Exactly. Mascots are useful when they are physically embodied, in a plush toy, on a T-shirt, mug, or stickers. When the coffee mug becomes a conversation piece with a visitor to your office, or when the plush toy becomes a prized possession of nerdy pride.
Tux (Linux), Ferris (Rust), Octocat (Github), Wilber (Gimp), Xue (XFCE), the GNU wildebeast are all visually simple. Most of these are recognizable as silhouettes or in black and white.
In theory, yes. In practice, I think that AI rendered images without a clear concept just sidetrack discussions. They are like visual popcorn.
I would argue that the GNU wildebeest is not simple.
I would really start betting now that in a test with different coffee mugs showing, say, a penguin, a GNU wildebeest, and a mantis shrimp design, the mantis shrimp might not fare bad in initiating curiosity.
YES, Julia should rather have a mascot (however official) than not
This was a close call and my hunch was that it were more like 60 : 40. Nevertheless, the yays have it.
The HUMMINGBIRD is the overall winner in the mascot contest
The (or better: a) hummingbird won the race, followed by the dragonfly / Julia skimmer proposal. This also met my expectations.
No serious candidate seems to have been missing
Here I had though that it might be closer, but the rather clear outcome 60 : 40 showed that the preselection after all was not so bad. Sorry, for “Dispatch” the walkie-talkie.
Thanks for participating and now it’s up to you all to use this piece of information or not.
