Hubert Halun - Art of R Packages: Forging Community with Hex Stickers
Hex logotypes in the R community are not just for show. They represent identity, unity, and the collaborative nature of open-source projects. This talk will explore how these stickers blend design and visual storytelling, turning R packages into symbols of community. I'll cover the hex sticker creation process, from idea to design, and their impact on brand recognition and user pride. Using examples from the Tidyverse, Rhinoverse, Nest, and others, I'll highlight how hex stickers unite the R community. The aim is to show how mixing design with data science in creating R packages can build a strong community, highlighting the importance of both looks and usefulness. Talk by Hubert Halun
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Transcript#
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
So, my name is Hubert, and I'm a visual designer at Appsilon. And today we're gonna talk about Art of R packages and how to forge community around them.
I am an author of Rhinoverse stickers, and as well as Nest stickers. So I got a little bit of experience in design. So let's go ahead.
Our main topic will be community and design and how to blend it together.
What is community?
So let's start with what exactly is community. According to Wikipedia, community is a social unit with shared significant characteristic. And it makes sense, it's probably true.
But I think each of us understand it in its own way. Everybody experience community a little bit different.
So for me, for example, community is people who share experience and emotion on the same topic.
And I'm gonna be a little bit nerdy here. So after work, I really like to play games. I like to call the game on myself.
Yeah, here you can see some popular games like Bottles Game 3, which I spend definitely too much time on. Some other really tough one, and The Witcher 3, which I cannot resist to put here. It's our small Polish pride.
And so, but what those games are going in common? Basically, without a community of those games, you are missing really important part of experience because the games are really big and you can like miss a lot of things. So for example, you can miss a secret way that will save you time. And you can find a way, you can find the answer in a community. Maybe you can also miss like an opinion about some lower character on events or maybe you cannot spot like the weapon cannot solve your problem later.
So solving problems together, which require experience to solve them and share your opinion, which always involve emotion, drives the community.
which always involve emotion, drives the community.
If only there was another community like that. I wonder, and I think I got an idea. Yeah, there we go. Our lovely R community.
So, and this is a small comparison because instead of secret way that will save you time in a game, you can find in our community a tip or shortcut that will save you time. Or for example, you can share opinion about some community events and it's gonna help you decide if it's worth going for it. Or instead of the weapon, you can find a package that will solve your problems later.
Why we collect things
And speaking about hexes, do you ever wonder why we do collect things like at all? So basically people from beginning of time, they just love collecting things, but they're doing it for preserving memories, express the identity, finding the joy or connect with other peoples.
So as you can see, we can collect a lot of different things like coins, crystals, stones, instruments, or even Pokemons. People have always loved collecting things, especially the shiny one. Wink, wink to everybody.
So the question is how hex stickers can build our community? Well, here you got a bunch of photos of people enjoying the environment of hexes. As well, I can show you that hexes are not only the stickers but you can put it as a pattern on a sport clothes or as a decoration on a cake. And I think my favorite one, which is the jewelry, as you can see, there's small hexes with the colors according to the stickers in behind. So this is cool.
So to sum it up, hexes build a community by connecting people together. And this is the answer. We love them.
How to design a great hex sticker
So question now, if we know that people love to collect things, especially the shiny one, and the question is how to design a hex that will be recognizable and well-made. And this is the second part of the presentation where we're gonna talk strictly about the design. So there are three rules, symbol, colors, and details.
First of them is capture the essence of a package in one symbol. And it's really important. And I will show you a few examples. For example, in the nest one. So what I was told that the nest hex should be about nesting thing inside and also be related to bird nest. So this is what I did. You can see like top view of the nest. And also I make this one element on the right. And then by repeating itself, I created the whole image of a nest from the top.
Another one, and the side note, I am not the author of this hex, but I really love this one. And I will try to do an interpretation, how it was made, but I am not sure if it's actually what author got in mind.
So PUR itself, from what I know in simple terms, is about the iteration. So we got a cat made by pencil. And the word PUR is basically a tonal voice that cat makes. Then in the word, you got triple R, which is about the iteration. R, R, R, and R community. But about the pencil, if you want to achieve really good quality sketch when drawing with pencil, you need to iterate it a lot of times. So as you can see, it's all coming together into one symbol. That just makes sense.
I hope I get it right. We got also the rhino, which is package that will help you build a stable application and well-structured organization of the files. So I choose the rhino animal because it's a symbol of strength and stability and all the geometric shapes of the logo to just emphasize the well-structured inside.
And here you got the cat. And here you got like a smaller workflow, how I work on the stickers, how I made them. So basically I start with reference. Then I get the quick sketch on the paper. Some first shapes in usually vector program, advanced shaping. Then we've got the black and white version and some details and colors in the end.
All right. Second rule, evoke emotion with colors. As you may know, some colors evoke different emotion. If somebody wants, you can take a photo of it. For example, red one can evoke a new strength or speed.
And this is what I did here. Shiny Benchmark is basically all about the testing and speed. And as you can see, the left one is the original one and the right one is special for this presentation. I just want to show you the difference in colors and how it matters because you can feel on the left that the red giving this power to it. And the green one, there's something over the green one.
We got also churn, which in this example, the most important thing was the graph on the wings. You can see the red and the green line. But when you take the color, you cannot see them. It just doesn't make sense anymore.
And I think this one is the best one example in colors. tidyverse is about showing the space in the galaxy, you know, all the stars and everything. But when you invert the colors, it's not a space. It's like some dirty tile on surfing. So this is why the color is really important.
All right, the third one, the details. The details for more context. Speaking of tidyverse, I don't know if you notice, but those small dots are actually the hexes. And as you know, tidyverse is all about collecting different hexes together. So it just makes more sense in context right now.
This is my favorite one. I did like AlchemFixC one time, and it's basically an carbon atom. So you got like electrons and other stuff. But when you add one more small dots on the right, it's no longer a carbon, it's a nitrogen. But nobody gonna spot it. But yeah. So this is where like all the small details really matters in such designs.
Summary
So in summary, you get symbol, colors, and details. This is what you need to focus on. Without the community, you are missing the really important part of the experience. So I really encourage to join the community.
And hex build the community by connecting people together. And at the end, I just want to give a quick information that in Appsilon, we recently did hex sticker design contest. When we choose the stickers, the packages that will receive a new sticker, so they can join all the design, like the community with a new design. So the Tidy Polar is finished and it's ready. The one on the right, it's still in progress, but I wanted to give him some recognition. There also gonna be one more in future, and we will post it on social media soon. So that's it. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, you can of course ask Slido questions. First question for you, what is your favorite hex sticker? Oh, my favorite one? I should say that is Rhino. But I would say, I think it's gonna be the poor one in terms of design. I really love that one.
And how does accessibility fit in with your color and your design and your details? Okay, so with that, I always trying to, so there is like a rules with contrast, for example, when you really need to match contrast of a first element in the background, so it's always visible. So basically there's like a set of rules that I need to follow to just make it more accessible.
