Just think of a chubby penguin and try to relate it to any relevant product. A software company is sure to come last in your mind while trying to associate it with a particular company or business. Yet the Linux logo—depicting a fatty penguin—is one of the most recognizable logos of all time.
When the Linux insiders came into a common consensus that it was high time for this software company to generate a unique logo of their own, many suggested different animal’s names—strong, huge and intelligent creatures. But nobody could actually think up that a penguin is the creature that could possibly represent this booming software company! Starting from hawks and eagles, even to jackals to shark.every possible fierce species were considered.
But it was Linus Torvalds—the Linux boss—who ultimately vetoed for a cute and chubby penguin to be the visual envoy of Linux Company. However, he was against the idea of a “macho” type of penguin. The penguin of his dream was essentially cuddly and one that seemed to draw great satisfaction from making a feast on gallons of raw herrings.
How the penguin came to be known as Tux is a different story altogether, but Tux saw the light as a result of artistic endeavors of Larry Ewing who gave it the shape using GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program), an illustration program that comes with many GNU/Linux distributions.
No substantial money was spent on the logo designing companies to develop this penguin logo. Yet, everybody has been given the full freedom of modifying the Tux logo, only with due mention of GIMP.
Thus the Linux logo becomes an excellent proof of concept of the whole rationale behind open source and free software development,” —-as observed by Marco Pastore, an open source programmer.
If the motto of open source software is to give the software fraternity the freedom of any modifications with the software, the open use of Linux logo is also inspired by the same idea experiment and innovation for the purpose of creating something even more amazing.
Now coming to the most important question: what makes Tux stand out?
Torvalds wanted something unusual and different and that he got in this overweight “Tux” the penguin. Going by the standard logo designing norms, a soft design approach is generally unacceptable for a software development company.
On the contrary the penguin logo of Linux was softness and cuteness personified—-a symbol that excites the kids and makes the adults smile. It is after all this unusual association that makes it one of the most widely recognized logos on earth and that compete with equal ilan with the other grammatically accurate hi-tech logos like IBM or Microsoft.
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