Whew!  Many many months ago, we decided to do a contest to come up with a logo for SVG.  We wanted something iconic that people could use on their Web sites to show that they were using SVG, and for companies to put on their packaging and promotional material.  Little did I know what a huge undertaking this would turn out to be!

I basically ended up running the contest myself: wrangling sponsors, trying to get official W3C sanction, building the site, setting up the rules (amid conflicting opinions by the aforementioned sponsors), hand-editing all those entries that were not-quite-right (thanks, Inkscape… it’s a good drawing tool, but the code output is lousy), and generally reaping the results of my hubris.  And all of this was on top of my programming work, standards work, travel, and attempt to have a real life.  (Okay, I did have some help along the way, and obviously the judging was by a panel.)  We had setbacks… hundreds of entries by one person alone due to my foolishly allowing unlimited entries on a piece of bad advice; a cancelled SVG conference where the winner was to be announced; slipping deadlines (due to just not having the brain cycles to spare), and some impromptu international copyright legal hoop-jumping to make sure that the winning logo could be distributed and used for free.

But in the end, I think it was worth it.

I really like the new logo (and most of the finalists, too), and I think it will help “brand” SVG, so that even if normal people don’t know what SVG is, they will come to associate the logo with dynamic, interactive graphics.