EndeavourOS new design proposal
EndeavourOS is a Linux distribution created in 2019 after the end of Antergos. It follows the “spiritual” way about how to offer an Arch-based distro, making it accessible to a lot of people thanks to easy installation and setup. Is one of the most beloved distros by this reason, thanks to pure Arch base configured and ready to use. In recent years it has been acquiring its own personality thanks to an interesting style focused on astronautics. This is really cool and this post shows my brand/design proposal. Let’s take a visual and conceptual journey for it.
Astronautic inspiration, ideas & revamped brand
EndeavourOS releases logos are visually inspired by the insignia of astronautical missions, even the names remember the space shuttle and other projects (like Apollo). The current artwork team took it very well and now it’s the key in whole style. Is an excellent idea! Even today, astronautical insignia is usually based on modernism ─and a touch of neoclassical style─ and this can be very elegant. Will be the basis of all because modernism can keep designs clear and simple, so let’s try to translate this for a new logo with better performance.
Let’s start with a good typeface: Futura is a classic and elegant font that was used in many things related to science fiction, for example the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Futura isn’t free to use, but exist a good free replica called Jost* (released on GitHub too).
EndeavourOS has 3 important ideas as pillars: Arch Linux, the terminal and the community. These concepts can be represented as minimalist shapes, and each shape has a color. The triangle for Arch, the slash (/) is a common terminal symbol, and the circle represents the community. The coral color can represent the basis or architecture, the purple looks technological and can represent the technics, and the lilac can be all the people surround the project. The combination of this three parts makes the new logo, trying to keep similarities with the original.
The font applied (Jost*) keeps the capital style and the “OS” takes lilac color (i.e., the community). “Endeavour” word can be changed to black or white if is neccesary. The whole logo can be adapted to grayscale ─with specific color palette─ for special uses as we can see later.
Implementation examples on artwork
NASA provides a lot of real old images about space, astronautic and missions under permissive licenses. This incredible amount of material can be used for a great retro futuristic look. A proper selection (and photo edition) can give really elegant results with subtle images, and planet surfaces can draw beautiful patterns to use as backgrounds.
Calamares installer icon can be adapted easily to the brand colors too.
As you can see, this proposal tries to be more professional about how to communicate the style of entire distro, the ideas and the community. Adopting some little tricks can open new ways.
If you want to see more of my personal works, visit my Linktree.
