The “Tw” abbreviation may be useful as a narrower marker to complement the full name. It is probably too abstract to be used without the "CUTwC" logo providing context, but unlike the other designs it is clearly derived from the full "CUTwC" version.

It took nearly three years to observe that the aspect ratio of the "pot of winks", while similar to the other abstract logos, really looked too tall for a "real" winks pot. This was a bit odd given that the source really wasn't very far from using the official sizes, and the web site maintainer hasn't bothered to work out what was going on there. The Pot-of-Winks has now been replaced with one of more natural proportions, but the original is archived.

The "pot made of winks" logo is a more abstract design, relies on colour, and particularly only has a CUTwC connection if combined with a Cambridge Blue glow — the "realistic" version is also pixel art. It conveniently doubles as a "layered" image as a mild visual pun for the home page link of the web site, and it's a more convenient logo shape than some alternatives; it also has enough detail for large viewing while being identifiable at very small scale (e.g. as a favicon).

So long as full colour is available, the Pot-of-Winks is a recommended option in situations where an abstract logo is appropriate, and in particular where a relatively square logo is needed.

POVRay source for the colour and grey versions (just of the winks) is available.

The process in Photoshop starts with the rendered image just of the winks. The "glow" expands the image by 1.2× — the PovRay source allows for this extra space if an 11.03° viewing angle is used, but an angle of 9.2° is a "tight fit" and the image will need to be expanded correspondingly. Most images use a square aspect ratio, although the larger ones for desktop backdrop use have a more precise 8:7 ratio of width to height; those designed to have a glow added retrospectively are sized expecting this 1.2 factor to be applied. The process to add a glow to a rendered PNG in PhotoShop is:

• Expand the image by a factor of 1.2 if necessary.
• Convert to 16-bit mode.
• If generating a "light" version, apply a gamma of 1.5 in the "levels" dialogue.
• Duplicate the initial layer to what we'll call layer 2.
• Create a layer mask for layer 2 from its transparency.
• Temporarily disable layer 2's layer mask.
• Select the colour part of layer 2.
• Fill layer 2 entirely with Cambridge Blue (RGB(163,193,173)).
• Re-enable layer 2's layer mask.
• To the layer mask, apply a Gaussian blur of radius 1/20 the unexpanded image width (or 1/24 of the width if the image was already expanded).
• Adjust the levels of the layer mask to 5 at the low end and 128 at the high end, with a gamma of 2.00.
• Move layer 2 below layer 1.
• Merge layer 2 and layer 1.
• Convert back to 8-bit mode.
• If necessary, assign the sRGB profile to the image.
• The naming convention used here is a "G" suffix for images with "glow" and "GL" for "glow, lightened".

The grey version of the image uses the same process but converts to 16-bit "Grayscale" mode, and uses the default interpretation of Cambridge Blue in that mode. The image is converted back to RGB before saving.

Alternatives are available in a range of smallish resolutions:

Glow as part of the image, lighter

The default colours are a little dark on a light background as it's self-shadowing.

Lightened versions the square renditions exist that are suited for lighter backgrounds where adaptation makes the default colours look dark; the web site uses these lighter versions for the navigation when not in "dark mode" — on a dark background the lightened versions look washed out.

4800×4800 (7.9MB)
WebP (5.8MB)

Alternatives are available in a range of smallish resolutions:

Glow as part of the image, monochrome

The varying colours can map strangley to a monochrome representation; here therefore is a version with the winks a uniform grey colour.

4800×4800 (5MB)
WebP (3.1MB)

Glow as part of the image, half-toned

Some places one might want to reproduce the logo use processes that may be incompatible with transparency — notably on T-shirts, drinking receptacles, etc. The following versions are variants of the 4800×4800 image with the glow effect reproduced as a half-tone pattern, which should work better in these situations (the fine half-tone for larger reproductions, the coarse half-tone for smaller ones). The assumption is that high resolution is suitable for print jobs, so smaller versions are not provided.

Glow as post-process

In some cases for web use, it can be more helpful to apply the glow as a CSS post-process effect; this allows better overlapping with other object, for example. Safari, in particular, seems prone to clipping the edges of the effect, so it's a bit fragile compared with integrating it in the image. Here, then, are plain images without the glow — to which the glow can then be applied in CSS. Without the glow, the "Cambridge" connection disappears; the glow is considered part of the logo, so these aren't intended to be used "naked". The glow can be relatively slightly larger with smaller images to increase visibility (not used for the image-only version where there is less risk of overlap with other objects hiding the glow). Again, please pick a suitable resolution to manage file size.

These use a Cambridge Blue drop shadow (tripled for density):
filter:drop-shadow(0px 0px npx rgb(163,193,173)) × 3, where n is shown below.

Alternatives are available in smallish resolutions, sized to allow the glow to be added (not tightly cropped):

Lighter version for light backgrounds

Monochrome version

Glow as post-process, monochrome

Note: These versions have not been tightly cropped, so the images contain space for the glow.

Colour-reduced versions

While the pot of winks works best as a "realistic" image, not all printing processes support a full range of colours. In some cases one of the alternative logos would be a better option, but for consistency of branding, simplified forms are available. Note that, without the colours drawing the connection to winks, the polite objects that the monochrome ones resemble are some designs of bottle stopper or honey dipper, and they resemble... some other objects commonly described as "ribbed"... as well, so please think carefully before using them and ensure that the context is obvious.

These are all resolution-independent line art; see the PNG generator if you need a specific resolution.

The "CUTwC text logo" above has sensible-looking lettering, a clear tiddlywink, and a little bit of a visual pun in the pot effect — it works as a stand-alone design. However, for plain text uses, it is a little tall, and this can be inconvenient; it is also "a logo" of itself, which is distracting as an adjuct to other designs where lettering (with some mild branding) is more important — such as adding a reference to the name of the Club to the Pot-of-Winks or Pot Rampant.

For situations that require wider, plainer wording (such as banners), there is an alternative design based on circles (hence a tenuous tiddlywinks connection); apparently Bauhaus/geometric designs are popular at the moment, too. The coloured version "works" only at larger sizes (like a banner) — it is too visually "busy" otherwise, but adds some visual interest at scale (like graffiti). Other versions work acceptably as text alongside a logo, since their design is more clearly textual and less graphical. Please ensure sufficient contrast (which will depend on size) for the solid logo. Consider the mono logo where an extremely short logo is needed (including inlining a logo in text with a small font), since it is distinguishable at smaller vertical sizes than the pot-of-winks or CUTwC text logos.

For historical interest: This background is arranged to tile in both dimensions by using the coordinates to trace loops in four-dimensional space as an input to a Perlin noise function (with different scales in different dimensions to represent the way a mat is squashed when it is rolled up). The plane was shaded by rendering it on custom ray tracing hardware in the 1990s (possibly the noise function actually perturbed a normal and some lighting was applied, I've forgotten), and then "hairs" were drawn on manually and the result heavily compressed. It's also been tweaked a couple of times to better represent the colour of an actual felt winks mat. Needless to say, it is heavily over-engineered even by the standards of this site.