So heres a suggestion about a rebranding, what do you guys think about it?
Logo:
Website:
Modern and minimalist style, I like it!
I’m not a big fan of this ‘metro’ style, looks a bit unity-ish, but that’s what people want these days.
I can but hope it will pass like disco music, but until then… Yes, it’s good.
I like the idea and execution, but I find the logo a little too reminiscent of Unity’s for my comfort.
Hmm… What about keeping the hexagonal shape, but replacing the suggestion of a cube with some cel-shading?
This is my suggestion; I hope that you don’t mind that I’ve taken the liberty of performing a paint-over of your logo:
I really like the home page design you showed. If people are overall happy with the home page look, I’d also like to see other pages, like the forum page.
Unity’s logo is three arrows forming a perspective cube projection. The only thing this logo and Unity3D’s logo have in common is that they both incorporate a cube, which isn’t rare at all among 3D engine logos. The cube element was purposefully chosen to communicate the 3D aspect of Panda3D.
I fear that adding shading would simply take away from the simplicity of the logo, while making it less cube-like. A flat logo is more effective, I think.
Yeah thats what I think too, I wanted to keep the logo as simple as possible, using only 1 color (2 respective for the black version), as that gives a more flat look, which fits to the metro design. Also the 3D-Aspect is lost then, which was the main purpose of the hexagonal shape.
Amazing! I would completely be in favor of using this design and logo.
Have you actually coded the layout of that suggested site design in HTML/CSS/etc., or is it just a graphical representation of what the site could look like?
If we can get that design to be used on the actual panda3d.org site, that would be great. Potentially it might bring more popularity to the engine.
The layout is already in HTML/CSS, but its kinda messy right now, more of a draft.
Now that I think about it and you really want to rebrand Panda3D, then maybe it’s time to get rid of a few letters.
Kentucky Fried Chicken turned to KFC
Unreal Engine turned to UDK
Federal Express turned to FedEx
Electronic Arts turned to EA
International Business Machines turned to IBM
So maybe Panda3D could turn to P3D?
As I recall, one of the first things that came to mind on seeing the new logo was something along the lines of “that looks like Unity’s logo”–the resemblance is immediate and strong to my eye.
Given the prominence of Unity, especially amongst freeware engines, I’m not sure that it’s wise to stray too close to their image. I don’t want people to look at Panda’s logo and think “ah right, a Unity knock-off”.
Note that Unity’s logo shares not only the use of a tilted cube to convey three-dimensionality, but also a rather similar palette. Since we’re likely to stick with a black-and-white colour-scheme–we’re using the image of the giant panda, after all–differentiation seems better implemented in the logo’s form.
As to other engines, I took a quick look at the logos for Ogre3D, CryEngine, and Unreal Engine–simply the 3D engines other than Unity and Panda that come to mind–and none of them seem to use a cube in their logos. (Based on their sites, Ogre uses a cell-shaded ogre-head, CryEngine uses a stylised eye, and Unreal Engine uses a stylised ‘U’ in a circle.)
I do get that, very much so. I gave some thought to alternative means of conveying this before I settled on my suggestion, but unfortunately didn’t come up with anything that I liked.
Hmm, you might be right in that, admittedly. 
That was rather the point. 
I believe that the “strips” design wastes too much vertical space on basic information. My proposal is several-fold:
Firstly, the Welcome message should be divided up and merged into the top carousel. Instead of just having that whole paragraph to welcome the user, take the information it presents (purpose, liberal licencing, ktp.) and present them in different top carousel slides with appropriate background imagery.
Secondly, merge the Features section into the very same carousel. Unless you can present enough diverse features that it would flood this carousel, it shouldn’t take up an entirely new strip. Given that the current presentation shows only filler text, I see no good reason presented for the separate Features carousel at all. Proposing separation for the sake of separation and without any other information is not a good idea in my mind, especially since it carries the negative of demanding scroll and obstructing further secondary information such as news/blog. Given that only the major features should be presented, the features which would attract devs toward P3D rather than just something like “We can do Direct3D 9!”, there really shouldn’t be too many features to present separate from the slides at the top. Even if there were many of these major stand-out features, what is planned for the top carousel that would somehow demand many slides and not touch on those features?
By merging these strips into the top carousel through effective wording on each slide to cover all the major points of the project, the strips (which I find rather distasteful aesthestically as well, just in their efficiency at laying out information on ones screen) can be purged, which leaves the scroll-down space for much more important secondary information, such as news and/or maybe trending forum topics. If the user has to scroll to see news, that makes sense, but if the user has to scroll to see so much as a welcome message or basic features of this engine, it’s demanding too much of the user for basic selling points. If the user is here to see whether they’d like the engine, let’s not force them to navigationally work to find that information; let’s just give it to them straight-up. If, however, the user is already familiar with the project, let’s not make them navigationally work doubly hard just to reach information which is more important to them: news, forum topics, whatever.
As for the logo, it’s nothing like Unity in my opinion. There are plenty of successful firms which feature much more generic logos than this. If this were nothing more than a cube, it would have a harder time standing out, but with a majority of the logo being the panda face, it’s unique enough to stand out. Just no red-green anaglyph lenses this time around, yes?
Well, there is much space between the sections indeed, however I tried to lighten it up a bit so that its more appealing to read.
Well yeah, I didn’t have much thoughts about the text and content itself yet, its mainly about the logo and page design, not the content 
If you look at the feature page here: http://www.panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Features I feel like there are enough features to be presented. I don’t know whats planned for the content tho. It might be aswell that the feature section will get the blogpost section, showing the latest 3 blogposts or so … as said, its more about the design than the content yet.
Glad to hear
I like it. I would also ask you to release the logo as SVG or whatever format you use. The previous logo designer didn’t do that, at least I can’t find an svg of the current logo.
As for exactly how the website should be structured, I think it’s not really important, different designs work equally good for me and discussing which one is better is a waste of time in my opinion.
I would personally suggest changing the Gallery page. Post some photos of modern games or demos there and move there rest of the old images and online demos to an “Old” or “Legacy” category or page. They are really really old now and really not helping to give a good impression on what the engine can do, quite the opposite.
+1 Fully endorse this. Outdated graphics in current gallery might scare some potential users.
As I said, to me the resemblance is pretty clear: both are essentially tilted cubes (composed of different elements, but nevertheless) in black-and-white. Put it this way: if one wanted to parody the Apple logo, a pear with a bite taken out of it would be sufficiently close that people would likely make the connection–the two don’t have to be near-identical.
(Perhaps part of the difference is that to me, what stands out is the cube-shape, likely under the influence of familiarity with Unity’s logo, while I gather that for most here it’s the panda-face that stands out.)
However, if the majority doesn’t see it that way, then fair enough, and I’ll leave it be. shrugs
I’m not arguing that it’s generic, but rather that it (to my eye) closely resembles the logo of another major free engine, to a degree that leaves me concerned about how it might be perceived.
To be clear, that wasn’t my point. I’m saying that if the similarity you see is that of a cube shape (you keep saying “tilted” cube, but the two cube structures are very differently angled), then consider that a cube is a generic prim. I’m sure other logos exist involving cubes. Generic shapes are going to be found shared across many logos. The primary logo of Unity is three distributed arrows while that of the proposal here is a panda face which just happens to also carry the illusion of a basic cubic structure. Rest easy as there’s no reason this should disturb anyone.
That looks more like an icon suitable for a comic book following the escapades of the Coon. The pointy ears remove any trace of panda and bring on more of a raccoon look. I propose those be removed again.
I think that not only cube form affects the perception, If you change colors of the logo from black & white to something different, it will look less unity-ish
I don’t see any serious resemblence to the unity logo with the first proposed logo. I think stressing out on trying to make the logo different is just as dangerous and trying to make it look the same. “Oh no they both use cubes! As a consumer I am so confused now!” or “Panda3d’s logo looks like a cube! They are totally ripping off Unity!” If the logo used arrows or the same rotation I would agree, it would be a pear with a byte out of it. It isn’t. I have yet to see anyone fuss over pear.php.net logo being a fruit like apple’s (there is no byte in it). If there has been it is long since faded to irrelevance.
If anything I’m not sure the proposed panda logo will scale well down to 32x32 px.