as3logo

If you search online for an AS3 logo you can find different things

this one quite popular

another one

and a couple more.

To promote the ActionScript 3.0 language we thought we should own our logo so we can make it open source and share it with the community.

After some discussions and contributions we decided to go with two main inspirations.

This design from Yuri Krasnoshek "The Flash"

And the Adobe brand and logo design from the CS3 era

Here the preview of what we obtain

If you are into marketing bullshit here how we would describe it:

The main red color combined with a touch of yellow associate the identity to "Flash"
(either the super-hero or the technology), while the long shadow and the 45 degree cut
emphasize on the "action" of rising from the ashes (as the phoenix), all that
to say the opposite of "flash is dead", no AS3 is not dead.

How to build the logo

We're working in Illustrator but any other tool would do,
we use the Myriad Pro font.

We start with a 3x3 grid to build a rectangle,
we split this rectangle at a 45 degree angle.

We write the letters "As" and allign it to the center,
and push the surrounding box to be alligned to the bottom of the rectangle.

We write the number "3" and allign it top-right.

To build the long shadow, we added a fill.

see this tutorial Techniques to Create a Trendy Long Shadow Effect.

We have a main color: red #f1463f
and a secondary color: yellow #ffcc00

We fill the background with them.

If you resize the logo those long shadow can be problematic,
so we need to "solidify" them.

First, we need to resize our logo to a 512x512 rectangle,
this to obtain a smoother shadow (to avoid the dent).

Second, we select our font and Object/Expand Appearance

Third, we select the font again and Object/Expand...

Now we copy the background on top and make it a Clipping Mask

You need to do the same thign for all the letters using a shadow.

Here the final result

Here the render with different size

For size less than 32 pixels we think it is preferable to use
only 1 background (red) to offer better readability.

Download the logo

logo
the regular logo
letters are 100% white
main rect is 100% red
secondary is 100% yellow
shadow is 20% black
SVG download
PNG
512x 256x 128x 64x 32x

logo_a
a for alpha
letters are 100% white
main rect is 40% black
secondary is 20% black
shadow is 20% black
PNG
512x 256x 128x 64x 32x

logo_b
b for black (and white)
letters are cut out
main rect is 100% black
secondary is 100% white
no shadow
PNG
512x 256x 128x 64x 32x

logo_f
f for flat
same as the regular logo
no shadow
PNG
512x 256x 128x 64x 32x

when 32 pixels or less an alternative
is to use a unified red background