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Update - revisions posted at the bottom

I'm Paul, a designer here at Stack Overflow and the designer working on the upcoming Arduino site theme for you. I reviewed your responses to my first post - and below you'll find the site design I came up with based on your ideas and input.

Your site design

From the answers and comments on the original post, I understood that you wanted a simple and modern design that also has a bit of fun. There was also agreement that using the Arduino Community logo and colors was a good starting point.

Color scheme

Proposed color palette for Arduino SE theme, using the colors listed on the Arduino Community Logo page linked above: Teal, Light Teal, Orange, Yellow, and Brown.

Logo

Proposed logo for Arduino SE, using the logo shown on the Arduino Community Logo page linked above, with the addition of a teal speech bubble containing a white "?" in the bottom-right of the logo.

The Arduino community logo offers a space to customize which I used to insert the ? icon hinting at questions and answers here on Stack Exchange. The typeface is Inter, which is a feature-rich, clear typeface that is also open-source and available on GitHub. I hope you agree those qualities seem to fit the open-source nature of the Arduino project.

Page Design

I used these elements and I set them against a custom background that I hope does two things:

  1. It hints at a breadboard (white background with small holes) used with Arduinos
  2. It also hints at other technical SE sites, including Math and Electrical Engineering, Ubuntu, and maybe even Cryptography.

I hope it has a sort of "maker" or "DIY" or "behind-the-scenes" vibe to you.

For a bit of fun, I found this lovely little LED illustration created by Giacomo Alessandroni and released under CC licence to the community.

Proposed page design/theme for Arduino SE, as described above, showing the site's Questions page (/questions). Question titles and other links appear in light teal.

Following the SE custom of making the meta theme similar, but "greyscale", you can see what Arduino Meta would look like below.

Proposed page design/theme for Arduino Meta SE, as described above.

We hope you enjoy this design, but if something doesn’t feel right, now is your chance to share your feedback. This window for feedback will be open for one week. We will then work to incorporate feedback as best as we can, finalize things on our end, and lastly, deliver the design to your site.

Update

Screenshot of proposed site design for Arduino

Screenshot of proposed site design for Arduino meta

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I like the main site design. The breadboard idea is neat. I tried to make it look more breadboard-like by making a gap every 5 rows (like a real breadboard, there are gaps), however that made it look fussy so I think I prefer your original.

As for Meta, having the logo grey makes it look a bit "dirty" to me. Could we have the logo still coloured but the words "Arduino Meta" in grey? I mean, the grey seems to blend into the background too much, making it looks a bit of a mess.

Or maybe, like Electronics SE, make the logo lighter grey to make it stand out? I'm not sure. Maybe use the coloured logo but desaturate it, but not totally.

Having said the above, I like the design, yes. And even unchanged it is great! Thanks, Paul.

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    Thank you Nick. And yes I can absolutely take a look at tweaking the Meta logo and report back
    – paintedbicycle Staff
    Jun 9, 2022 at 15:24
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    I updated the logo and background to hopefully take care of your concerns. Posted the tweaks at the bottom of the original post
    – paintedbicycle Staff
    Jun 20, 2022 at 19:11
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    @paintedbicycle Looks great!
    – Nick Gammon Mod
    Jun 22, 2022 at 8:47
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I like the idea of using breadboard pattern as background, but to be recognized as breadboard it needs square holes with the right proportion of space between holes.

enter image description here

Couldn't the SE logo be used instead of the ? bubble? Or a Q&A text instead of the ? in a bubble more similar to the SE logo shape?

I see on other sites that the header with logo and site name can have a different background to not to interfere with the logo and picture at the right.

The picture you took the LED from is created in Fritzing, a popular application to create wiring and breadboard designs. The components in Fritzing have CC license, but I think we should not use the Fritzing LED.

I like the header on Academia. If we can have a picture in the right upper part, there could be more than a LED. For inspiration, the Arduino IDE splash screen and the Arduino site have illustrations with electronic component symbols as characters and ornaments.

enter image description here

  • Maybe the Ask Question button could be orange.

  • I think the teal colored question titles don't go well with the green color of accepted question label.

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    Thank you for your thoughts - it feels like we're pointing to very different themes. I think there is a bit of a consensus about "simple" and "modern" so I'm not sure I'll land where you're hoping. Having said that I will definitely take your point about square holes for the background. And I'm going to change the logo a little bit too, to not use the "?". I tried the SE logo but the colors look a little weird together so I may use words instead. Thanks again
    – paintedbicycle Staff
    Jun 20, 2022 at 18:33
  • @paintedbicycle, I like the updated logo. Did you try orange for the Ask button?
    – Juraj Mod
    Jun 21, 2022 at 7:08
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    I did! Sorry I forgot to mention that. The color contrast was really bad (~3:1) with the orange and worse with the yellow so I ended up staying with the teal here
    – paintedbicycle Staff
    Jun 21, 2022 at 13:44
  • @paintedbicycle, thank you for trying
    – Juraj Mod
    Jun 21, 2022 at 15:30
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I'm not personally a fan of noisy backgrounds. I'd much rather a plain, more simple, background.

The LED I find a bit silly and very much out of place.

The main logo though I have no real problems with.

Like Nick I think the meta logo looks muddy and dull. It could be brightened up a little.

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    Thank you - I'll dial down the background just a touch which should help your first point and your last point. I think the LED was about a bit of "fun" and "quirky". I'll try moving it to the footer. Thanks for your thoughts!
    – paintedbicycle Staff
    Jun 20, 2022 at 18:29
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    Have now posted the updated screenshots in the original post
    – paintedbicycle Staff
    Jun 20, 2022 at 19:11
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    @paintedbicycle That looks much better to my eye. It gets my vote :)
    – Majenko Mod
    Jun 20, 2022 at 20:55

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