Hi all.

So, 12.3 has been released to positive reviews, and our artwork in particular seems to have gone down well

So lets start the discussion about what we're going to do for 13.1

Schedule - For 12.3, we didn't do a great job at getting stuff done at the right stage for proper testing and feedback by the distribution. Let's see if we can turn that around this time for 13.1 Coolo is yet to publish the 'official' 13.1 timeline, but my expectation is that with the release penned in for November, we want the artwork pretty much finished by Sept 31

Personally, I prefer the approach of 'release early and often', and I would love it if we're able to get something in to factory before the first Milestone (which I'd estimate to be in May), so we can constantly receive feedback and iteratively improve as the development of 13.1 moves forward - it worked even with the accelerated schedule for 12.3, I imagine it would work even better with 13.1

Colour / Palette - The decision to 'go dark' and use green as a highlight rather than a base colour seems to have gone down well. I think we should stick with it.

In previous releases, we've been keen to dramatically change our colour schemes with new releases

Given that the KDE team have used the same colours in their theme, and are unlikely to want to do a major retheme for 13.1, plus the possibility that GNOME will be using a new theme also based on the same colours, I strongly suggest that we don't do a dramatic palette change for 13.1

My recommendation would be to stick with the existing colours we used in 12.3, or to pick colours that compliment and co-exist with those currently in use.

This will also cut down a lot of the polishing work for stuff like GRUB2's theme - I like the idea of being able to reuse as much of what we did for 12.3 as possible :)

I would like to see us also be able to offer a 'light' version of the default wallpaper, because dark clearly isn't to everyone's taste - doing this while still being true to everything I just said might be a challenge, but shouldn't be impossible :)

Design - The 'minimalist' approach in 12.3 went down well.

Having a largely plain background with a single graphical element was a bold choice which I'd like us to consider sticking with for 13.1

This also enabled us to do the fancy Grub > Plymouth > Default Wallpaper fade-in transition which seems to have gone down very well with our users and reviewers. I think we should keep doing that, I know we talked about not tying all 3 together in the past, but we got it so right with 12.3, I think we should push to do it again for 13.1

Obviously, we probably don't want to stick with the vine idea (or do we?), so I'd suggest something equally organic (trees? leaves?), or perhaps something more abstract, circles, shapes..I dunno, but I do think we should be careful to keep it simple, and not have too many visual elements which may seem overwelming after 12.3's very clean and crisp aesthetic

(the Twitter and Google+ covers are a good example of what I think would NOT be a good idea for 13.1 - while they work great as Social Media covers, they're awfully busy, and I do think we're on a good thing with much 'quieter' wallpapers)

Alternative Wallpapers - This time around, hopefully we can get folk to submit wallpapers in the correct formats (png/svg) and at the appropriate aspect ratios (5:4, 4:3, 16:9, 16:10), and with the appropriate licenses of course, so that I can package them up so we can offer our users a full selection of designs from the team, rather than just the one that forms the basis for the Bootloader, bootsplash, and default wallpaper.

Generally, I suppose my thoughts for 13.1 are "we did 12.3 well, why don't we learn from what we didn't do right, and build upon what we did" rather than our approach in previous releases which I feel has been more of a "start from scratch" each time.

What do you all think?

I would not take part in this round, but I wish you all the best and am sure that it will be a great release. For KDM, we still did not find a solution. Maybe the best would be to use the current or previous theme as base, as these support nearly all features. Greetings Marcus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-artwork+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-artwork+owner@opensuse.org

On Monday 18 of March 2013 13:53:58 Richard Brown wrote:
> Hi Team,
> 
> So, 12.3 has been released to positive reviews, and our artwork in
> particular seems to have gone down well
> 
> So lets start the discussion about what we're going to do for 13.1
> 
> Schedule - For 12.3, we didn't do a great job at getting stuff done at
> the right stage for proper testing and feedback by the distribution.
> Let's see if we can turn that around this time for 13.1
> Coolo is yet to publish the 'official' 13.1 timeline, but my
> expectation is that with the release penned in for November, we want
> the artwork pretty much finished by Sept 31
> 
> Personally, I prefer the approach of 'release early and often', and I
> would love it if we're able to get something in to factory before the
> first Milestone (which I'd estimate to be in May), so we can
> constantly receive feedback and iteratively improve as the development
> of 13.1 moves forward - it worked even with the accelerated schedule
> for 12.3, I imagine it would work even better with 13.1
Agreed on that 

> Colour  / Palette - The decision to 'go dark' and use green as a
> highlight rather than a base colour seems to have gone down well. I
> think we should stick with it.
Not 100% sure about that. But i do think it would be a good
idea to use green as a highlight rather than base, whatever the base would be.

> In previous releases, we've been keen to dramatically change our
> colour schemes with new releases
> 
> Given that the KDE team have used the same colours in their theme, and
> are unlikely to want to do a major retheme for 13.1, plus the
> possibility that GNOME will be using a new theme also based on the
> same colours, I strongly suggest that we don't do a dramatic palette
> change for 13.1
Personal agenda/opinion follows:
KDE team did not yet discussed at all what should be done for 13.1, and
i am still unsure how to proceed. Also, not sure i would have the strenght
to do something new for the next release. :-P
*If*  there would be something done from our end, i would personally do:
1) improve the current plasma theme, as also be on track with upstream changes
for 4.11 (that should be 13.1 target)
2) try also to ship greenish icon theme
3) maybe to create light counterpart of the dark theme
4) possible KWin Aurorae decoration

> My recommendation would be to stick with the existing colours we used
> in 12.3, or to pick colours that compliment and co-exist with those
> currently in use.
> 
> This will also cut down a lot of the polishing work for stuff like
> GRUB2's theme - I like the idea of being able to reuse as much of what
> we did for 12.3 as possible :)
> 
> I would like to see us also be able to offer a 'light' version of the
> default wallpaper, because dark clearly isn't to everyone's taste -
> doing this while still being true to everything I just said might be a
> challenge, but shouldn't be impossible :)
Agreed.

> Design - The 'minimalist' approach in 12.3 went down well.
> 
> Having a largely plain background with a single graphical element was
> a bold choice which I'd like us to consider sticking with for 13.1
I am slightly against that, as it brings some issues with it 
(remember the screenlocker problem?)

> This also enabled us to do the fancy Grub > Plymouth > Default
> Wallpaper fade-in transition which seems to have gone down very well
> with our users and reviewers. I think we should keep doing that, I
> know we talked about not tying all 3 together in the past, but we got
> it so right with 12.3, I think we should push to do it again for 13.1
> 
> Obviously, we probably don't want to stick with the vine idea (or do
> we?), so I'd suggest something equally organic (trees? leaves?), or
> perhaps something more abstract, circles, shapes..I dunno, but I do
> think we should be careful to keep it simple, and not have too many
> visual elements which may seem overwelming after 12.3's very clean and
> crisp aesthetic
> 
> (the Twitter and Google+ covers are a good example of what I think
> would NOT be a good idea for 13.1 - while they work great as Social
> Media covers, they're awfully busy, and I do think we're on a good
> thing with much 'quieter' wallpapers)
> 
> Alternative Wallpapers - This time around, hopefully we can get folk
> to submit wallpapers in the correct formats (png/svg) and at the
> appropriate aspect ratios (5:4, 4:3, 16:9, 16:10), and with the
> appropriate licenses of course, so that I can package them up so we
> can offer our users a full selection of designs from the team, rather
> than just the one that forms the basis for the Bootloader, bootsplash,
> and default wallpaper.
> 
> Generally, I suppose my thoughts for 13.1 are "we did 12.3 well, why
> don't we learn from what we didn't do right, and build upon what we
> did" rather than our approach in previous releases which I feel has
> been more of a "start from scratch" each time.
> 
> What do you all think?
-- 
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