Publisher's Brand Emblem: Difference between revisions

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(Give example of complex brands.)
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At the current time, we are only recording publisher's brands (see discussion below).
At the current time, we are only recording publisher's brands (see discussion below).


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''An extended example''
* A semicolon separates two brands that appear on the same cover
* A slash may be used to separate two bits of text that appear on the same logo (for instance, the main text and a smaller tagline incorporated within the logo).  This is not a strict requirement, but rather is an option if running all of the text together makes it hard to read properly.
As an example, Chesler books before and after the war used "World's Greatest Comics" as their most prominent logo.  However, the smaller text within the logo box above the main text changed.  Pre-war it was "A Dynamic Publication" while post-war it was "Harry "A" Chesler, Jr."  So I put that after a slash because:
* I wanted to put the most prominent part first so they'd sort next to each other and people would see both
* because it makes you realize there are two distinct bits of text within the logo
'''World's Greatest Comics / A Dynamic Publication'''
'''World's Greatest Comics / Harry "A" Chesler, Jr.'''
I explain this in more detail the notes.  Additionally, the first version always appears along with a smaller line of text identifying the Chesler syndicate.  This I put after a semi-colon because it's clearly a distinct emblem:
'''World's Greatest Comics / A Dynamic Publication; Harry "A" Chesler Features Syndicate N. Y.'''
Which is a heck of a long name, but accurate.  See http://www.comics.org/publisher/112/brands/ for how these are used in practice.
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''Some info from recent discussions that might be useful (or not!)''
''Some info from recent discussions that might be useful (or not!)''


My suggestion is that we have three fields: Publisher's brand, Distributor's brand, other brand. That way all of this information can be captured, but the distinctions among them are respected. At some point if we can have a search for "any brand" that looks in all these three fields, perfect.
My suggestion is that we have three fields: Publisher's brand, Distributor's brand, other brand. That way all of this information can be captured, but the distinctions among them are respected. At some point if we can have a search for "any brand" that looks in all these three fields, perfect.

Revision as of 17:43, 24 December 2009

A brand is roughly equivalent to a logo. For the purposes of the GCD, some minor variations of logos are ignored.

At the current time, multiple brands should be recorded separated by a semi-colon and a space. This will allow us to separate these into distinct brands in the future.

Examples: "Dark Horse; Lucas Books" or "DC; TSR"

At the current time, we are only recording publisher's brands (see discussion below).


An extended example

  • A semicolon separates two brands that appear on the same cover
  • A slash may be used to separate two bits of text that appear on the same logo (for instance, the main text and a smaller tagline incorporated within the logo). This is not a strict requirement, but rather is an option if running all of the text together makes it hard to read properly.

As an example, Chesler books before and after the war used "World's Greatest Comics" as their most prominent logo. However, the smaller text within the logo box above the main text changed. Pre-war it was "A Dynamic Publication" while post-war it was "Harry "A" Chesler, Jr." So I put that after a slash because:

  • I wanted to put the most prominent part first so they'd sort next to each other and people would see both
  • because it makes you realize there are two distinct bits of text within the logo

World's Greatest Comics / A Dynamic Publication

World's Greatest Comics / Harry "A" Chesler, Jr.

I explain this in more detail the notes. Additionally, the first version always appears along with a smaller line of text identifying the Chesler syndicate. This I put after a semi-colon because it's clearly a distinct emblem:

World's Greatest Comics / A Dynamic Publication; Harry "A" Chesler Features Syndicate N. Y.

Which is a heck of a long name, but accurate. See http://www.comics.org/publisher/112/brands/ for how these are used in practice.


Some info from recent discussions that might be useful (or not!)

My suggestion is that we have three fields: Publisher's brand, Distributor's brand, other brand. That way all of this information can be captured, but the distinctions among them are respected. At some point if we can have a search for "any brand" that looks in all these three fields, perfect.

  1. A Publisher's Brand is something used by comics publishers to identify and name a group of series in some way not related to a specific storyline or event.
  2. A Distributor's Brand is something used by a distributor to identify series it distributes.
  3. An Other Brand is something used to associate a series with a non-comics entity such as a TV show or toy line.

It just seems to me that these are very different types of things performing very different functions. To group them all together under one heading fails to provide adequate resources for research for the end user. To leave the field in a "know it when I see it" state fails to provide adequate direction for the indexer and the approving editor.


Hi folks,

So this has been one of the more interesting polls. Only tracking publisher brands was only fully supported by one person, and preferred by another person who as OK with a different option. So I think it's clear that we need to cover other things. That leaves the question of cover it all with one field, or do something else?

"Something else" was preferred by a nearly 2-1 margin. Not enough to be called a consensus, but I'd like to point out a few things in its favor:

  1. Jim Van Dore put forward a very clear a clean-cut way to capture this in three fields. Those extra two fields are almost trivial to implement, as they're a straightforward copy of what we already have, except non-publisher brands are not attached to publishers.
  2. Jim's proposal captures more data, and is consistent with the general goals of precise data capture already discussed for New Fun.
  3. Implementing the "all in one" approach means that the folks who would like the extra data of the separate approach are denied that data. Implementing the separate approach has no significant negative effects on the folks in the "all in one" camp (you can still search them all, and have two extra drop-downs is not a significant problem). Counterarguments to this point are welcome.

I am strongly inclined to go with the separate approach based on Jim's proposal. Since there is no official consensus and polls are not binding, if anyone really wants to raise a stink and force an official decision they can do so.

If someone forces an official decision on this, then the current Brand field will be treated as only accepting publisher's brands (which, I'll point out, is exactly what the documentation says on the issue page). If folks accept Jim's proposal, if I have time I'll toss in the two fields tonight. If I don't have time tonight, they'll get done in the next release (I don't want to add anything that big after tonight, and I'm only considering adding this because it's no new logic, just replication of existing well-tested code).


For the purposes of this discussion, a "publisher's brand" is something denoted on the cover with a logo or tagline that is directly associated with the publisher (if published by multiple publishers, with any of the publishers). A brand that is not a publisher's brand is one that is not directly associated with the publisher, such as the logo of a television studio, sponsor, or other external brand with which the publisher has some sort of arrangment.