Chances are good, when you logged on today, you got quite a shock, especially if you have been using the RPF's default style.
For almost a year we have been working towards a "rebranding" of the RPF, which we intended to roll out with our upgrade to vBulletin 4.0. However, since the upgrade has been repeatedly delayed, and because we continue to venture out further and further on the internet (we recently started our own YouTube Channel) we did not feel it was a good idea to do so under the current branding. With that in mind, we decided to rollout the new branding ahead of our upgrade to vB 4.0 which also necessitated an update to our styles, providing us the opportunity to modify them to a slightly more modern and cohesive look.
The Name
Much like Kentucky Fried Chicken becoming KFC in an effort to deemphasize the 'fried' part of their name, we are pushing more for the Replica Prop Forum to simply be "the RPF." This effort didn't start with this staff but in 2006 when our current domain, therpf.com, was purchased. Still, the banner for the default style proclaims this site to be "The Replica Prop Forum." While we always will technically be "The Replica Prop Forum" (much like KFC will always be Kentucky Fried Chicken) we are purposefully using our full name less on the site for two reasons: 1) For years we have been more than a site about replica props. We have always welcomed original/custom props, costumes, and models and more recently have begun to encourage the sharing of screen used prop collections as well. We feel labeling us as a "replica prop" site limits the true nature of the site and the amazing information and artwork that is shared here. 2) With upcoming efforts (wiki and gallery, along with a few other surprises) this site will be more than JUST a forum and again, promoting ourselves as "The Replica Prop Forum" is somewhat limiting. Some might perceive this as an effort to move away from what the site has classically been, but the truth is, we are actually striving to achieve consistency between our name and the content that is offered by the site which is why we are emphasizing "the RPF" and deemphasizing "The Replica Prop Forum"
The Logo
Over the years, the RPF has had a number of type treatments and pseudo-logos but it has only had one that has really been embraced by the membership as identifying the site. This logo was created by Ron Boyd (rhboyd) but to the best of my knowledge, was never actually used on the site.
For the rebrand, we wanted to go with a logo that was a bit more professional and clean while still being easily identifiable. We essentially wanted a logo that heavily emphasized the name of the site, but would also lend itself to multiple applications. We went through over 600 logos (no, I am not exaggerating) and finally settled on our name inside an open ended border.
Icons
While we love our logo, it is pretty plain by its self so we had Robb Denicola (propazoid here on the RPF) create three icons to work in conjunction with the logo to help depict the main three focuses of this site: props, costumes and models. It was important that the icons were, well.. iconic, but that they didn't specifically point to any particular franchise (we didn't want a lightsaber, Superman, and a tie fighter). Robb did a great job of giving us icons which clearly get the point across without making them franchise specific. Note the subtle homage to Ron's original character in our new "costume" icon.
Styles
Prior to this change, the RPF had a look that harkened back almost to the very beginning of its existence which was a dark theme with heavy Star Wars connotations.
While styles themed after particular franchises can be appealing, they don't help create brand recognition and can even hurt a site by limiting people's perception of what the site has to offer. In the case of the previous RPF default style, the RPF looked like a Star Wars site, and it is not. Star Wars was the main movie franchise talked about when the RPF started and there is still a VERY strong passion for Star Wars props, costumes, and models, but the RPF is so much more than just Star Wars or any single franchise. We aren't the first to recognize this as long time RPF member dueledge created an awesome logo for the RPF long ago that was without any franchise associations. You can see the text treatment from dueledge below.
Many sites on the internet have ONE look, that can't be changed and you just have to deal with it whether you like it or not. Since our site has a lot of readable content, and because our membership is so diverse, members have come to expect a light and a dark style to suit their particular tastes and facilitate ease of readability. Some can't read light text on a dark background while others feel dark text on a light background is simply too harsh. With that in mind, we are maintaining the light and dark styles, but one thing that has changed is that the outer chrome for both stays the same. Again, the purpose of creating a uniform chrome is to maintain brand consistency and to ensure that there is little doubt that you are at the same RPF regardless of the style you choose.
To get a visual of what we mean here are the old dark and light styles.
And here are the new dark and light styles.
In addition to the light and dark styles we have also retained the work friendly style which has minimal coloring and imagery. We won't say much more on that other than we are again, attempting to ensure our members have the things they need.
CHANGES IN THE STYLES
I want to take a moment to talk about a few of the changes you may notice in the styles and the reasons for those changes. You may or may not agree with those decisions and that is ok, but we at least wanted you to know why we have made these changes.
Color Desaturation and lower contrast - You will notice that a lot of the bright colors are not as bright and the dark colors are not as dark. There are few true blacks and few true whites. The reason for this is primary because this is the prevailing trend across the internet and because it is supposedly easier on the eyes in the long run. We have made these changes in an effort to help the site look less dated and more modern and so that there is less eye strain due to high contrast.
Fixed Width Forum - This is probably the one we are going to hear the most about, especially from those with larger monitors with high resolution (if it makes any of you feel better, I have dual 24" monitors running 1920X1080... so I have a lot of background showing, just like you). Why did we go to fixed width? Like lower contrast, fixed width sites are the prevailing trend. Why? Because they are very easy to design, while variable width is almost impossible. We have optimized our width for 1024X768, which is (surprising) still one of the predominant resolutions.
The Junkyard - This is a hold over from our Star Wars-centric past and with the Star Wars theme going away we felt it was time for this outdated name to go away as well. With that in mind, we have changed the Junkayrd to the Marketplace. You are still going to find dozens of references to it in our FAQs and we are going to work on getting those out over the course of the next few weeks, but for all practical purposes, the name "the Junkyard" is no more. Non-members still can't see the Marketplace and it is still not being indexed by Google. Nothing has changed but the name.
Legacy Themes - We have permanently retired the old work safe theme, the old light theme and the replica properties theme (which was an April Fools joke). While we consider the Star Wars theme deprecated, we have left it available for those who have difficulty with change. However, our next step will be upgrading to vb4.0 in which all themes will have to be rebuilt from the ground up and we will NOT be rebuilding the Star Wars theme. We would strongly encourage our members to begin trying the newer themes, but are leaving the Star Wars theme to make that transition easier.
SWAG
We plan to offer shirts, patches and challenge coins along with other swag in the near future! In fact, with any luck, we will be debuting the new shirts at the upcoming Southern California Prop Party, but you can get a sneak peak below. Please remember that these icons and logos belong to the site and we do not allow members to offer ANY runs of RPF branded merchandise (containing the forum name or logo) without prior approval from the staff.
WRAPUP
Considerable time and money were put into this project and we really hope you enjoy it and can come to embrace this imagery and look as your prop home. We also hope it helps better define us as a site and a community and helps give newcomers an accurate first impression of who we are and what we love. We have many more exciting things to share with you in the future and can't wait to get started on them now that this one is out of the way!
CREDIT
Our new logo was created by Jason Harskjold.
Our new icons (props, costumes, models) were created by Robb DeNicola (propazoid).
Our new status icons were created by Noel Green (TK8541) who also helped tweak the final look.
Also want to give a shout out to Tom Spina (Tom Spina Designs) and Montagar for helping tweak a number of the icons and helping achieve the final look.
For almost a year we have been working towards a "rebranding" of the RPF, which we intended to roll out with our upgrade to vBulletin 4.0. However, since the upgrade has been repeatedly delayed, and because we continue to venture out further and further on the internet (we recently started our own YouTube Channel) we did not feel it was a good idea to do so under the current branding. With that in mind, we decided to rollout the new branding ahead of our upgrade to vB 4.0 which also necessitated an update to our styles, providing us the opportunity to modify them to a slightly more modern and cohesive look.
The Name
Much like Kentucky Fried Chicken becoming KFC in an effort to deemphasize the 'fried' part of their name, we are pushing more for the Replica Prop Forum to simply be "the RPF." This effort didn't start with this staff but in 2006 when our current domain, therpf.com, was purchased. Still, the banner for the default style proclaims this site to be "The Replica Prop Forum." While we always will technically be "The Replica Prop Forum" (much like KFC will always be Kentucky Fried Chicken) we are purposefully using our full name less on the site for two reasons: 1) For years we have been more than a site about replica props. We have always welcomed original/custom props, costumes, and models and more recently have begun to encourage the sharing of screen used prop collections as well. We feel labeling us as a "replica prop" site limits the true nature of the site and the amazing information and artwork that is shared here. 2) With upcoming efforts (wiki and gallery, along with a few other surprises) this site will be more than JUST a forum and again, promoting ourselves as "The Replica Prop Forum" is somewhat limiting. Some might perceive this as an effort to move away from what the site has classically been, but the truth is, we are actually striving to achieve consistency between our name and the content that is offered by the site which is why we are emphasizing "the RPF" and deemphasizing "The Replica Prop Forum"
The Logo
Over the years, the RPF has had a number of type treatments and pseudo-logos but it has only had one that has really been embraced by the membership as identifying the site. This logo was created by Ron Boyd (rhboyd) but to the best of my knowledge, was never actually used on the site.
For the rebrand, we wanted to go with a logo that was a bit more professional and clean while still being easily identifiable. We essentially wanted a logo that heavily emphasized the name of the site, but would also lend itself to multiple applications. We went through over 600 logos (no, I am not exaggerating) and finally settled on our name inside an open ended border.
Icons
While we love our logo, it is pretty plain by its self so we had Robb Denicola (propazoid here on the RPF) create three icons to work in conjunction with the logo to help depict the main three focuses of this site: props, costumes and models. It was important that the icons were, well.. iconic, but that they didn't specifically point to any particular franchise (we didn't want a lightsaber, Superman, and a tie fighter). Robb did a great job of giving us icons which clearly get the point across without making them franchise specific. Note the subtle homage to Ron's original character in our new "costume" icon.
Styles
Prior to this change, the RPF had a look that harkened back almost to the very beginning of its existence which was a dark theme with heavy Star Wars connotations.
While styles themed after particular franchises can be appealing, they don't help create brand recognition and can even hurt a site by limiting people's perception of what the site has to offer. In the case of the previous RPF default style, the RPF looked like a Star Wars site, and it is not. Star Wars was the main movie franchise talked about when the RPF started and there is still a VERY strong passion for Star Wars props, costumes, and models, but the RPF is so much more than just Star Wars or any single franchise. We aren't the first to recognize this as long time RPF member dueledge created an awesome logo for the RPF long ago that was without any franchise associations. You can see the text treatment from dueledge below.
Many sites on the internet have ONE look, that can't be changed and you just have to deal with it whether you like it or not. Since our site has a lot of readable content, and because our membership is so diverse, members have come to expect a light and a dark style to suit their particular tastes and facilitate ease of readability. Some can't read light text on a dark background while others feel dark text on a light background is simply too harsh. With that in mind, we are maintaining the light and dark styles, but one thing that has changed is that the outer chrome for both stays the same. Again, the purpose of creating a uniform chrome is to maintain brand consistency and to ensure that there is little doubt that you are at the same RPF regardless of the style you choose.
To get a visual of what we mean here are the old dark and light styles.
And here are the new dark and light styles.
In addition to the light and dark styles we have also retained the work friendly style which has minimal coloring and imagery. We won't say much more on that other than we are again, attempting to ensure our members have the things they need.
CHANGES IN THE STYLES
I want to take a moment to talk about a few of the changes you may notice in the styles and the reasons for those changes. You may or may not agree with those decisions and that is ok, but we at least wanted you to know why we have made these changes.
Color Desaturation and lower contrast - You will notice that a lot of the bright colors are not as bright and the dark colors are not as dark. There are few true blacks and few true whites. The reason for this is primary because this is the prevailing trend across the internet and because it is supposedly easier on the eyes in the long run. We have made these changes in an effort to help the site look less dated and more modern and so that there is less eye strain due to high contrast.
Fixed Width Forum - This is probably the one we are going to hear the most about, especially from those with larger monitors with high resolution (if it makes any of you feel better, I have dual 24" monitors running 1920X1080... so I have a lot of background showing, just like you). Why did we go to fixed width? Like lower contrast, fixed width sites are the prevailing trend. Why? Because they are very easy to design, while variable width is almost impossible. We have optimized our width for 1024X768, which is (surprising) still one of the predominant resolutions.
The Junkyard - This is a hold over from our Star Wars-centric past and with the Star Wars theme going away we felt it was time for this outdated name to go away as well. With that in mind, we have changed the Junkayrd to the Marketplace. You are still going to find dozens of references to it in our FAQs and we are going to work on getting those out over the course of the next few weeks, but for all practical purposes, the name "the Junkyard" is no more. Non-members still can't see the Marketplace and it is still not being indexed by Google. Nothing has changed but the name.
Legacy Themes - We have permanently retired the old work safe theme, the old light theme and the replica properties theme (which was an April Fools joke). While we consider the Star Wars theme deprecated, we have left it available for those who have difficulty with change. However, our next step will be upgrading to vb4.0 in which all themes will have to be rebuilt from the ground up and we will NOT be rebuilding the Star Wars theme. We would strongly encourage our members to begin trying the newer themes, but are leaving the Star Wars theme to make that transition easier.
SWAG
We plan to offer shirts, patches and challenge coins along with other swag in the near future! In fact, with any luck, we will be debuting the new shirts at the upcoming Southern California Prop Party, but you can get a sneak peak below. Please remember that these icons and logos belong to the site and we do not allow members to offer ANY runs of RPF branded merchandise (containing the forum name or logo) without prior approval from the staff.
WRAPUP
Considerable time and money were put into this project and we really hope you enjoy it and can come to embrace this imagery and look as your prop home. We also hope it helps better define us as a site and a community and helps give newcomers an accurate first impression of who we are and what we love. We have many more exciting things to share with you in the future and can't wait to get started on them now that this one is out of the way!
CREDIT
Our new logo was created by Jason Harskjold.
Our new icons (props, costumes, models) were created by Robb DeNicola (propazoid).
Our new status icons were created by Noel Green (TK8541) who also helped tweak the final look.
Also want to give a shout out to Tom Spina (Tom Spina Designs) and Montagar for helping tweak a number of the icons and helping achieve the final look.
