On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 08:55 +0300, Alexey Eremenko wrote:
And yes, I think we need to define new rules, but for branding I believe we should not stop every artwork idea completely. We must use some voting scheme, which will be simple for normal artwork and more complex (require more community votes) for branding change. (and Novell agreement too)
Hi Alexey,
I don't think voting will get us anywhere. People's taste vary a lot and
if you average the tastes you end up in something worse than it sounds.
What we do need is the generic brand/logo guide to define what is
allowed and what isn't. While building boundaries may seem like it makes
our life harder, it does lead to creating a strong visual identity
that's needed even fora community-driven Linux distribution.
The key problem on the bootsplash theme[1] is not the designer's* take
on the distro's mascot, Geeko. It's how the new character interacts /
interferes with the official logotype.
I've started on the openSUSE brand guide[2] to better define the logo
treatment. Obviously it's nowhere complete at this point with lots of
lose ends. I'm still waiting for the svn repository on Novell Forge to
be created, so the links are dead for now. The major open issue on my
mind right now is shading and effects -- do we want to allow people to
add dropshadows, make the logo glass shiny, brushed metal and all the
bling things people tend to love? My take on it is that we shouldn't do
that with the official logo, but allow such interpretations for the
Geeko button.
I'm cc:ing David Groom, the director of brand communications of Novell
to help with relation of the openSUSE brand to the Novell brand. The
logo page up on novell.com seems to provide a few web buttons combining
the secondary Novell 'N' graphic with the chameleon's head. Do we want
to communicate the link between Novell and openSUSE in such a prominent
way?
In addition the current wiki seems to be using green shades currently
undefined on the novell.com or innerweb pages (355 C, 366 U). David?
I wouldn't demotivate people experiment with the mascot. Something like
the chameleon samurai may not end up in the default styling, but it does
have a potential building the link with the distro's main audience -
wide home user community.
[1] http://en.opensuse.org/Branding_Overview:os10.3:Bootsplash
[2] http://en.opensuse.org/Artwork:Brand
* I enjoy talking about myself in 3rd person :)
--
Jakub Steiner