First of all compliments on the allegro logo (Yeah, I mean the one on the wiki and I know it's not official ). Looks good. Rescalable two thumbs up.
But as the nitpicker that I am, I do have some criticism. As already mentioned it looks like the mascot standing in front of the logo... implicitly making the logo that big ol' "A" which I think is a bit bland for a logo. It would be nice to see "Allegro" spelled out in that font.
Having said that, I have to contribute something. Okay, I utterly suck at drawing on the computer, but here goes...
http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/592604
http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/592605
I just thought a music note in (kiddy) colours spells out fun and fits graphics of all caliber. Ofcourse that's a little bland too...
The motto could be less sarcastic: "play it allegro".
On a side note, when I ripped that first image I noticed that the line under Alex' chin is kind of weird. I don't think there should be a black line there. (Alex the allegrator? )

Make sure you ask Peitz' permission first. Don't forget he already made 4 games with Alex.

[LATER...]

I've updated Tegel to show the allegro Logo in the about box (in this case the pixelated logo done by Mark Oates)

http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/592606

I'm slowly going to update all my games to use the allegro logo somewhere.

I was under the impression those "quirks" were shading... It might look better if there was some gradient in the shading as opposed to solid black, but I don't think it needs it...

I still like the logo in LexMenu.

Well if a logo is ever finally decided on and picked would it be possible to have a function in the new api that does a cutscene or intro with something along the lines of "Made with Allegro game programming library" with the new logo fading in and out.
Something like:

al_advert();

Of course the image should probaby be dumped and stored in a header or something and as well as account for the current set screen size.
It's just an idea though, it would be great to be able to have something like that imo.

Would you also license him to the community for free if he did not become the official logo/mascot?
As it is now, we have a lot of inofficial logos among which is also the vectorized Alex The Allegator and I guess if anybody wants to use that as the logo in their games, they need to have a license for that as well.

Don't know if what I say makes sense, I'll try to say it shorter: The community wants/needs(to be on the safe side) a license to use Alex The Allegator as the logo for Allegro, independent of whether it becomes an official logo or not.

And I see one more problem with rights: Matthew said that he grabbed that big blue A from somewhere. There could be copyright issues attached to that as well, unless of course the source was in the public domain. (Would not be funny to get a call someday from someone saying "Hey, I'll sue you for using my A without permission!")

Now what is the next step?
Should there be an official logo challenge? (runtime: one or two months, winner cast by democratic vote of the community(two picks per member allowed), the logo picked by the vote will become official and henceforth will be included with all future versions of Allegro)

Hm... can you try to reverse the order of Alex and the A?
So he stands on the left of the A instead of the right. I think it would like he is standing there, leaning against the A. Also, since part the tail would be covered by the horizontal bar of the A, it would get more depth.

Definitely not, because it's less than 50 years so even if the artist croaked while putting in the last pixel, it is still under copyright protection. The same goes for the A in the Alex logo. Which font is that? If it belongs to the Monotype company there could easily be a bill for €300 + punitive damages, looking for a mat to land on.

I'd dearly like to use Futura in DevAlleg, but that's €350 per font, or €1350 for the whole typeface.

EDIT: no need for anyone to tell me I'm being paranoid. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate in case we want to cross our t's and dot our i's legally.

In the pixeled version, sure. The A in the vector version has changed too dramatically to be considered the same one. The shape may be the same, but as one was pixeled and one was vectored, I don't think there's any comparison, plus the shading was changed.

There is also the option to change the shape of the A a bit. Maybe even redesign the whole logo from scratch. Alex The Allegator could probably stick his upper body through the center of the A, his one arm lying on it like on an open car window while he'd still do that "thumbs up" gesture with his other arm. This would also give the logo more depth.

I hereby change my #1 choice to the vectorised A that everyone else is supporting.

A good argument for making it the 'official' logo is that it's development was a team effort, it's approval has the consensus of a.cc'ers and I don't think that anyone objects to the design (although I think there's still a few outstanding niggles about the minor details).

Also, I like the pixellated logo Mark Oates drew. Bear in mind that rasterisation of vectorised images does not work well at low resolutions, so the rasterisation would have to be done by hand. Would still be nice if there were 'official' 32x32 and 16x16 pixel-versions of the final design for the vectorised image.

It would be nice to include this logo in some form in the forthcoming 4.2.2 release (even as a large bitmap in the demo.dat file).

AE.

That could work. I think it would be nice to merge the A and Alex together better... The current version makes them look like two separate images, one pasted over the other one...

Maybe we should go with a puma...

I agree... but I'm wondering if Johan considers the vectorized version too close to the pixelated version?

Suppose we include this as the offical logo, and we don't want to add a special paragraph in the allegro license, then we can't prevent people from making games using some alex-like character.