Bring back the Custom Logo Program

From 2007 to 2010, Scratch had a program in which users could suggest custom logos for certain holidays (such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, Valentines Day, and the like) and the best logos could be selected by the Scratch Team and used on that holiday.
You can find more info about it here. The original forum topic is here.
Multiple logos were suggested, and accepted. You can find a list of accepted ones here. I personally like this Mexican Independence Day one by @dancingqueen:

I think the Scratch Team should bring back this program for three reasons:

1. It boosts community engagement and transparency
   
2. It promotes design and creativity
   
3. It's just plain cool.
   

I will dive into these reasons further.
Firstly, the Scratch Team has been plagued with accusations of not listening to the community. From the studio update to the Browser Extension/Userscript Policy change, to the most recent accessibility color changes, the Scratch Community has complained that the Scratch Team has not listened to them. Of course, not all of these criticisms are unwarranted. Some are valid. Some definitely aren't. But there is no denying that this has caused a lot of drama, and mistrust of the Scratch Team recently. Creating a program in which community efforts are directly rewarded and validated by the Scratch Team would be a big step in beginning to repair this broken relationship. It would also provide a space for constructive criticism, and encourage people to try new things, experiment, and learn from others, which is a stated goal of Scratch in both the community guidelines and the about page. (If you're not using Chrome or Firefox, you may not be able to find the highlighted text. It's near the top of both pages. Look for “give helpful feedback” on the CGs page, and “Scratch promotes computational thinking” on the about page.)

Second, it would promote design and creativity. Scratch has often promoted design and beauty. There is a thriving design community on this site. Just look at Design Duel, of which there have been 10 renditions, and Brand Battle, of which there have been 5. Imagine this community being supported and fueled by the Scratch Team themselves! It would be glorious. And that's not even mentioning how much it would inspire and push people who otherwise would not work on design to put their efforts towards it. Scratch literally even has design studios, of which there have already been 151.

Thirdly, it's just cool. What kid wouldn't love to have a logo they designed on the front page of a site that has 90 million views per month?? And, the logos would bring more life to the site. Just imagine something like this Halloween logo from 2010 made by @OldWheezerGeezer, modernized and on the navbar of the site:

Or this 2009 Groundhog Day logo, made by Lance Vikaros, a member of the Scratch Team:

Think about how cool that would be! Imagine how much creativity there would be with a community that is now about 71 times bigger (scroll down to the “Monthly Active Users” section and compare 2010 with 2023) than when this program last existed. Not to mention the fact that much, much better graphic design tools are now available on cheaper, lower-cost-to-entry platforms than ever before. Even the Scratch Paint Editor has changed dramatically since then, going from the 1.4 version in 2010 to the 2.0 version (gaining vector images, which is likely the biggest change overall) to the 3.0 version now. Anyone could make an incredible logo with the current tools available.

On top of all of this, Scratch Team member @Paddle2See even said that it was only removed “temporarily” and that they hoped to “offer this again sometime soon”.
The only reason this program was removed was because logo changing gave them difficulty - which is to be expected given that they had a much smaller team and an experimental website. Changing the logo would not be a problem now, since all scratch-www (aka 3.0) pages use the same logo image (is is on GitHub here). The logo could be changed by the developers with one commit. And scratchr2 pages (old styled, currently being phased out) are similiar, with only one image linked on all pages. While the scratchr2 code is not open source currently, I am confident they could change the logo easily. I don't believe they would need to do so though, as those pages only exist in a few places on the site currently, and the few remaining places are quickly being replaced. All in all though, changing the logo is much easier than changing the entire site (both scratchr2 and scratch-www!) from blue to purple.

SO, I'm suggesting that the Scratch Team accept suggested logos from the community. They don't have to be for holidays, it can be anything that looks cool. Then they could find the best ones and set them as the logo for a day.

Overall, I don't see any reason as to why this should not be implemented. It would support creativity, promote transparency and trust, and be super cool and fun. There's almost no technical limitations anymore, and the Scratch Team even said themselves that they wanted it to return. This would be a very cool and beneficial change for the site, and should be done.


This logo is from October 23, 2010 (Mole Day, which celebrates the unit of measurement called a mole). Made by @scmb1.

Here's a picture of the site with a custom logo from International Peace Day, made by @lovevpets:

that would give the site more feeling

Scratch on AFD:
Changes the name to ScraOOOOOOtch, but keeps the domain name same
No support.

NotK3ndricAlt wrote:

Scratch on AFD:
Changes the name to ScraOOOOOOtch, but keeps the domain name same
No support.

that isn't a good reason

One thing I can think of right away: this was much easier and more apparent on the old 1.x website because the logo was bigger. But the Scratch logo nowadays is quite small. Will this be a problem?

There are also quite a lot of holidays. Will the frequency of holidays pose a problem?

Za-Chary wrote:

One thing I can think of right away: this was much easier and more apparent on the old 1.x website because the logo was bigger. But the Scratch logo nowadays is quite small. Will this be a problem?

It might. Perhaps we could make the logo a bit bigger.
Or, maybe we could make it a bit of an easter egg for those who know their Scratch history.

Za-Chary wrote:

There are also quite a lot of holidays. Will the frequency of holidays pose a problem?

Perhaps there could be a list of celebrated holidays. The community will suggest holidays, and the community/ST would respond on if it would be a good holiday to celebrate.

Za-Chary wrote:

There are also quite a lot of holidays. Will the frequency of holidays pose a problem?

I mean, couldn't the same be said for featured projects?

Za-Chary wrote:

One thing I can think of right away: this was much easier and more apparent on the old 1.x website because the logo was bigger. But the Scratch logo nowadays is quite small. Will this be a problem?

I don't think so, as displays have gotten much higher resolution over time. And the logo on scratch-www pages is still pretty big.
Also, they could implement some rules, like the original program had. Here are the original rules:

1. It had to have the word Scratch in it.
   
2. You could work in a team or individually.
   
3. You had to download the original logo and make modifications to it, then submit the image by posting a link to it.
   
4. The dimensions of the logo should not have been changed. They should have been 198 x 60px.
   

Za-Chary wrote:

There are also quite a lot of holidays. Will the frequency of holidays pose a problem?

The Scratch Team doesn't have to accept every submission. It's up to their discretion. Also:

MythosLore wrote:

Za-Chary wrote:

There are also quite a lot of holidays. Will the frequency of holidays pose a problem?

I mean, couldn't the same be said for featured projects?

sonic__fan wrote:

Perhaps there could be a list of celebrated holidays. The community will suggest holidays, and the community/ST would respond on if it would be a good holiday to celebrate.

What is a “good” holiday to celebrate? If the Scratch Team decides that Yom Kippur is not a “good” holiday, that would be excluding Jewish Scratchers. A quick Google search suggests that only 0.2% of the world population is Jewish, so the community would probably not believe that this is a “good” holiday either (despite being the holiest day in Judaism).

MythosLore wrote:

I mean, couldn't the same be said for featured projects?

I think there's a difference between featuring a project and changing a logo. I don't know if I'd really be able to explain why, but a logo seems to “endorse” it much more. Ah, here's a thing: suppose somebody doesn't celebrate Christmas. If a Christmas project was featured, no problem — they don't have to click on it, and they can browse the rest of the Scratch website as normal. But if the logo were changed to a Christmas logo, they can't really “escape” that, because the Scratch logo is on most (all?) pages of the Scratch website.

You know, I wonder if this suggestion would be better if it were more general. Why not open up the possibilities for logo redesign to any design, holiday-related or not? This gives Scratchers more creative opportunities, and it allows the Scratch Team to have the freedom to choose non-holiday logos if they prefer not to go the holiday route. OP even gives an example, some science-looking logo (which looks cool, but unfortunately they don't say where it comes from).

The science logo in particular, though, might look a little squashed in practice, going back to my earlier point that the Scratch logo is pretty small. I worry that would block very intricate designs from looking their best. Image resolution doesn't mean much if the actual size of the logo is too small to see any cool designs.

Za-Chary wrote:

You know, I wonder if this suggestion would be better if it were more general. Why not open up the possibilities for logo redesign to any design, holiday-related or not? This gives Scratchers more creative opportunities, and it allows the Scratch Team to have the freedom to choose non-holiday logos if they prefer not to go the holiday route. OP even gives an example, some science-looking logo (which looks cool, but unfortunately they don't say where it comes from).

The science logo in particular, though, might look a little squashed in practice, going back to my earlier point that the Scratch logo is pretty small. I worry that would block very intricate designs from looking their best. Image resolution doesn't mean much if the actual size of the logo is too small to see any cool designs.

That's fair. I'll change the suggestion. Also, the science logo is from Mole Day (October 23) 2010, which celebrates the unit of measurement called a mole. It was made by @scmb1.

Za-Chary wrote:

sonic__fan wrote:

Perhaps there could be a list of celebrated holidays. The community will suggest holidays, and the community/ST would respond on if it would be a good holiday to celebrate.

What is a “good” holiday to celebrate? If the Scratch Team decides that Yom Kippur is not a “good” holiday, that would be excluding Jewish Scratchers. A quick Google search suggests that only 0.2% of the world population is Jewish, so the community would probably not believe that this is a “good” holiday either (despite being the holiest day in Judaism).

Again, that would be up to the community and what they think.
Perhaps a “good holiday” would be something many people celebrate, like Christmas or Halloween.

Although, your idea of making this suggestion more general is better than the original one.

Support! this is like a google doodle! This can do for events like scratch camp, scratchtober. And others.

bump

Support. It gives a more community like feeling to scratch, ans it also boosts the site's fun.

Support, I would love to see what the community can come up with!

bump

no support just an example in Australia/ New Zealand we celebrate a holiday honouring soldiers called ANZAC day only a incredibly small percentage of people are from these places so does this make it a ‘bad’ holiday? Also with religion it can be seriously offensive if a religious holiday was included and another one was ignored. (e.g: Christmas is celebrated on scratch but they ignore Hanukkah)

ImmortalJelly13 wrote:

no support just an example in Australia/ New Zealand we celebrate a holiday honouring soldiers called ANZAC day only a incredibly small percentage of people are from these places so does this make it a ‘bad’ holiday? Also with religion it can be seriously offensive if a religious holiday was included and another one was ignored. (e.g: Christmas is celebrated on scratch but they ignore Hanukkah)

Great point.

I support this because it could really spice up the graphic design on the website. I feel like things like this were done in the late 2000s or early 2010s but for one reason or another they aren't done anymore!

However, it could be offensive if scratch made a Christmas themed logo but not, for example, an Eid logo. I think they should just limit it to Scratch events, like Scratch day or Scratch camp, or maybe even April Fools day. It would also be really nice to see what the community could come up with.

I'm certain there was something about scratch not celebrating religious holidays as it would leave out other people. Couldn't find it but im certain it existed.

On the other hand, maybe non-religious holidays/events could have this. For example, scratch-tober could get one, other holidays such as ice cream day or cake day could be celebrated as well, other things such as pride month, which scratch already celebrates anyways so we can ignore the people who dont like that, could also be included.