On 27/04/14 19:14, Andy Silva wrote:
Hello friends,
Given recent developments in the community about our branding efforts, it is that I write this email.
The openSUSE Conference gave time to the SUSE team to present new ideas and guidelines about branding. The idea behind this presentation was to aid designers and contributors who use our brand to promote our community and distribution. Many of them have to produce print material on their own and need help with the design.
Up until now, our branding has decreased in strength and as a result, we might end up looking for ideas every time that we need to create material for the distribution without having a core that guides our thoughts when creating artwork for events, LUGS, etc. Having to deal with such work is hard and slows down the overall progress of our branding efforts.
I wanted to open the discussion about these branding guidelines proposed by the team here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-r_ML-MnMo
Let me start by asking some question in sequence so we can answer in proper thread style
1. Ken and his team showed a new color palette, graphic elements such as a lightbulb and a geeko to use for posters and other print material to be used as guidelines for future artwork that requires openSUSE branding. Are these branding guidelines going to be published in our wiki? Will they replace or add to the current guidelines placed in the wiki? These colours are simply the ones used in the latest marketing campaign material. We're offering them in case anyone would like to make their own marketing material according to the brand of this campaign. It is an effort to help others use this campaign and nothing else.
Whether someone wants to put them on the wiki is not up to me, but we should at least wait until we have a full cmyk and rgb palette ready. The colours defined on the wiki are clearly marked for screen usage. This in no way translates to printed material, nor should it.
2. Ken discussed the possibility of changing our current logo to match more closely the work that SUSE did on their logo to build a stronger brand image. Can you explain more about this idea? What conventions, proposals or extensions do you have in mind about the logo changes?
Let me make this point very clear because it can be easily misunderstood: I did not say that we will change anything in any specific way. I said that in my opinion we need, at some time when it is appropriate, enter a discussion with all stake-holders concerning a possible brand refresh, re-brand, etc. My opinion in this is one in a large sea of opinions. My say in the matter is equal to null. I also expressed our frustration at having very little clearly defined branding elements, directives, etc. Creating marketing material in a short time with little or no information on a weak brand is quite hard :-) This is the source of my opinion above.
3. Richard asked during the video about possibly integrating this branding design into the distribution and what that would entail. What are the plans of the team about making branding material available but at a distribution level? I also heard wallpaper proposals mentioned during the presentation and, if possible, would you share those?
Richard did ask whether these colours will be used in the screen design. I think that too much of that is a bad idea. Print and screen design are very different things. If desired one could use the print design as an influence on a new variant of screen design but they will never be translatable 1:1. I did promise the take the current which has come back upstream from SUSE and adjust it as-needed for openSUSE. I was planning on doing it based on the current theme, not creating a new one. Naturally, if there is change needed/desired and anyone wants to help create something new I'll offer any info I can.
4. Ken and the team work to help the openSUSE Community work on branding and create material that will help further us as a brand. What is the relationship that the SUSE Design team has with the community? Ken explained to the audience that they are part of the community and if you can, would you explain how that goes about? How is their team part of the community and what methods do you use to communicate your work with other team members around the world? This is where it gets a bit tricky :-) Our design team has the mandate to work on all SUSE products necessary (SLES/SLED, SUSE Manager, Customer Center, Cloud, HA, etc.). In addition, we are allotted a window for also working on openSUSE.
We stepped in, once the team was up to steam, to fill a gap in a short time. There was budget for marketing material for booth boxes but nothing was ready in any way shape or form. You have to realize that there is much more to what we have done than the design. We had to determine, with Jos and the help of others on the team, exactly what we could print for the money within the time frame of the budget (yes, budgets expire). That meant finding printers which could produce what we needed, for everything singularly to reduce the price, which in turn means more work making sure that everything is printed using the same colours, etc. Then we had to get all the legal information from each printer in order to attain purchase order numbers from SUSE (not as easy as you think :P), work around things when that process was not possible, etc. Oh, and we designed some posters, flyers and such as well...based on a colour (green) and an out-dated logo. All of this took place in a couple of months. Don't forget that the designer had just started a new job in a new country where they don't speak the language. Gosh, I almost forgot that we also had to plan all the logistics for sending the boxes, getting the boxes themselves, finding a space to store all of this, someone to actually send the boxes...you get the point. I honestly don't think that this all would have been possible given the restraints and time-frame if done in the community. Moving forward we'd like to be able to help a bit with the screen design. We have a couple of things we've played around with and would like to offer these and anything else that comes along in the future. Naturally we will submit them to the community and discuss them - anyone can change them or do what they like with them. In this we are community members and expect no special treatment. We expect to start releasing SVGs the marketing material campaign elements as well as the pdf's we used to print everything so far. What people do with them is up to them. The guidelines we made are intended to help but only if you want to use them. That is why we called them guidelines and not rules :-) I hope that answers all the questions in your email. -- Kenneth Wimer SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-artwork+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-artwork+owner@opensuse.org