Haskell plush toy

#43

I’ve commissioned a few Haskell-tan characters.

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This one was done for $10, from a kid.

FiveRR has a bunch of artists available, and some of them are good quality. A friend of a friend is also a graduate art school trained artist, but wants a bit of money, in the 200-400 USD range.

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Mascot design, IMO, should be done by corporate types, not primarily to represent Haskell or the community, but to appeal to future Haskellers we want to reach. A sloth or a snail is a nice symbol of laziness, but it’s not strong marketing, which should be the underlying idea of a mascot.

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#44

I think a narwhal will be pretty charming and feel more welcoming to outsiders (compared to a sloth, snail, etc…). Plus it is also pretty unique an animal to remember.

As for a cute/anime character representing Haskell, I think it would not appeal to as much audience alone (but we have Wikipe-tan, so who knows). I think it’ll be nice if an animal mascot and an anime character coexist to represent Haskell.

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#45

Is your argument that an anime girl is a more corporate, stronger marketing mascot than a sloth?

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#46

…or for that matter some other anime character e.g. a droid?

#47

course not, but it should be handled by Haskell Foundation or at least GHC. I’m just expressing my interest in mascots; Lisp, for instance, just has a parentheses monster, Java’s a cup of coffee, etc…

It has to be considered how the symbols work. One of the issues brought up in another thread is that Haskell is not seen as suitable for production so we have a lot of Haskell amateurs who never get to get a Haskell job. A mascot has to be designed to appeal to the bean-counters (and honestly upstanding men and women) who make decisions on whether or not to adopt Haskell, to existing Haskellers as a symbol of identity, as well as to target audiences of future Haskellers.

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In that regard, my efforts to design a Haskell-tan is just a hobbyist effort, but it entertains me. The Haskell sloth people are pushing here should also be seen as a hobbyist effort; i.e, HF and GHC steering committee will have to sign off to it, but a proper Haskell mascot requires marketing strategy and intention.

#48

…where to place the Haskell logo is left as an exercise for the artisans amongst us.

5 Likes
#49

I love this idea! Is it happening ?

#50

I finally took the time to create a short form to vote the options which emerged in this thread.

Please vote at https://forms.gle/zgsEerrkUR4wS3Ct9

I’d ask also to share it with fellow Haskellers, to get as many votes as possible. If you to retweet, I linked it here https://twitter.com/marcoshuttle/status/1511735812039319553

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#51

This is the result (up to now) of the poll. It looks like a cat would be the preferred option, closely followed by a lamb a a sloth.

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I guess the next step could be to try to see if there is actually some entity interested in founding this experiment. @HeinrichApfelmus you mentioned you had a contact in the Haskell Foundation, right?

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#52

Top 3 are too close tho, what about polling again restricted to the 3?

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#53

I think this is a great idea - maybe even a new poll officially backed by the foundation?

#54

if we could get an official poll, it would also probably get more attention from a wider audience. I mean, 74 people is not a terrible number, but I guess there could be many more Haskellers interested in expressing their preference.

#55

as it was to be expected, as soon as I posted the result here, some influential members of the community retweeted the poll and several more votes arrived. Now the situation looks like this

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#56

created an account just to advertise the power of the Hercules beetle. don’t sleep on it, it’s an unbearably awesome creature [video]:

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#58

How about a more abstract mascot, like Kotlin has? I like the Haskell logo’s form.

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#59

Well, is there any “in production” I can buy from at the moment? I really want to buy a few for the local meetup.

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#60

A sloth sounds like a good idea, but the one that @cdsmith posted looks like the artist was thinking of a raccoon. Its head is too round.

I will only accept a sloth-looking sloth. Agreed with @Bodigrim that the ZuriHac 2022 artwork is lovely.

#61

I used Midjourney to generate a sloth wizard

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#62

As far as I know nothing came out of the poll and there is nothing in production.

Given we’re at it, let’s try to ping @david-christiansen to see whether the Haskell Foundation could be interested in founding/leading this

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#63

Let me get back to you on that one - are you looking for there to be a webshop where you can buy them?