Hi Bernhard, all, On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Bernhard Dippold <bernh...@familie-dippold.at> wrote: > Hi all, > > I created a wiki page covering some important points to be considered on the > way towards the new project: > > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Design_Artwork_and_Branding_Project_Proposal > > I'm sure I didn't think at all of them, so: > > Please comment, improve, discuss - whatever ;-)
I have a few general comments/questions, so I'll list them here under the sections they correspond to on the wiki page. == First Steps == You have listed the Art project here; at the moment it is not clear what will happen to the art project itself - will it remain, or will it be integrated into this new project? This is probably still something to sort out, but it's something that deserves consideration. If the art project stays, would it still be a subset of marketing or would it too become a stand-alone project? The User interface project is an interesting case, because this is where Stella's work comes under - it is at the top of the list on the UI project homepage [1]. Yet the d...@ui mailing list is very inactive... so I'm not sure how/where this project stands. Many of the other sections appear to have very old documents. According to [2], the UI team has not met for 5+ years! [1] http://ui.openoffice.org/VisualDesign/index.html [2] http://ui.openoffice.org/protocols/index.html One other thing we might consider is looking at branding related projects in other open source projects - for example, I recently had a look at Ubuntu [3] and Fedora's [4] art projects. While the ubuntu project is more like ours (limited impact on artwork - most artwork is done by paid designers at Canonical), the Fedora artwork project is much more actively involved in branding (e.g. designing the branding for each release). Other projects might provide additional insights into different approaches we might take. [3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork == After establishing the new project & Next Activities == The wiki page says: "Revise present artwork and design elements with regards to their usability for a general branding design." As I see it, this is a very complex and potentially problematic matter. Do we try to make existing artwork consistent using current artwork as a basis, or do we start again (e.g. begin with the logo and then evolve other designs from the tone set by the logo)? This has clear implications for the creation of a style guide. == Continuous work == I was interested in Christoph's idea of having a branding/identity person on relevant i-Teams. We could also try to have goals for each OOo release. I have been thinking about certain areas of OOo that could do with some artwork, and many of them are listed on my wiki page [5]. For example, the UX list had discussions about a dashboard (something to improve the Start Center that opens when OOo loads) [6], and about the application background (currently a dreary gray) [7]. My own idea is to improve the design of help pages (which I think are encoded in HTML and could therefore be styled with CSS). The branding project could have its own goals for each release cycle to take a certain aspect of OOo and improve it from our perspective. [5] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User:Ivanm#Visual_Design_Ideas [6] http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?listName=discuss&msgNo=2654 and http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/StartCenter on the wiki [7] http://ux.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?listName=discuss&msgNo=3760 I have written quite a lot more than I had expected, so I'll leave it there for now, but I'm sure it will be an interesting ongoing discussion. Thank you Bernhard! Regards, Ivan. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
