This was originally posted on my blog, but since the blog has been gone for a while, I’m going to post it here instead!
I figure its time I took a break from my technical posts to revisit some common questions people have asked me over the years. In this post, I’ll talk about why kirupa.com’s logo is an orange:
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Several years ago, the site’s header displayed a random logo every time the page was loaded. Or at least, it should have displayed a random logo. Instead, I made a simple mistake that caused the same logo to be displayed all the time. As you would have guessed, the logo that was accidentally displayed was the orange you see now.
Displaying a random logo wasn’t a major priority for me at that time, so I failed to really notice that the logo never changed. As long as it displayed some graphic, I automatically thought that it must work. I didn’t realize the extent of this bug’s influence until the orange started appearing in various forum-related activities. I just thought that kForum users liked oranges…a LOT.
I first noticed the excessive appearance of the orange during the site’s T-Shirt contest. If you browse through the submitted entries, you’ll see many entries that feature the orange (or related citrus fruit) quite prominently such as [URL=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070818155832/http://www.cafepress.com/dreamevo_online.9227144”]this, [URL=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070818155832/http://www.cafepress.com/ososa02.9171615”]this, [URL=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070818155832/http://www.cafepress.com/arjen.8410874”]this, and [URL=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070818155832/http://www.cafepress.com/nine_c”]this. Only then did I realize that the orange they were using is based on the orange icon that was being displayed in the header.
The subliminal orange-ification of visitors must have worked, for I found an old picture of me wearing one of the winning t-shirts bearing an orange from the contest:
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At this point, too many people associated the orange with the site. While the orange isn’t an official logo, if the site ever needs a mascot, I’ll be sure to have a giant orange costume ready for some lucky individual to wear! Any takers?
(In case you are wondering, the orange and many related graphics are used on this site with permission from Dark Project Studios.)
Cheers!
Kirupa :kommie: