Count me in  the minority.  I find the color and gradient less than an improvement.

Recent style movement is towards much flatter icons (e.g. Android Material Design).  You can see this already in your attached clip from OSX.  (Focus on icon from the distribution, not third party icons which likely are lagging re conforming to the style guidelines or may have no intention of doing so.)

My druthers would be a hue closer to the old purple but devoid of gradient.  Then I would like to see the icon with and without the surrounding ring.  (My suspicion is that abandoning the ring will enhance a flat look.)  And obviously the pen gets jettisoned.

/john



On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 3:26 PM, Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> wrote:
Hi,

I've been working recently on the "branding" of Emacs.  The final goal
is to improve the first experience newcomers have with Emacs, from the
website to the startup screen, and the image people have of Emacs.

As a first step, I'm working on dusting off our logo, improving the
current website, and designing a proper website for GNU ELPA.

You will find attached a proposal for a new iteration of the Emacs logo.
Here's a summary of what I did:

- flattened a bit the circle
- changed the gradient of the logo to warmer shades of purple
- changed the orientation if the E, to look more dynamic (looking up
  instead of down)
- added a dark stroke around the logo

Because it's important to see a logo in a context, I'm also attaching an
image (emacs-logo-context.png), which is a composition of:

- the current logo in GNOME
- the new logo in GNOME
- the new logo in OSX
- the new logo in Windows 10

as well as emacs-logo-gnome.png, which shows the new logo in the GNOME
task switcher.

I'm also attaching the current logo for reference, as well as a variant
of the new one with the original pen (which I do not like as much as
without it).

Cheers,
Nico