Main Page/Logo Redesign
Registry Logo Redesign Contest! Win an iPod or a Wii!
Go ahead, take a look at the upper left corner of our beloved Registry website. If you're like us, you're probably thinking the black book with the ghostly cell-gear and the "Catalog" title is looking a little outdated. Ok, more than a little outdated. We couldn't agree with you more, and we think you could do a much better job. So, we want to invite you to redesign the Registry logo.
Sound cool? Think about how you could represent the concept of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts in an enticing, cool, sleek, slick, shiny, poppy, sciency, nerdy, sexy, accurate, hip new way. Post a design on this page for the community to see and comment on and make suggestions for tweaks and revisions. If everyone likes the final version, we'll use it, highlighting your creative genius for the entire Synthetic Biology community to see. And as if the glory isn't a good enough motivation, we're also going to give you a brand new Apple iPod (8gb Nano or 80gb video) or Nintendo Wii! (Just think about how fun a Wii would be in lab! :)
Details
The mission of the Registry is to collect and provide standardized, reliable biological parts to enable synthetic biologists to design and construct biological machines. Parts are defined as bits of DNA that have been designed (and then often constructed) to have a particular biological function with defined inputs and outputs. The Registry acts as a clearinghouse for these parts as well as the biological devices and systems that are built from these parts.
The new logo should embody and convey the purpose of the Registry. In particular, it would be cool if the logo conveyed the principles of an abstraction hierarchy and composition.
For a more tangible example of the principle of abstraction, imagine that you inherit a vast supply of lego bricks. You start a business of selling prebuilt lego kits to parents of children with no aptitude for engineering. You simply get the design for the desired lego kit and then spend your time building it. As your business booms, you start to realize that many of the designs you are commissioned to build share identical subcomponents - for instance, many of the car designs call for the same assembly of lego bricks to attach the wheels to the car's chassis. You realize that thanks to the fundamental modularity of lego, you could save lots of time by outsourcing the construction of these subcomponents, allowing you to focus on the details of connecting them together. The collection of biological parts in the Registry is a bit like the collection of parts you would find on your workbench at your lego business workshop - lots of prebuilt modules that are reused often, many of which may be composed themselves of other prebuilt modules, along with a fairly complete chest of fundamental lego bricks of all shapes and sizes that are used to connect your functional lego modules together.
Consider the principles of abstraction, functional definition, composability, modularity, insulation, and intentional design when thinking about the new logo.