapt or make new proposal
• see if the active community agrees, or which of the two versions they prefer (here; on the Google Group; are there any other means?)

I don't know when you planned to get 1.4 out to the stable channel on Google? Would it be worth trying to finish the process before then?

the extra supports in @mfietz's design seem unneeded

Added those because I didn't want to go too far away from the original design. Dict.cc tells me the term is "value of brand recognition" ^^

To be honest I really dislike this tone, it's too much in your face or something

Well, I'd argue that you'll basically only ever look at a rather small tiny version of the icon, next to a huge bunch of other app icons. To make an informed decision about the best background color, we should probably look at how it looks next to other app logos in the... what's that thing called? App menu? Dock? (I really like to know what idiot at Google comes up with the stupid names)

I think we should stick to the material design colour sets, but I don't think logo's necessarily have to be a primary colour

I'm leaning towards using https://www.materialpalette.com/blue/grey for the material design. So, it might make sense to use #1976D2 as the background color as it would be our dark primary color.

get some ideas/feedback from actual designers

know any? :>

see if the active community agrees, or which of the two versions they prefer (here; on the Google Group; are there any other means?)

I have honestly no good idea how to do this. I don't expect to get more than 10 responses via the Google Groups and I feel we already hit the maximum on Github. So we have something like 5+(0-10) opinions, but 55k people later have to come to terms with the new logo :/

Let the end users decide. A/B testing could help. The Google Play Console supports so called "experiments", where you can change market icon for certain percent of the play store users. (i.e. 50% original, ~=17% for 3 new variants).

I use these experiments for all "market graphics" testing. However I don't know how many users download the AntennaPod app per day. There needs to be thousands downloads for each variant so we can rely on experiment numbers.

The number of installations is pretty steady. Deducting from a higher number of new installations that these new users like the new graphics better than the old one might make some sense for more popular apps, I don't think this is a good idea in our case.
These kinds of tests probably only really make sense if you also run ad campaigns or some other sort of advertisement.

To make an informed decision about the best background color, we should probably look at how it looks next to other app logos in the... what's that thing called?

You're right. But I still don't like the tone, and it should look ok on the Play store, Fdroid and the website, too ;)
We can have Blue 700 (#1976d2) as one of the three trial colours ;)

Added those because I didn't want to go too far away from the original design. Dict.cc tells me the term is "value of brand recognition" ^^

I guess the brand recognition does not depend on the number of support bars in the antenna :p

know any? :>

Not personally, but I'm sure we could reach out to some and find a few willing to help out. I'm also in a Facebook group with a bunch of young designers, geeks & entrepeneurs, often there's a positive response if someone asks for help.

So we have something like 5+(0-10) opinions, but 55k people later have to come to terms with the new logo :/

What does 'steady' in terms of installations mean, how much within a month's timeframe, for example? If that's really small, indeed an A/B testing would provide little value as users would (hopefully) mostly triggered by the app's functionality anyway. But it might be one of the means.

Isn't it possible to send a notification (have an in-app pop-up or something) to users after an update? MyExpenses has this every time, but I wouldn't know if any new permissions would be needed? That way we can invite them for a short user survey (asking what functionality currently implemented they like most [handy for updating the website/description], would like to see added most [handy for setting priorities for development], and which of three logo proposals they would like most [obvious]).

new users like the new graphics better than the old one might make some sense for more popular apps, I don't think this is a good idea in our case.

Well, If new users prefer certain icon, the old ones will probably like it too. I run several of these experiments on my apps and old users never complained.

From my experience the icons that meet certain quality level don't affect the downloads ratio ration radically. It is usually in +/- 10%.

We can have Blue 700 (#1976d2) as one of the three trial colours ;)

Do you even material design? ;)
It is not a big issue, but it is a sign of bad design to have one shade of blue in the logo and then two other shades in the rest of the app.
Assuming users will actually notice...

I guess the brand recognition does not depend on the number of support bars in the antenna :p

No, but I'd say it is a pretty big step from the current logo to stevomit's proposal.

how much within a month's timeframe, for example?

About 1k new installations per month or a growth of around 2%

Isn't it possible to send a notification (have an in-app pop-up or something) to users after an update?

Yeah, as I said, we don't have any infrastructure we could send the survey answers to.

No, but I'd say it is a pretty big step from the current logo to stevomit's proposal.

Ah, but looking at the feedback and other proposals, I think we'll end up somewhere in the middle. And then it would be ok to remove the extra support bars.

About 1k new installations per month or a growth of around 2%

I guess we can set up such an experiment to get some more feedback, no? It's not much, but still.

Yeah, as I said, we don't have any infrastructure we could send the survey answers to.

So far I think we only talked about being able to reach out to the community? Collecting answers is a whole different issue and can be solved relatively easily (e.g. using Limesurvey).

Just thought I'd throw in my attempt at an icon:

It incorporates the RSS likeness and smaller angle from @mfietz's icon, a material shadow + score, leftward alignment from @keunes, and the logo is adapted from Google's antenna icon so that it has all the right geometry/stroke width/etc.

Offers his version of the icon.
He performed in full compliance with the guideline Google
Icon here: settings input antenna
For the generation of icons thanks to romannurik

Details can be found here: #2124

Is a new icon still up for discussion?

Bump- i saw a lot of great stuff in here and as well some great submissions on Twitter but we're still with the old school icon.

LOL didn't know there were already proposals so I made mine haha

(If you're following Google's guideline I can change the background and make it solid like the others)

PS: I liked the others though, specially this one because of the "A" haha

@MyNameIsTroll Did you by any chance submit another proposal? I received an email but didn't see it here. Just wanted to say I like it (with some tweaks).

@keunes hi,
yes, I did make a proposal, I deleted it to work on it a little more.

I've been using AntennaPod for a long time, I love this app.
As I don't know how to code, i wanted to contribute graphically.
I saw that there was already a ticket so I took the liberty to post it here.

I used a condensed typography and I modified the crossbar of the A so that it's lower and more reminiscent of an antenna.
I used orange to remind the filiation between the podcast and the RSS feed icon.

I hope the AntennaPod community will like it.

I haven't seen any clear winners so far

keunes and I have gathered proposals and will start a vote in a few days. The process is outlined here: https://antennapod.org/designbrief

I think if we want something unique from the community, we may also have to change the name Antennapod to something else

No, sorry. Changing the name is something I definitely do not support. I am not 100% happy about changing the icon but if the community votes for one of the new proposals, I will accept the vote. A new name is a totally different story and more or less throws away the reputation we already have. Some amount of recognizability is important (and also was a requirement during the icon design, as outlined in the brief).

Hi @Pentaphon
Thanks for your reflections. I see your point of the word 'antenna' in the name. However, renaming the app is not an option for the lead developer at this point. Finding a good alternative name would also be a whole other process, and even more difficult than finding a new logo. Also, as it stands, our current name is still a unique identifier for the app (vis-a-vis competitors).

If you'd like to start a process to rethink the name, our new forum would be a better place to do so. But be prepared, you'd need some solid argumentation & evidence to convince th core team ;)

As you might have seen in the design brief linked also above, we are now approaching the end of the process of finding a new logo. One of the criteria we developed was 'recognisability', so don't expect anything drastically deviating.

Best,
Keunes

To celebrate the public release of version 2.0.0, we set up a vote for a new app icon. Vote now to help shape the future of AntennaPod!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T2LZCWN

Prompt for Google Play beta users: #4288
Prompt for F-Droid users: fdroid-icon-poll branch
Twitter: https://twitter.com/antennapod/status/1286945266642366468
AntennaPod Forum: https://forum.antennapod.org/t/new-icon-for-antennapod-2-0-0/88

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T2LZCWN

Done. I like what @221pxls did the most and that is reflected in my votes.

When the new icon is finalized, we should submit Antennapod to the SubscribeOnAndroid.com site to help market it.

Get your App listed on Subscribe on Android

Please send the following information to cio [at] rawvoice dot com:

Application Title
URL to application on Google Play
URL to application on Amazon App Store
URL to your website (if available)
Cost of app (Free or paid)
URL to high-res app icon, which should be a square 512 x 512 px png image

https://subscribeonandroid.com/developers/

(which was introduced in #3739)

How much time did you plan for this survey? It was such a snap that just when I (and probably some other people) saw the vote it was already closed. Would one week be too much?

Hi @Etua! It's sad to hear that you missed the chance. We want to collect the opinion of a uniform distribution of people. At the moment, 80% of the votes come from F-Droid users, who are probably more tech-savyy than Google Play users. The new AntennaPod icon should appeal to both, Google Play users and F-Droid users, though. Because of that, we already closed the vote for F-Droid users.

Hello!

Any updates regarding the results?

Hi!

@keunes and I decided to close the poll on Friday (2 days ago). Today, the poll is still open for Google Play users and he does not reply to my messages. Let's give him some more time. Only he has the permissions to manage the poll. I can see the average rating of the icons but I think we should officially close the poll before announcing the result. Also, I do not have the permission to download the raw vote data. We have prepared some nice plots that visualize the data, which should be published together with the announcement.

Yes, he hasn’t been replying to my emails since Aug 6 so that’s why I’m asking. Anyways, I hope he can get back to us soon.

He replied :) The poll is closed. We are now evaluating the plain-text comments and preparing the announcement.

Hey, I was watching this thread and I was wondering what the new icon was going to be. Despite the poll being closed (I was late in finding this thread.), I really liked @221pxls's icon.

Hey, I was watching this thread and I was wondering what the new icon was going to be. Despite the poll being closed (I was late in finding this thread.), I really liked @221pxls's icon.

Same here, I don't have a Google account, but I like the same icon

Telling your favorite icons here does not help. The poll is over, now :) I am sorry that you were not able to vote but we can not add your vote now without being unfair.

We are currently evaluating the 4000+ plain-text comments and preparing the announcement. After that, we will try to integrate some of the improvement suggestions from the plain-text comments.

The poll allowed to provide a 1-5 star rating for each of the proposals. There were plain-text comment fields, too, though. We want to announce results of both ratings and comments at once.

The poll allowed to provide a 1-5 star rating for each of the proposals. There were plain-text comment fields, too, though. We want to announce results of both ratings and comments at once.

I think what he's trying to say is that he thought the community would just vote for a new icon and it would immediately be merged into 2.0 and then released for all of us to enjoy. It is disappointing to now also wait for 4000+ plain text comments to be gone through by volunteers in order to get 2.0 in our hands. I actually agree with this. You should consider just pushing 2.0 with the new icon now and then using the 4000+ comments for tweaks that you eventually apply to 2.1

While I understand your reasoning @Pentaphon we decided to do everything in one go. Once we release the results, we'd have much less motivation to follow up, dragging the whole thing even longer. For communication purposes it's also a bad idea to make further tweaks after the initial announcement and 2.0.0 release. The new logo would have an outdated version in no-time in many databases & articles.

I understand you're eager to get the next version in your hands. I'm sorry this is taking longer than expected - I really hope we can release everything soon!

Dear all,
We know we have put your patience to the test. Two months after we released the poll, and 4 years and 11 months (and 1 day) after the initial request, I have the honour to close this issue: We have a new branding and app icon!

We want to thank you all for your suggestions here and your eagerness to help out our awesome project.

For the final result and to read about the process we went through: check the page below!
https://antennapod.org/blog/2020/09/new-icon

Version 2.0.0 of the app, with a refreshed interface, the new app icon & performance improvements, will release somewhere the coming week. We're also working on a new website based on the new branding, but please bear with us as that'll take another bit of time.

Version 2.0.0 of the app, with a refreshed interface, the new app icon & performance improvements, will release somewhere the coming week.

Thank god. The sooner the better.

Don't forget to add Antennapod to the https://subscribeonandroid.com/ page.

I mean this with no disrespect, it’s beautiful that we’ve gotten here but it took two years to land on a simple icon change.

I am one of the people who has wondered why 2.0 has taken so long to release but I will admit there is a lack of people who want to put in some of their time into this project. We need to encourage more people to contribute as best as we can, especially as this is the only actively maintained open source podcast client for Android.

but it took two years to land on a simple icon change

The reason why this took so long is that we wanted to do it right. This is not just a simple icon within the app - it is the app's whole brand. Changing something like this throws away a considerable amount of recognizability. I think that we might even get a drop of app installs because users do not like change. When doing such an important change, we need to make sure that the project will profit in the long run. I am quite happy how it turned out and hope that we will go with the new brand for many years. I hope that you can understand that this is something completely different than a simple icon change :)

is some reflection that could be done on how to be more agile

To me, the most valued thing that users of AntennaPod can do is to help other users in our forum. Having to do user support in addition to fixing bugs, implementing new features, reviewing pull requests, managing releases and managing public announcements is quite a lot of work. If you want to help to speed up the development, I really suggest visiting the forum and being so active that I no longer have to visit the page every few days ;)

asking for donations could help this

There already are services like bountysource but from my experience, this does not really help. What AntennaPod needs is not money, but people.

it took two years to land on a simple icon change. This is an open source unpaid project so it’s ok, but there is some reflection that could be done on how to be more agile.

Simply put: it was long regarded as 'not necessary'. I'm glad the current maintainer/lead developer after a while saw the light ;) With that new attitude I was happy to contribute time to organise all this (and it does cost a lot of time).

Even putting up a good brand info page and asking for donations could help this. People work better when motivated, devs could find some this way. Antennapod just lacks a small amount of organization to take the leap. People would donate for coffee mugs, hoodies, etc if they love the project enough. Many do

Agreed. A new brand page is foreseen on our new website.

Having to do user support in addition to fixing bugs, implementing new features, reviewing pull requests, managing releases and managing public announcements is quite a lot of work.

Very true, and I hope others will step up and contribute. At the same time; it's also that you are eager to do all this. The project would also 'survive' if we let users swim in the forum and you focus on Dev ;) And I'd be happy to do public announcements but don't have access to the channels (and yes, they'd probably go out a bit slower). The thing is: stuff runs very smoothly, and there's no call for help anywhere easily visible. So there's limited incentive to step up.

There already are services like bountysource but from my experience, this does not really help. What AntennaPod needs is not money, but people.

As I've mentioned (privately) before: I disagree with this. Having money as a project allows for goodies allowing to activate & reward active community members. So I think actual donations are more beneficial to the project than any bountysource money (also because I've never seen a bounty get a fix implemented for any of the projects I care about). But yes, introducing money into the equation adds administrative hassle and other downsides (e.g. how to get agreement on what to spend the money on?). So I fully understand why the Devs so far haven't accepted donations.

Version 2.0.0 of the app, with a refreshed interface, the new app icon & performance improvements, will release somewhere the coming week.

Hopefully that means today since a week has passed since this post?

Thanks it's appreciated