Kotoba is Fav’conified

Sometimes it is the little things that can make you smile.  Case is point is Kotoba‘s new favicon.  

I wanted something that was clean and easily recognizable in the toolbar.  While options included something abstract, I felt that a monogram might best represent the intent of the site.  While “K” might be arguably more universal, I ultimately decided that the 「言」という文字 is both identifiable to many using the site and abstract enough to act as a “logo”.

In order to create the image, I went through the process of  getting various Japanese-supporting applications installed just to create a very simple image.  This process culminated in the installation of OpenOffice.org’s OpenOffice and  Gimp.   

There is a wealth of information about installing Japanese versions of these pieces of software:

• OpenOffice.org 1.1.4日本語版 for X11 on Mac OS X
• LeopardのX11.appでかんなとkinput2を使う
• Inside Leopard: X11.appと日本語環境の問題
• Beginning OS X 10.5/運用編

In the end, installing the latest versions of both OpenOffice and Gimp is sufficient to get out-of-the-box compatibility with Japanese display and input.  While OpenOffice supports Japanese input directly into the application, the same cannot be said for Gimp.   Nevertheless, it is relatively painless to use OpenOffice to create images with Japanese text that can then be imported directly into Gimp.  

Once we had a means of creating an image, the final step is to get it into a format that is universally used by web browsers.  I lucked out when I found the very  wonderful website, http://www.favicon.jp/, which will take any image and create a version in .ico format.  Once this file is generated, it is straight-forward to added to your site you can point to it in your HEAD tag.

And that is how we get something small but that gives us a large, warm fuzzy in our tummy.  😀

Author: Ward

I’m the creator and operator of this little corner of the internets, writing on all things related to art and more specifically my experiences trying to figure this whole thing out. I guess I’m trying to figure out life, too, but mostly I just post about art here. View all posts by Ward