Ok, I had a try at designing something.
Just to make things clear: I don't expect this to appear on the IMSLP front-page tomorrow. I did not draw this as an attempt to set the logo, but just to keep things going, and anyone is (obviously) free to add, correct, remove, tamper with, or change entirely the image, or create their own.
It would be great if we could have lots of suggestions going, so we could inspire each other and get things working.
That been said, here's my idea:
I really like the idea of using circles, because circles are endless, the don't have a starting or ending point, and there is no hierarchy. Circles are also more feminine and less masculine, an attribute which I think is more descriptive of emergent organisations/groups/websites rather than established ones, and IMSLP is -of course- the former.
The 'off-centric' (is there a word for that? I bet there is but I am blatantly ignorant of its existence and only makes me look like a fool...) circles represent how things expand - they have a common starting point but diverge to something bigger, which is how I see IMSLP working - each one of us adds a facet to IMSLP that is not pre-known, and can only exist through our collaboration together with a starting point: to contribute to an online library of public domain scores and share music with everyone who has access to the internet. No one can know what kind of scores will be uploaded, what kind of langauges IMSLP might be translated in, what kind of new pages might be created, who will download this content, who will sue us next etc etc, which is part of the fun and joy of being a member of such a community (and wikipedia the same - who would have known what wikipedia would become when it first started?)
The bird stands for freedom (couldn't think of anything less cliché), and it is attached to the treble clef for matters of pure aesthetic pleasure. Its head also looks slightly like a condom, but that is highly irrelevant so I shouldn't have mentioned it.
The musical material on the stave is quite minimal - I haven't added any dynamics or slur markings or anything because I thought it would be too much. However, one could add a discreet "pml" under a note as a supposed dynamic, although in smaller versions of the logo that would clearly not be visible.
I was also thinking about adding colours, but I think it would be good to limit ourselves to maybe 3-4 colours (including black and white) - this way the logo would be more easily memorable, and easier to port to favicons, thumbs, banners etc.
Another idea I had was to use a tree instead of a bird, to signify "knowledge" (and which also bears connections to growth, development, seeding/sharing, etc), but I think it would be a lot more difficult to do a simple drawing of a tree than a simple drawing of a bird. Also, the tree symbol would not emphasize the "freedom" part of IMSLP (as Trees of Knowledge in the past have had a high cost) (for example the tree of knowledge in the garden of eve - now *that* was expensive, kicking us out of heaven for trying out some fruit!).
For the favicon, for example, we could dispose of the bird and notes, and just have the five off-centric circles. That would be small, simple, recognisable, and instantly related to the main logo.
So, there you have it.
I also that maybe we could start thinking of a phrase we could use to accompany the title of IMSLP. Yeah, ok, IMSLP stands for "International Music Score Library Project", but that's not really a catchy line. Wikipedia, for example, is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." What is IMSLP? (maybe with less words, or maybe something like "Create. Collaborate. Share." or something).