How Well Do You Know Your FOSS Mascots?
The open-source community has a tradition of creating mascots — which tend to be cute, cuddly animals — rather than adopting staid logos. Sometimes whimsical, the mascots indicate that they do not take themselves too seriously. Although some users believe this type of branding is unprofessional or amateurish, mascots are arguably part of Linux culture. I would like to survey computing mascots in this month's article; they may represent software, hardware or any project or collective entity behind them.
It might be useful to distinguish between mascots and logos. A mascot is a character that represents a brand's personality; it is more complex than a logo and can take a variety of forms, such as animals, people, or objects. A mascot can convey emotion and personality through its expression. According to graphic designer Lenore Ooyevaar, a mascot “has a life outside of the logo”. Logos and mascots are not mutually exclusive, however; organizations can have both a logo and a mascot, e.g., KDE, Java, the FreeBSD operating system.