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Why is an icon or logo preferable to "Begin PGP signed..."? The little rose, or chevrons, or escutcheons, or whatever, then have to be explained to people. "PGP" is actually its own best logo.
(There is also the important point that most uses of PGP are in primarily-ASCII settings, in e-mail. Yes, I know that MIME and whatnot can support graphics, but such uses are rare. Look at this mailing list, and Usenet, for examples of how most messages are composed. I routinely delete all messages that have "attachments converted" to them, and others have told me they do the same thing.)
i agree with mr. may. graphics are misplaced in email generally. it takes long enough to download my mail without the additional load of cute graphics. i can't image many graphics at all that would be much smaller than the biggest sig files. otoh, it _would_ be useful imo to have a pretty much 'standard' graphic to put on web pages similar to the 'netscape' buttons you see everywhere. they might do nothing but link to one of the cypherpunks home pages, but the more people see them, the more aware people will hopefully become. perhaps it will pique some folks curiosity. actually, i like rsa's logo, but it is obviously taken. that said, i've seen a few passes on this list of discussion of a graphic logo. the archives would be a good place to look for a fairly massive volume of posts on it. if anyone has a good idea, put it on a page and post the pointer. amp