Custom German Language design and logo - Information gathering

Question

Congratulations German Language community! We’re going to be creating a custom site design for you that we hope will represent your subject and we want you all to really love it. You’ve been waiting almost three years and we really want to do this well. To facilitate this, we’re reaching out now to ask you for what you’d really love to see in the design and logo.

I'm Katie, one of the Product Designers here at Stack Exchange. I'll be working with our community managers in order to ensure that your custom theme truly reflects your community. As someone who has spent quite a bit of time in Deutschland, I look forward to bringing you something “wunderschön”. 😃

A quick history lesson about site theming

Originally, site designs were part of the site graduation process. When a site left beta, they'd get their design. But, at the time we only had one designer who was working on designs and the designs were very specialized and often involved a lot of custom illustrations. We got into a situation where several sites were in queue for graduation but the designer didn't have the bandwidth to actually create the designs.

Before she worked here, one of our Community Managers, Catija, asked the question Can Beta sites slated for graduation get full-site abilities without site design upgrade? - on Meta Stack Exchange. This kicked off several discussions within the CM team of the time and community members and the eventual decision was to implement "Design-independent graduation" in September 2015. This meant that many sites were finally able to leave beta without waiting on a design!

At that time we also had much more strict guidelines for when a site could graduate - they had to consistently get 10 new questions per day. This level of volume made graduation impossible or very unlikely for many sites - meaning many would stay in beta forever. As such, the CM team considered another request - Let's break up with "Graduation" and remove a bunch of "Beta" labels - and that's what eventually happened, too. In 2019, we removed the beta label from 29 sites - including this one - and another 59 in December 2021.

We've also gone through several design systems changes, including launching Stacks version 1.0, which make creating and building in designs much simpler for both our design team and the developers. In fact, we showed off how flexible it could be in our April Fools prank this year "Filters for Stack Overflow".

What to expect

Over the next few weeks, we'll be communicating with you about your site design, so please help us out as much as you can. While we may not be total experts in German, we know that you are and that you have great ideas about what you want this site to look like - so share them with us! You've got a week now to pool up your thoughts in answers to this question, at which point I'll start working on this site's design.

I'll spend some time working on a design based on your guidance, and will return when I’m ready to share the design and logo. At that point, y'all will have a week to make suggestions for adjustments to the design. Our hope is that there will be little that needs adjusting but, due to the size of our backlog, we can't allow more than one phase of feedback, so any changes will need to be recommended at this point.

We'll then consider the changes proposed and make any adjustments that we feel are beneficial. Changes that are too big or are out of scope likely won't be possible, but we'll make sure to explain why we opted against making a change should that happen. Please understand that design is often a subjective thing and we may end up with community members differing in their opinions, so we'll be taking that into account when deciding. Decisions about the final design will be made by the design team and CMs with the concerns of the community taken into account.

Also, it's worth keeping in mind that the goal of these designs is to make something topical, unique, and attractive, but we'll be designing within the scope of our newer site theming. We'll be able to create a logo, background colors, and textures in addition to your logo - but please don't expect illustrations like what you may have seen on some of the older site designs.

Process

Over the next month or so, we’ll be going through a few steps to get your site design up and running. This post is the first of those steps. I’ll also be using this post to track the phases in the table below.

Step	Status
Information Gathering	complete
Design V1	complete
V1 Feedback	complete
Design adjustments (if needed)	complete
Developer cleanup and shipping of final design	complete

What we need from you

As I've mentioned already, we need some inspiration from you so that we can get started on this design and create something you'll really be proud of. So far, I was able to find one older discussion about logos here on Meta. Feel free to reference them if there are ideas you like already - or give us new ones! If I've missed any, please link them in a comment so we can find them. We're really looking for design ideas rather than needing you to design anything for us.

When you're answering this question, think about:

• What symbols or images are important to the subject of this site?
  • Especially things that speak to insiders that we might not find on our own
• Are there any colors that are tied to your subject?
• What tone/mood/feeling would you like your theme to emit? While this is subjective, it helps to set some design guardrails. So, when answering your thoughts, some good axes to mention are where the theme might sit inside these spectra
  • From fun to serious
  • From classic to modern
  • From simple to complex
• How could a good logo represent your subject?

If you have any questions, let me know! We're really looking forward to hearing from you and getting your site design underway in a week!

Answer 1

An important general consideration:

German is not only the official and predominant language of Germany, but also of Austria, large parts of Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), Liechtenstein, and East Belgium. Furthermore it has some official status in other countries like Luxembourg and there are more German speakers in Brazil than in the last four regions taken together.

Thus I advise to avoid design choices that say “Germany” rather than “German Language”. For a blatant example, do not use a colour scheme informed by the German national flag.

Answer 2

I suggest to make the title bilingual, i.e.:

German Language – Deutsche Sprache

(Without any general preference, whether the two are vertically or horizontally or otherwise aligned.) This is to make it clear that this site is bilingual and particularly that people may ask in German here – which many users do not realise.

Answer 3

Traditionally, SE site designs do something humorous or surprising for the error, captcha, and 404 page. For example English Language SE uses the classical illustrations of Alice in Wonderland: error, captcha, 404.

Stealing the latter approach, I suggest to use illustrations from Max and Moritz, an illustrated story by poet and illustrator Wilhelm Busch. It is very well known in the German language sphere and which had a considerable influence on the German language with many quotes becoming catchphrases (“geflügelte Wörter”).

The illustrations are public domain now and can be found on Wikimedia Commons. Since they are available in black and white, they can be easily adapted to any colour scheme.

Specific suggestions:

404 – Page not found

Error – Oops! Something Bad Happened!

(Maybe crop the image to exclude Max and Moritz.)

Captcha – Human verification

Answer 4

Here are some logo ideas I have tried based on the feedback received thus far. Everything here is a draft and nothing is final, this is just about the overall concept.

1. I liked the comment from Janka about how the colour red appears in all 6 flags from German-speaking countries.
2. I agree with Jonathan's comment regarding the ä being too similar to Die Ärzte's logo.
3. Finally, I tried the ß without the point underneath, for a more standard option.

The font I used was FF Meta font by Erik Spiekermann (a famous German typography designer). I researched fonts from designers in all 6 German-speaking countries, but ultimately preferred this one. However, I am happy to go in a different direction as well.

As always, I welcome all feedback or alternative logo ideas. Danke!

Answer 5

To throw a wild and unpolished idea for a logo out there:

How about combining an eszett and a question mark, e.g.:

Note: All the colours are random. It’s only to say: “I envision the colour of this part to be the same/different/blend than those of other parts.”

Rationale:

• A one-letter logo suggestion with some support was the ß. It is also the one letter that is practically exclusive to the German language.

• Question mark because you can ask questions here. And one common question about the German language is when to use the ß, even amongst native speakers since the rules about its usage changed in the 1996 spelling reform.

• The problem of excluding Swiss German (which doesn’t feature the ß) is reduced since the answer to “ß?” may also be no.

• Unitiated people may have a problem making sense of the logo, but I don’t see this as a problem. I already gave examples in the logo discussion, but particularly consider Japanese Language SE.

Answer 6

Regarding mood: My personal preference would be to be most serious, modern and simple. Again, I think, the standard design is the best bet for this target -- It looks serious, just because it is standard. It looks modern an will keep looking modern, because it will be updated whenever the standard theme gets updated. It is simple.

Answer 7

The following designs seem to me to be appropriate:

The letters give the impression of Otl Aichers rotis grotesk font design. (Let me be clear: I made this logo to cite the design by Otl Aicher for these three letters, but I did not use any form of font software in the process.)

Color, rounded edges etc. can obviously be changed. While the first one is square, the second one is not. I am not sure if there are technical requirements here.

You could argue de is the ISO country code for Germany (beside the German language code), so would not be country-neutral. The dt. variant is a nod to the common practice in lexica and dictionaries how to mark words as being German.

Answer 8

It would be really great if there was an option to change the entire UI to German. This site shall not only be a help for native english speakers learning German but also the other way round. Or just for German speaking people having some grammar questions. In those cases, they might not be fluent enough in english to use an english website.

Answer 9

With regard to logo ideas: I think it is more about avoiding the wrong things here. The signs and logos that stereotypically come up when thinking about German language, are rather to be avoided. I think, this is related to the history and identity of Germany.

Just to make an example: One could consider a letter in a black letter font. But usage of black letter is a matter of debate, as it is heavily used by German Neo-Nazis. I think, we don't want to create associations.
To discuss the examples based on a single letter which had been proposed in the logo thread: spanish.stackexchange chose a letter ñ as base for their logo. There is no good German equivalent: The umlauts ä, ö and ü are not specific for German, and ß does not exist in the Swiss variety of German (and would also easily be confused with the beta letter from greek alphabet).

In general, it is hard to find a logo that is a) recognizable b) telling and c) unproblematic (in the meaning of: it does not raise weird historic associations, or is tied to Germany instead of the German language. Again, looking at english.SE, they failed, as their logo is neither recognizable nor telling.

Answer 10

My strong personal preference is to keep the design of the site as is -- this looks neutral and professional.
I sometimes use https://english.stackexchange.com/. With regard to their theme, it feels they tried something. To me, it looks just old-fashioned, boring and unprofessional. And I fear that would happen with any theme we would come up with.

Answer 11

I already expressed my personal preference of keeping the standard theme in another post. I am sorry to add yet another answer here. I chose to do so, because this one contains more background and reasoning than just stating my opinion.

According to a comment on the OP, the following is the purpose of the design:

Site designs are a way to create an identity for the site. The beta theme is bland and shared by 100 other sites. While many themes are simple and clean, the primary goal is to give German Language a design that is a nod to the subject and sets it apart from the other sites. Hopefully someone visiting the site will feel like the theme fits the site's subject.

I think, the design of the site should serve the purpose of the site. To me, the purpose of this site is seeking or giving help and also collaboratively learn and reflect about (German) language. I guess, that is common sense.

I do not see that an identity of the site, making it stand out from other stackexchange sites, would contribute positively to that purpose. To the contrary, I am rather concerned it might get in the way of the attempts of making this an open community which is welcoming to everyone. Emphasizing identities strengthens both in-group and out-group effects. While I believe that the first might be good for a community which is driven by volunteers, I am convinced the latter would hurt the site. I consider the harm bigger than the benefit.

For this site, the concept of identity is particularly problematic. Trying to capture the essence, the spirit, or the identity of German language has strong associations with the idea of Volksgeist from the 19th century, contributing to ideas and concepts revolving around National Psychology and to German Nationalism, with its horrible escalation in the first half of the 20th century. These ideas experience a revival in contemporary far-right ideologies which resort to cultural or linguistic identity in order to rediscover them as grounds for the purpose of othering and discrimination.

The political and historical struggles related to German identity cannot be untied from German language, as the names and contributions of Herder, Novalis, Schlegel, Hegel, and Heidegger illustrate.

Even the debate around the use of black letter, which already popped up in the logos thread, are an example of how the construction of symbolic identities of German language bears associations with ideologies which are, to put it mildly, discriminating at their heart. Making a logo or a theme representing German language will inevitably bear associations with these ideologies. That is why I believe, it should be avoided to try to construct an identity for this page.

With regard to german.stackexchange, the idea of an identity has very different implications than for sites like puzzling.stackexchange, codegolf.stackexchange, or law.stackexchange.

In my opinion, a "bland", neutral, "simple and clean", boring, standard theme that is "shared by 100 other sites" is the best we can wish for for german.stackexchange.