OSMF – logo & StarlightOSMF–logo&Starlight

There has been a lot of chatter about open-source sustainability recently, particularly around maintainer burnout.

Big businesses are using code without giving anything back for the tireless work of the developers who – often thanklessly – keep the corporate world’s critical products alive.

Our developer friend Rob decided to do something about it, and started the Open Source Maintenance Fee project to help coerce OS consumers into forking over some of their money to the devs that write it.

We felt this was an excellent initiative, and something we here at blackspike towers feel strongly about too, so we were only too happy to donate our time to create a new brand and style their Astro Starlight website.

The foremost necessity is always a logo!

After some ideas and iterations, we settled on a combined O and S for Open Source, with dollar-style embellishments to drive home that while this is about OS, it is principally about money.

We experimented with a bunch of colourways, and came to an agreement that green fit the bill perfectly.

The client needed to know the hex colours used plus the logo in a variety of sizes and shapes.

We exported a Media Pack with a small reference sheet and the logo in different dimensions, inverts and filetypes (SVGs, PNGs) for social media avatars, videos, PowerPoints and so on.

OSMF Media pack
├── Open Source Maintenance Fee FINAL.ai
├── Open Source Maintenance Fee Styleguide.pdf
├── PNG
│   ├── osmf-logo-dark.png
│   ├── osmf-logo-light.png
│   ├── osmf-logo-square-dark.png
│   ├── osmf-logo-square-light.png
│   ├── osmf-logo-wide-dark.png
│   ├── osmf-logo-wide-light.png
│   ├── osmf-logo.png
│   ├── osmf-logotype-dark.png
│   └── osmf-logotype-light.png
├── SVG
│   ├── osmf-logo-dark.svg
│   ├── osmf-logo-light.svg
│   ├── osmf-logo-square-dark.svg
│   ├── osmf-logo-square-light.svg
│   ├── osmf-logo-wide-dark.svg
│   ├── osmf-logo-wide-light.svg
│   ├── osmf-logo.svg
│   ├── osmf-logotype-dark.svg
│   └── osmf-logotype-light.svg
└── Social
    ├── 1200x630.png
    ├── 192.png
    ├── 512.png
    ├── apple-touch-icon.png
    ├── favicon.svg
    └── social.png

We’d worked with Rob on his company website, using the Astro framework and using Starlight for the docs section.

A fantastic experience. We are thrilled with the devx, look and feel and performance, and importantly the ease-of-maintenance, so Astro was a no-brainer.

Taking this a step further, we just used Starlight for the whole website! Well, Rob did, we only came along to colour it in with brand colours, graphics, fonts and icons/logos.

Look how good Starlight looks almost out of the box

opensourcemaintenancefee.org

With his Hollywood good looks, charm, and dulcet tones 🤩 Rob is naturally a video-first type person.

To increase professionalism in his YouTube channel, he asked us for a couple of 1-second idents.

After rejecting our 3D wireframe idea as being over-realistic for the brand, we settled on a simpler animation, that we modelled, coloured and animated in Blender.

Need some animation? Check out our

Both the client and ourselves are delighted with the output.

We love helping non-profits look professional, and we’re willing and able to produce you an Astro, Starlight or WordPress website. If you’re a scruffy non-profit with laudable aims, let us help you look good too – just get in touch to start a discussion, and meanwhile, check out