Note that the above rendering is in an arbitrary resolution, and not antialiased (anti-aliasing is easy - see more on it below).
Explanation: This is a logo, not a maskot. As such, it also
contains the name of our organization, but in a unique font with an especially
unique design of the letter mem, whose "head" was replaced by a head of a
bird (resembling a swan, a duck, or perhaps a dove). The bird head obviously
relates to the word "makor", a homonym to our "makor", meaning "beak" (see
more on that below). The special mem with the bird head can also be used
seperately from the whole logo when a tiny distinctive logo is needed, or
as a mascot. If required, it's even possible to complete the bird, perhaps
into something resembling a duck.
This bird head also gives me the feeling of sharpness, wisdom, and forward-
looking. However, care was taken that this bird does not resemble the
maskot of existing free software projects. In particular, it looks nothing
like a penguin.
The yellow ellipse was used in this case to contain the logo
in an "insignia"; Obviously the same logo can also be used without the
ellipse, e.g., when embedded in text. One of the colors in this design
can be removed if the printing process demands it. The color yellow was
chosen rather arbitrarily - different color schemes can be considered if
somebody is allergic to yellow.
See below examples of other variations on this logo.
Hebrew nitpick: While the Hebrew words for "source" and "beak" sound alike, they are not actually the exact same word. "maqor", source, is spelt with a kamats under the mem and its plural is "mkorot", while "maqqor", beak, is spelt with patach under the mem and qof dgusha, and its plural is "maqqorim".
Here is an example of rendering the same picture, in smaller resultion. The folowing rendering continues to use only four colors (white, yellow, black and orange):
Alternatively we can do slight anti-aliasing resulting in larger files and more colors, but more "smooth" look, by rendering a big logo an then scaling it down. In particular, the small bird-head looks much better:
Because the vector graphics were used, it's also possible to tweak the line widths for each size (but I haven't done that in the above examples).
The "insignia" look of the above logo gives us the opportunity to turn it into a real insignia, complete with a "motto", to be prominently placed on the association's homepage. Here, for example, I increased the height of the ellipse and stuck in four words which I considered the essence of this association (but the words, and the ugly font, can easily be replaced):
