Logo Submission

My submission is based on the iconic handcuffed briefcase but with the white-knuckle grip softened to a snapping hand. The snap should underline design principles already suggested by Tarsnap's name, but I think the literalness will also help make the name more memorable, as a kind of mnemonic device. And if you really indulge me, I would say the briefcase stands in for a tar file: a container for collecting many files into one easily transferred unit.

The handcuffs of course are a vivid symbol of security, but I've also abstracted the chain into a canted orbit of discrete boxes. I want to suggest both the travel of data over the internet as well as the incremental nature of backups with Tarsnap, though the links could also be taken generally as the fragmentation of any data sent online.

Attached are a mock-up of the Tarsnap front page with a small version of the logo and a title/tagline set in Bitstream Vera Serif; a large version of just the logo, as would be used on the FreeBSD page and on twitter; and a favicon. The favicon is obviously much simpler than the logo, but I hope the briefcase's asterisk recalls both the visual sound effect of snapping and the need for backups (via that symbol commonly appended to the names of documents needing to be saved). The logo is rendered from vectors, and I can provide the SVG file and/or PNGs of any size you'd like.