On Friday 17 June 2011 13:34:49 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 16.06.2011 21:54, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
Can I get some of your thoughts on this?
You asked for it ;)
You could've said it in one of the earlier versions of the brochure - we've been working on this for 5 months or so. In the interest of getting anything done, I don't think we can and should rewrite all the text now (and start all over). Not that your comments aren't useful or correct, they are. We could get together after the openSUSE conference with a bunch and try to re-write the text... For now, this is what I'll print.
I find the text to vary too much from what we use everywhere else. The messages are sometimes even a bit different (freedom loving philosophy vs. "open, transparent and friendly" for instance). You should see that this matches what we communicate on the web etc.
In general I find the story of the brochure a bit weak. It's an pretty accurate description of what we are and do but it doesn't really say why and especially what you should do with that information. You know what I mean? What do you want the reader to do after he finished reading it? My pick would be installing the distro he usually gets together with this brochure and maybe secondly going to opensuse.org. For them to really do it you need to tell the reader that multiple times in multiple ways. In the text, in the pictures and in the graphical elements.
I also think it contains way too much url's for a brochure. The URL is also a message you want people to remember and by using it in too many different ways you water that message down. Some of them also might be a bit to short lived for a brochure. The only thing the reader should take away is opensuse.org IMHO. Everything else he can discover from there. The back page is a perfect place to put this URL and make the user visit it.
Then you mention things that are a bit too specific. You mention Appstream (even on the main page), Anjuta, QTCreator, Amazon EC2, KVM, SSH, WebYaST, XML, RPM, deb, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, XFCE and more. It is nice for the projects but of little value to the reader who supposedly doesn't really know what most of them are right? All of those need to be put into perspective for the reader somehow but I don't think this is even remotely possible. You should limit yourself here and if you use an abbreviation or a project name explain it shortly and tell what it's use is to the reader.
I also find the size we give Studio on the back a bit mismatched to what it really means for openSUSE. Yes Studio is a nice tool and all but does it really make 50% of what's cool about openSUSE? I don't think so no. OBS is maybe 50%, the distro is definitely 50% but Studio? I'm not even sure that it is double digit ;-)
Some minor nitpicks:
- Get rid of the SUSE and Novell logos, this is an openSUSE Brochure. It's very confusing and sends the wrong message. We are an independent open source project right?
- The openSUSE Logo on the front page is some self made logo with strange color in the text, don't do that. We have a logo, don't invent your own please :)
- Why are the Desktop project logos on the frontpage?
- You still say openSUSE Build Service instead of Open Build Service
- There is only one small Geeko on the whole brochure. Geeko IS our brand, how about you use it? :)
These nitpicks should be implemented, yes. Thanks!
Thanks for considering this.
Henne