💸 How $0 marketing budget boosted my creativity & automation opportunities

#automation #marketing #design #showdev

💡 Inception back in days

Years ago I watched the following Netflix series :

A look beyond blueprints and computers into the art and science of design, showcasing great designers from every discipline whose work shapes our world.

Then wrote a dedicated article :

How did Netflix put my heart & brain on fire with "Abstract: The Art of Design" S02

That brought me a lot of inspiration about :

The power of simple/pure designs
Importance of typography
How to manage color gradients
How a minimalist design opens opportunities
How playing with things makes us creative and productive (Cas Holman, founder of toy company)

⏳ About `geol` : the need for a logo

Then since last year we started to work on geol, and I started to feel the need to get a logo for example to :

Display in the terminal
Show up in youtube thumbnails
Give an identity to our website (we built one w. Docusaurus)

So I filled an issue... to fix later.

🎨 How low marketing skills and budget boosted my creativity

🍿 Show me what it looks like

📝 Inception and paper/pen drafts

To build a logo, you need to focus on what your product does at its very core.
In my case, I came to the conclusion that there were two core things:

⏳ Pay a tribute to the data source : endoflife.date API
🚦 Colors which is the color identities, know when:
- 🟢 We're ok with a product,
- 🟠 When we should start to take care: time to plan
- 🔴 When it's too late: you're at risk

So finally, two dimensions :

📐 Shape
🎨 Colors

It started to trigger my curiosity about geometric considerations, which could hence be described thanks to mathematical objects, finally opening coding and automation opportunities.

I started to draw and draw a lot of shapes, think about how to put colors, the benefits of a simple geometrical/mathematical vectorial approach while enjoying a coffee cup outdoor seating at a café, drafting ideas and charts w. the paper/pen strategy :

☝️ Put more constraints to be more productive

I really love the pattern that consists of putting more rules to be more creative and just:

see what happens if...

Finally I got my own rules.

The logo should:

Be perfectly described with a few mathematical geometrical rules as possible (easier to code or to draw, even by a kid)
Give sense to colors and product lifecycle
Pay a tribute to its core meaning : the hourglass
Fun with graph datascience: it has to be both eulerian and hamiltoninan
Be as light as possible

🚀 Pure code and automation

Once I found the solution came the coding part:

Design the svg (and put placeholders inside them)
Create a Taskfile to automate a bunch of things (generate various formats from a single task command)
Inject colors with code and automation
Create automation tasks that build jpeg, png, animated & static gifs, webp, optimize jpeg... all built and delivered as output artefacts

So finally I came from a workflow on a paper to a fully automated makefile:

🖼️ Benefits : the `100%` LaTeX cheatsheet

As a benefit I could produce a 100% LateX version of the logo (see full demo)

🔭 Further opportunities

What's exciting with a "simple logo" is that it makes it possible to use the mathematical vectorial description and inject it in many artistic artefacts