I love PHP, but the logo is ghastly. It looks like it was designed by a programmer humanoid Unit, not by an actual designer species of human being. We’ve got to do something—and fast! It’s time for PHP to get a fresher, prettier, cuter face.

Ruby’s has the super sexy Rails thing going for it, and Python has that heart-warming snake. Admittedly, Python’s charm is hamstrung by the stale Monty Python references—who even knows what “Spam! Spam! And more Spam!” means these days? There’s no doubt that Ruby and Python are as wonderful as all the other Turing complete languages, but one day we’ll wake up and admit that they were merely the Flavors of the Month and that PHP is the Flavor of the Decade.

And how is PHP fighting off this onslaught of pretenders to the throne? Sad to say, with a stodgy ellipse and some off balance lower-case letters the reek of Gimp and 1996! We’re gonna have to step up to the plate if we want to compete in the sexy, pretty face contest.

Then again, PHP’s logo, ugly as it is, suits PHP’s personality. Just look at PHP’s syntax; it’s bloated and verbose, no better than Java and C++. Syntax-wise, the Ruby and Python gangs are killing us. Have you seen what Ruby and Python code looks like? They’ve got the looks, the sweet syntax, and no damned semi-colons. They’re frackin’ sexy, sleek, modern languages.

We can rightly claim that PHP is functional as all Hell, so does it really matter that it’s butt ugly? If you’re ugly enough, you’re beautiful, they say in the world of haute couture. We’re pretty ugly, so maybe we can look claim that all those parentheses, brackets, braces and semi-colons are really beauty marks. Or maybe PHP is the Charles Bronson of programming languages—so ugly it’s handsome.

Then again, maybe PHP is just the winner of the Ugly Language Contest.

Does beauty matter in a programming language? Is it important to be sexy? Sleek? Concise? It may not matter to you, but it matters to me. I’ve always preferred to look a pretty face, and a sleek figure, with no damn semi-colons in my code.

You can call me shallow, but call me human, too. I’m just like all those new Code Kiddies coming to join our party. I know they’re going to look at those pretty languages, then look at fugly PHP, and make a choice. I’m afraid a lot of them will be like the shallow side of me—they’re going to want to date the Head Cheerleader, not the Lunch Lady.

Wait! Don’t despair—yet. I think we can do something to save our PHP. If we’re not going to change PHP’s syntax, the least we can do to is create a hotter, sexier logo. I propose that we have a contest, a Design a Better PHP Logo Contest. It may be just one man’s dream, but a cool logo can make up for being homely, boring, and functional.

Since I’m starting the contest, I get to make the rules. The first rule is this: No programmers can enter this contest. We want artsy-fartsy types only!

To get the ball rolling, here are my entries.

That’s my best shot. Let’s see yours.