ArtWorks 2 » RISCOSitory

As a Bristol resident the annual RISC OS South West show, held at the Webbington Hotel near Loxton, is my local event – but one I almost always miss because it usually takes place in February and clashes with a regular holiday. This year, however, the show was held slightly later, so I was able to go along as a visitor. Having missed it for some years now I’ve no real notion of what the show is typically like in terms of the number of visitors, so I couldn’t say if there was an increase or not this year – but what I can say is that I was pleasantly surprised with the turn out. I can’t help but suspect that it is higher than previous years, and that the reason for it is a combination of the amazing coup that Paul Middleton managed by getting Sophie Wilson to do a theatre presentation, and R-Comp‘s decision to unveil their ARMini computer at the show. That’s the sort of combination that could have the South West Show challenging the Wakefield Show as the premiere event in the RISC OS calendar.

Updated 31/1/2010 with a fourth idea and altered to use a vector based acorn.

Updated 1/2/2010 with a new version of idea 4, but with better colours, and a few others.

Following the initial comments made earlier this week about the possibility of starting a new Bristol based RISC OS user group if there is enough interest, Trevor was able to find a copy of the old BARUG (Bristol Area RISC OS User Group) logo:

Bristol Area RISC OS User Group Logo

To my mind, there are a small number of issues with this. First and foremost, it’s a bitmap which means it can’t be easily re-sized (upwards) without a loss of quality. Somebody, somewhere probably does have it in a vector based format – but it matters not, because of the remaining issues. The second is that it uses the word “RISC” instead of “RISC OS” – the former term encompasses a great deal more than just RISC OS (although the flaw with both is their apparent exclusion of, say, 8bit users of old Acorn kit). And the third most obvious issue is the use of the acorns to represent the towers of the Clifton Suspension Bridge; representing the bridge encompasses a well known Bristol landmark in the design – which is great, given that it’s a Bristol based group – but the acorn is somewhat out of date in that it associates the group (and RISC OS) with Acorn Computers Ltd, who are long gone. There may also be trademark issues with the use of the acorn.

South West Show 2011. That was today, that was.

Logo ideas for Bristol RISC OS user group