Definitely this one!
The sloth as the Haskell mascot? Iām surprised no-one has suggested āthe Haskell snailā - it might be wise to wait until after GHC is multi-threaded by default. Who knows - a āfasterā mascot may then be more appropriateā¦
Iāve commissioned a few Haskell-tan characters.
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 itās not strong marketing, which should be the underlying idea of a mascot.
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I think a narwhal will be pretty charming and feel more welcoming to outsiders (compared to a sloth, snail, etcā¦). 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 itāll be nice if an animal mascot and an anime character coexist to represent Haskell.
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Is your argument that an anime girl is a more corporate, stronger marketing mascot than a sloth?
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ā¦or for that matter some other anime character e.g. a droid?
course not, but it should be handled by Haskell Foundation or at least GHC. Iām just expressing my interest in mascots; Lisp, for instance, just has a parentheses monster, Javaās a cup of coffee, etcā¦
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.
ā¦where to place the Haskell logo is left as an exercise for the artisans amongst us.
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I love this idea! Is it happening ?
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
Iād 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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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.
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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Top 3 are too close tho, what about polling again restricted to the 3?
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I think this is a great idea - maybe even a new poll officially backed by the foundation?
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.
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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created an account just to advertise the power of the Hercules beetle. donāt sleep on it, itās an unbearably awesome creature [video]:
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How about a more abstract mascot, like Kotlin has? I like the Haskell logoās form.
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Well, is there any āin productionā I can buy from at the moment? I really want to buy a few for the local meetup.
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