The Original SLUG Logo and Its History

This was the original SLUG logo. When we started this group in 1997, we needed a name. Tampa LUG (TLUG)? Central Florida LUG (CFLUG)? I was looking for a name whose acronym could be a real word, if possible. Finally, I hit upon the Suncoast Linux Users Group (SLUG), because they call this area of Florida the "Suncoast".

From there, I started thinking about a logo or mascot for the group. Of course, it had to be a SLUG, since that's the acronym. This also had a sort of hackish humor to it-- a vibrant, dynamic Linux group named "SLUG".

My wife and I own a small computer graphics and typesetting business, so we set to work trying to design a logo. Had to incorporate a slug, of course, but it had to be a cool slug. First we came up with a slug who looked pretty intimidating, like a Superman of slugs. Then we thought of how we could highlight how strong and impervious he was. What's the mortal enemy of slugs? Salt. So we had to have some salt coming at him, but have him completely unafraid and unaffected. Maybe a sort of force shield around him that warded off the salt. But then we realized that, just showing these particles raining down on him, it wouldn't be clear that it was salt. So we had to have a salt shaker that the salt was coming out of.

Then we had this flash! What if we put a certain logo on the salt shaker? What if the salt coming out of the shaker was coming from a certain company? A company that doesn't like Linux? A company that a lot of Linux users don't like? I'll leave it to you to guess whose logo it was.

The font used for the logo was selected to fit with the slug motif-- kind of balloony and wormy and fun.

At some point, someone suggested we have business cards made up, but that if we wanted to give them to people at places like IBM, that little slug logo wouldn't do it. It was too childish and not business-like enough. They wondered who even came up with such a logo. Well, I carefully informed the fellow about the history of the logo and SLUG. But I also had to agree that he was probably right about the message that logo conveyed. So my wife and I went to work on a new logo. We came up with some designs and consulted some of the people in SLUG. The current logo on all the other SLUG pages was the result. It's more dignified, while still having a bit of fun in it. And it's got that palm tree, which fits with the Suncoast of Florida (we sit on the gulf coast of Florida, with palm trees, beaches and ocean breezes).

But I hated to see our little slug guy go. So I decided that although he couldn't be our logo, he could be our mascot. And I gave him a name: Sylvester, the SLUG.

So that's the humble story of the SLUG logo and the SLUG mascot. A little piece of history, in case anyone's interested.

Paul M. Foster