What Are We Going To Do About A Logo?

In April 2008 the LRUG members decided to end their days wandering in the logo-less desert and choose an official LRUG logo. Until this point LRUG didn't have an official logo, and whilst it wasn't really hurting the group, occasionally people we were involved with would ask for one and all we could do was look at our shoes, shuffle our feet and say "uh, we don't really have one". To avoid embarrassment in the future when asked similar questions, we decided to finally settle the matter once and for all and come up with one.

Using the mailing list we had a short call for submissions followed by a vote to choose which one of those would be the winner.

The Winner

"El Rug" by Andrew McDonough

"El Rug" by Andrew McDonough

Of course, this isn't the end of the story, we now need someone to:

  1. vectorise this image so it can be scaled properly
  2. essentially re-draw it so it's less obviously copyright theft.

If you think you have the skills to help out with this, please get in touch with me or the mailing list and we can finish the job.

2023 Update

After 15 long years in the blurry jpg wilderness, Winston Ferguson stepped up to the plate and generated a gorgeous SVG version for us which we now use across the site:

"El Rug (SVG version)" by Winston Ferguson

Thanks Winston!

Other Submissions

Logo submissions, which have mostly been culled from these mailing list threads: one, two three and four

James Adam

  • The original The original logo, done as a joke, but it's the closest to an official logo as it was used at the LRUG pub quiz and on the flyer for the LRUG RailsConf London party. Most other logos have used the basic idea as inspiration (e.g. a London skyline inside a Ruby gem).

  • Tweaked version of Paul Battley's logos Actually a tweak of one of Paul Battley's logos shown below. Also blessed with a modicum of official-ness as it's currently in use on the LRUG WWR page.

Paul Battley

Richard Livsey

  • based on the old Ruby lang logo Richard attempted to redesign the LRUG site and this logo was his attempt to bring LRUG closer to the then current Ruby logo. This logo is another with a smell of official-ness wafting around it as it's currently in use as the Logo on the LRUG Last.fm group.

Skills Matter

  • Something new Skills Matter are our hosts for our meetings and they offered us this logo and this has sparked the debate once again.

Murray Steele

  • Based on the Baywatch Nights logo We have a spin-off meeting, which has it's own logo. Can the main group logo reflect this logo somehow, so that in some sort of bizarre reversal of the natural order of things the spin-off influences the mainstream? (Also available in SVG).

Andrew Stewart

  • TfL won't like this Of course, London has more icons than just a skyline. It's likely however TfL would destroy us in a legal sense if we used this. However, can the basic idea of the TfL roundel be used to make something less obviously derivative?

Mike Thomas

  • Oooh, reverse video and ... this time with just the text With or without ruby gems from Mike.

Matt Preston

  • lrug with no r and lrug with an r in the gem Two variations on a theme from Matt.

Chris Parsons

  • It's ironical Jason Lee also submitted a similar idea, but he didn't collect it into a single image for hosting. So I'm crediting Chris.

Andrew McDonough

  • It's what we're all thinking anyway This is probably what normal people think when they hear LRUG pronounced. James Adam has altered this to create his own version, which you can see here, but we're giving the credit to Andrew McDonough for doing all the heavy lifting.

Murray Steele (take 2)

  • A river runs through it Based on thinking about what other icons London has (after Andrew Stewart's TfL inspired version), we have the Thames river. The execution is poor, but there might be some merit to the idea in the hands of a more skilled artiste. Also available as svg.

Paul Battley (again)

  • I'll punch you right in the jacket A slightly more aggressive logo this time round, from one man logo machine, Paul Battley.

Michael Burnham

  • a logo and a street sign Nicely inspired by London, although why it's EC1 is baffling to me quite clear to me now: our usual venue is in EC1.

Jonathan Lim

  • Vertical A vertical choice from Jon.

For historical interest you can see how we voted and what the rules for voting were.