Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
Op 23-aug-2006, om 8:22 heeft Troy James Sobotka het volgende geschreven: On Wed, 2006-23-08 at 08:07 +0200, Michiel Sikma wrote: I think we have gone a little off-topic. :) Not off topic at all -- the deadline is pretty rapidly approaching. It _is_ difficult to churn out work after you have flogged away at it for a while, especially when it comes to the umpteenth variation on a theme. Now that we have been pressured under the gun by the approval process, it is quite difficult to achieve our goals -- especially when one considers the polishing and testing. It is. This is a style discussion, not a production process discussion. Also, note that Mark himself said that it is a good thing this discussion got going. There is little to discuss regarding the looks/styles themselves as the bulk of the criteria have been set forth by sabdfl at Paris. Ultimately, if he sees something he is willing to run with, the CC will consider it. If not, c'est la vie. In particular the brown and gloss are basically set. The degrees to which are certainly up for debate during production. Some element of the default folder gloss line is almost mandatory unless about 30 icons are going to be reworked (all based on the gloss line). Fine. If you do not wish to discuss styles with us, then do not. Don't try to smother the discussion that we _are_ trying to have, which can only be beneficial to the work that we can make for the produce phase. All that is going to happen for the GTK (due to the bug troubleshooting and such) is to tweak it back to the browner spectrum -- similar to the default dapper wallpaper. Frank was on this last time we spoke. It is simply too much to try and tweak the GTK elements as the XML is a bit massive. This is ridiculous. So even though it was asked by Frank to polish the Human GTK theme, going as far as to start a wikipage dedicated to it and advertising it on the mailing list (and not minding the fact that I did so afterwards), apparently we're now dropping it? Even though I've already made a mock-up which has had a lot of positive feedback? You're just saying, as if it is nothing, that we're not doing it anyway, the only reason being that the XML is a bit massive? Or are you going to cling on to the excuse that the deadline is approaching, even though we still have a good week to produce things? I really do not approve of such an attitude. You're supposed to be somewhat of a leader. You're thus not supposed to handle contributions by members like this, simply stating in a random e-mail that we're not gonna do it afterall, for your information, after work has been put into it in response to an official call to produce the work. The work has been produced and needs some more work before it can be finalized for consideration, but even though we're still inside the planning, now suddenly it is no longer necessary? As much as I realize that we can't do _everything_ we would like to for Edgy, Troy, I think this is plain ridiculous. Michiel -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
Op 23-aug-2006, om 11:42 heeft Mark Shuttleworth het volgende geschreven: Michiel, I'm somewhat responsible for this. Just so this is clear: if anything I make is not accepted, then this is fine. It does, however, seem very awkward to me that the artist-in- chief specifically starts up the efforts to polish the Human GTK theme, then applauds efforts I exert in doing just that, only for it to be shot down in a random e-mail by someone who informs me that such a change is never going to make it in anyway in a very by the way-like attitude. I don't know where in the chain of orders this went wrong, but that doesn't seem like valid planning to me. At the very least, Troy could have attempted to explain it himself. The current GTK theme was produced by Richard and Daniel, the authors of Clearlooks, working directly with me in London. Of course I'm happy to review updates to that but for the moment I will expect to sign off on those changes personally. That was not clear to Frank. So, by all means continue with GTK work, but present those changes to me rather than Frank. At the moment, having reviewed your current screenshots I think the roundedness is nice but the colour palette is not rich or saturated enough for me. There seems to be a hint of blue on the bottom of the widgets, and the net effect doesn't work well for me. I prefer the deeper more saturated look of the current widget set. Strange, since the whole is actually more saturated than the old version (except the progress bar, which is full orange; see image for a comparison). There are also less grey widgets, such as the scroll bar or drop down lists which I've given an orange accent. I do take it you have looked at the latest version, which can be found here? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkPlan/ Produce/Incoming?action=AttachFiledo=gettarget=michielgtk13.png Perhaps I'll attend to the color of the 3D elements later, which I did give a less saturated look. It's too bad for me to hear that you prefer the old version. I'll work on the GTK to try and improve on the criticisms you've mentioned, despite thinking it's already much more consistent than the old version, especially since we have not reached the polish phase yet. By all means, however, keep going! Mark By this, I presume that there is indeed room for such an improvement in this release cycle like with all other art? Michiel -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
Michiel Sikma wrote: Just so this is clear: if anything I make is not accepted, then this is fine. It does, however, seem very awkward to me that the artist-in-chief specifically starts up the efforts to polish the Human GTK theme, then applauds efforts I exert in doing just that, only for it to be shot down in a random e-mail by someone who informs me that such a change is never going to make it in anyway in a very "by the way"-like attitude. Just my take - I didn't read Troy's mail as "by-the-way", it was just terse because we're all busy! In this case I don't think there was any intention to dismiss good work. I don't know where in the chain of orders this went wrong, but that doesn't seem like valid planning to me. At the very least, Troy could have attempted to explain it himself. This is a disadvantage of having some folks at conferences and others not, because a lot gets communicated in brief interactions. Troy might not have known that Frank did not know that I don't want to lightly change the Gtk theme in this round... either way, please don't take offense here. Good work will be incorporated, Troy was I think just trying to focus folks' attention on the areas where we've specifically opened up the floodgates. The current GTK theme was produced by Richard and Daniel, the authors of Clearlooks, working directly with me in London. Of course I'm happy to review updates to that but for the moment I will expect to sign off on those changes personally. That was not clear to Frank. So, by all means continue with GTK work, but present those changes to me rather than Frank. At the moment, having reviewed your current screenshots I think the roundedness is nice but the colour palette is not rich or saturated enough for me. There seems to be a hint of blue on the bottom of the widgets, and the net effect doesn't work well for me. I prefer the deeper more saturated look of the current widget set. Strange, since the whole is actually more saturated than the old version (except the progress bar, which is full orange; see image for a comparison). There are also less grey widgets, such as the scroll bar or drop down lists which I've given an orange accent. I quite like the reversion of the window dressing, to the more neutral colours. As for the widgets, there are some wins and some losses. I do take it you have looked at the latest version, which can be found here? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkPlan/Produce/Incoming?action=""> Yes, this is what I've been looking at. It would be nice for the screenshots always to be alongside a shot of the current Dapper so it's easier to spot what's improved! It's too bad for me to hear that you prefer the old version. I'll work on the GTK to try and improve on the criticisms you've mentioned, despite thinking it's already much more consistent than the old version, especially since we have not reached the polish phase yet. Yes, there is room for improvement, but you will need to gate that past me personally, and I'm afraid I have very, very limited bandwidth for this. I'm travelling for a month now on business with very little reliable network comms for web surfing, just dumps of mail regularly. Please don't flood me or I'll just filter it :-). But if you can present clear ideas for improvement, with a picture of what we currently have and what tweaks you want to make, I will try to respond if I have time. In short, I think there is more productive work to be done on core theme (login, desktop, splash) and then extending that "look" to all the myriad places we "present" ubuntu, like the web site, the brochures, sample content etc. Mark -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
On Aug 19, 2006, at 1:43 PM, Who wrote: Good idea to discuss this :) Personally, I was struggling to produce much that I liked with all out gloss, I think that matte/gloss will be much easier to produce work that is easy on the eyes and has a positive impact. Do people think failsafe is matte or all out gloss? We seem to have one style from the existing gdm and another from the splash... Well, judging by the guidelines laid out by Frank, it is both. :) Or can be, anyway. But I feel that with the stuff that I personally have made that felt like it belonged to Failsafe, it's more of a Matte/ Gloss style than an all-out-gloss one. It just feels a lot better to me that way. Failsafe, as it has been retroactively named, was always a very sober and clean art direction, and I feel that Matte/Gloss continues that in a more elegant manner. In terms of designs, circles captivates me more than anything else, because I think we can push a bit of new into it - but it is also not as distinctive as it could be - with glossy circles we will need to be very careful not to step on the toes of Fedora Core 5 (which, while blue, was glossy/matte and circley) I don't think we need to focus on not having to look like Fedora Core 5, though. If anything we should just make neat art and not focus on whether we're stepping on anyone's toes. I can't really see Ubuntu ever taking the exact same artistic direction as Fedora, anyway. I hope that we can look even better than Fedora Core 5's art with the next release, by the way. I feel that the Core 5 art is just a little more sophisticated than ours as it is right now. It looks very lightweight, something which works well with the icon style they're trying to convey. I feel that our 6.06 had a mostly unfinished and unpolished look. Like the drop-down menu in the GDM, which totally does not fit in, or the end session dialog that looks bloated and is off-center. I personally also reject the large red knob-like icon used to end the session. If we look at Tangerine or Fedora's icons, we see that they use a door instead, which is much more low-profile and does a better job at staying consistently less noticeable to be a bother. I think that this release should, besides just making new and innovating art, also be to fix these inconsistencies and generally polish the entire thing up a bit, which is something Fedora Core 5 is ahead of, when compared to us. As for the colours: they are much less orage than we have been using (personally, a relief for me :P) - I don't know what implications this has for the GTK them or icon set - I think the key will be to add highlights in the other work that pick up on the icons - but I don't really know about this - if anyone has any more concrete ideas about how to make these other two look integrated I was actually kind of peeved to learn that Frank's color palettes were more brownish than what I had been doing with the GTK theme at that point. I had been implementing hints of red and even tiny touches of yellow into the palette with my latest versions, and think that it works really well at refreshening the look. But well, perhaps there's still room for such colors in the future anyhow. I don't even know about the icon set anymore, to be honest. I've got quite a few things to say about icons in general, but feel that a discussion on that is totally out of place here (for reasons of space too...). But as long as I don't have sources for the Human icon set, I can't really suggest anything. Does anyone still have that link that contained it? I'm willing to do a lot for Ubuntu art, but reverse engineering the alpha channels of all icons of an icon set isn't one of them. :) Michiel Sikma [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
On Aug 19, 2006, at 2:22 PM, PingunZ wrote: My preferences are Rounded and Matte and Gloss What I like about Rounded : - A face browser for the GDM. This is really popular on sites like gnome-look. I'd really like to see it included in Ubuntu. We can probably have a face browser in the other themes as well, if you suggest that we should. I don't really see why not. - The idea of the a usplash with a rounded loading bar. It could be modified a little, I personally like the scrolling text. I wonder about usplash myself. What's really going to be possible with this new usplash type? Will we make an old type for backup purposes too, in case someone's computer cannot use the new type? Can we make really innovative things like more graphical load bars that have fancy things like reflection, that would take a bit more time to implement than just simply a masked image? Frank was working on that, though, wasn't he? What could be better in Rounded : - The splash screen ( the one after GDM ), I'd remove it. Just a little animation on the GDM till the desktop is loaded ? I also like the vista-approach, fade out when the desktop is loaded. If the splash screen isn't removed I'd certainly go for an animated one, like xubuntu. I hope you can do this. I think Ubuntu just has too many loading screens. :) Michiel Sikma [EMAIL PROTECTED] PS: please CC your mails to the Ubuntu artwork mailing list. Seems that I didn't even notice that two mails, from you and Who, didn't reach the list. -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:33 AM, Michiel Sikma wrote: On Aug 19, 2006, at 1:43 PM, Who wrote: Personally, I was struggling to produce much that I liked with all out gloss, I think that matte/gloss will be much easier to produce work that is easy on the eyes and has a positive impact. Do people think failsafe is matte or all out gloss? We seem to have one style from the existing gdm and another from the splash... Well, judging by the guidelines laid out by Frank, it is both. :) Or can be, anyway. But I feel that with the stuff that I personally have made that felt like it belonged to Failsafe, it's more of a Matte/ Gloss style than an all-out-gloss one. It just feels a lot better to me that way. Failsafe, as it has been retroactively named, was always a very sober and clean art direction, and I feel that Matte/Gloss continues that in a more elegant manner. The basic idea was indeed to create artwork in combinations of all styles (Circles, Rounded and Failsafe) and all looks (Matte Gloss and All out Gloss). I didn't intend to prescribe a certain look for a given style, but rather try them both. Of course, it's not unthinkable that a given style works best combined with a given look, but that'll become apparent once we see the bigger picture of all combinations. What Michiel proposed was a good idea - try to figure out what style and look would work best in your own opinion and start working on that. This way, we'll end up with the best combinations worked out first and they can be refined a bit more than the combinations that won't work as well. In terms of designs, circles captivates me more than anything else, because I think we can push a bit of new into it - but it is also not as distinctive as it could be - with glossy circles we will need to be very careful not to step on the toes of Fedora Core 5 (which, while blue, was glossy/matte and circley) I don't think we need to focus on not having to look like Fedora Core 5, though. If anything we should just make neat art and not focus on whether we're stepping on anyone's toes. I can't really see Ubuntu ever taking the exact same artistic direction as Fedora, anyway. I hope that we can look even better than Fedora Core 5's art with the next release, by the way. I feel that the Core 5 art is just a little more sophisticated than ours as it is right now. It looks very lightweight, something which works well with the icon style they're trying to convey. I feel that our 6.06 had a mostly unfinished and unpolished look. Like the drop-down menu in the GDM, which totally does not fit in, or the end session dialog that looks bloated and is off-center. I personally also reject the large red knob-like icon used to end the session. If we look at Tangerine or Fedora's icons, we see that they use a door instead, which is much more low-profile and does a better job at staying consistently less noticeable to be a bother. I think that this release should, besides just making new and innovating art, also be to fix these inconsistencies and generally polish the entire thing up a bit, which is something Fedora Core 5 is ahead of, when compared to us. Those are nice goals to pursue, and I hope we'll be making great steps towards achieving them with Edgy. But let's not forget that the fact we're discussing this here is already a major step forward. Edgy serves as much as a testbed for new art directions as well as the artwork process itself. With regard to the Circles style - naturally I didn't intend to duplicate or replicate existing artwork for other distributions or operating systems, I wasn't aware of similarities when writing the document. To write down the directions I took all of the artwork that came in during earlier phases and decided which ideas might work and tried to sketch how the four artwork targets would look when using a consistent idea. One goal I set for myself was to _only_ use ideas and sketches that came up during our collaborative brainstorming. I want the artwork we're producing to be the sum of our collaboration to showcase what we can do with the team, basically the end-goal of our new process. As for the colours: they are much less orage than we have been using (personally, a relief for me :P) - I don't know what implications this has for the GTK them or icon set - I think the key will be to add highlights in the other work that pick up on the icons - but I don't really know about this - if anyone has any more concrete ideas about how to make these other two look integrated I was actually kind of peeved to learn that Frank's color palettes were more brownish than what I had been doing with the GTK theme at that point. I had been implementing hints of red and even tiny touches of yellow into the palette with my latest versions, and think that it works really well at refreshening the look. But well, perhaps there's still room for
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:37 AM, Michiel Sikma wrote: On Aug 19, 2006, at 2:22 PM, PingunZ wrote: My preferences are Rounded and Matte and Gloss What I like about Rounded : - A face browser for the GDM. This is really popular on sites like gnome-look. I'd really like to see it included in Ubuntu. We can probably have a face browser in the other themes as well, if you suggest that we should. I don't really see why not. I've been in some discussions on this already and I hear the security issue a lot regarding a face browser. My thoughts on this are that for home and probably small office users a face browser would be a welcome default login screen without compromising security. Once a malicious person has access to the _local_ login screen, there's probably more to worry about than giving away a user account name (like booting a live CD and mounting the hard drive). The situation in which a face browser doesn't work is where there's a lot of user accounts. I think a system that has more than seven accounts is likely to have an administrator capable of changing the GDM theme to something without a face chooser if so desired. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this as mine aren't authoritative by far. One thing I wondered is - I don't see where my Rounded style would imply a face browser, so maybe I'm mistaking but can you tell me where it says so? - The idea of the a usplash with a rounded loading bar. It could be modified a little, I personally like the scrolling text. I wonder about usplash myself. What's really going to be possible with this new usplash type? Will we make an old type for backup purposes too, in case someone's computer cannot use the new type? Can we make really innovative things like more graphical load bars that have fancy things like reflection, that would take a bit more time to implement than just simply a masked image? Frank was working on that, though, wasn't he? I've been asking around at the UDS about the usplash and have been forwarded to many people already. Right now I've got a good idea where to find answers instead of more questions and as soon as I know more I'll post it to the artwork mailing list. I've heard all kinds of stories up until now so I'd rather not share any of those to prevent misunderstandings, I hope you all understand. What could be better in Rounded : - The splash screen ( the one after GDM ), I'd remove it. Just a little animation on the GDM till the desktop is loaded ? I also like the vista-approach, fade out when the desktop is loaded. If the splash screen isn't removed I'd certainly go for an animated one, like xubuntu. I hope you can do this. I think Ubuntu just has too many loading screens. :) I don't think we can pull off amazing things like this for Edgy. We'll probably have to work within Dapper-like constraints for most of the artwork which implies that the login splash can only use 1-bit transparency and the icons and login text are probably going to be at the same place as in Dapper. Suggestions for new animations are welcome though, maybe a new specification can summarize your thoughts and ideas on this and we can filter for Edgy +1? Sincerely, Frank -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
Frank Schoep wrote: One goal I set for myself was to _only_ use ideas and sketches that came up during our collaborative brainstorming. I want the artwork we're producing to be the sum of our collaboration to showcase what we can do with the team, basically the end-goal of our new process. This sentence really made an impact on me. Frank, it's EXACTLY what I was looking for in an Artist-in-Chief - thank you! I know that you have strong ideas of your own and an ability to execute them, but keeping this an open, participative process is hugely important to building teamwork. That, in turn, is important because once we have a clear direction we will want to bring as much of "visual ubuntu" into line with that direction for edgy. By "visual ubuntu" I mean: * brochures * the web site(s) * the cd sleeves * sample materials included in the distro "example content" packages * presentation slide backgrounds that community members can use for LUG talks etc There's a large amount of opportunity to leverage the decisions we make here, and the more people feel that they played a role and can take ownership of a particular piece while still staying in tune with the overall style, the more we will be able to achieve. The Official Human Icons SVG Effort(tm) is something that's passed right by me as of yet, to be honest. Troy has been doing work on creating new SVG versions of icons lately and has sent me some nice samples of what is possible with some spare time. I think I'll send another mail to the list to discuss this because it'd be good to sort it out where we stand and what we're going to achieve. I'm sorry I can't say anything more substantial at the moment on this. Well, we also have some time "in the bank" with the designer who did the Dapper icon set, so we expect to get some changes and improvements to that icon set in for Edgy. If you have specific icons that you think need to be done (that did NOT get done for Dapper) then please pass those ideas on to Frank. Please DON'T suggest that every icon get redone for Edgy - we want to broaden the base of icons that are consistent with the Human look, not revamp the look :-) Good work team! Mark -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
On Tue, 2006-22-08 at 19:04 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote: Well, we also have some time in the bank with the designer who did the Dapper icon set, so we expect to get some changes and improvements to that icon set in for Edgy. If you have specific icons that you think need to be done (that did NOT get done for Dapper) then please pass those ideas on to Frank. Please DON'T suggest that every icon get redone for Edgy - we want to broaden the base of icons that are consistent with the Human look, not revamp the look :-) I think Mark has a very important point here. What we must accept is that producing anything of this magnitude (IE Ubuntu) is an incremental process -- and the key here is to realize quickly and efficiently what will yield the greatest cost / benefit ratios. That said, our four primary specifications are highly visible and will allow us, if approved and integrated, to greatly influence the future direction of the project. Icons are a massive task -- as you can ask any of our local icon celebrities (and we do have a wonderfully good compliment of them lurking around this list / IRC). That said, redoing icons is simply out of the question when it comes to taking an entirely new style / approach. This means that ultimately, all of the work needs to be judged against those 'constants'. Who had a wonderful technique for this -- juxtaposing the folder icon (a very high visible icon) against his work. If you look at his example logo, you will see how remarkably well his work has nicely fit within the constraints -- it feels as if the same artist did the entire body of work. (To compare against something, take a look at the orange globe icon and look at how it violates the stylistic tendencies of the set when compared to the recycle bin, arrows, etc.) Bersace has done a tremendous job of creating a visual archive to assist this process. The aptly named 'Archives' namespace in the wiki is invaluable to anyone who appreciates seeing the proverbial 'forest through the trees.' Compare all of your work against this set of images, in particular the icon selection located there: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Archives/6.06/Ubuntu I cannot stress enough how 'knee-deep' we are in it right now folks -- the deadline is coming _fast_. We must demonstrate serious work ethic and finish this task -- as tedious and repetitious the work might seem at this point. Please buckle down and bang out what you can -- the team thanks you for it. And again, create the illusion that _one_ person created the entire body of work. Consistency counts -- and absolutely _everyone_ should be encouraged to step in and emulate Ubuntu look in the manner that Frank has outlined for us. Sincerely, TJS signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
Re: [ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
Michiel Sikma wrote: I think it's very beneficial to get this discussion going a little bit. What do you guys think about the styles and looks? Agreed Michiel - thanks for kicking it off! Mark -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
[ubuntu-art] Styles/looks discussion
Hello everybody, Since the produce phase has now officially began, I think that it would be useful if we took the time to discuss with one another what we feel about the styles that have been outlined. This is purely for internal purposes, which is why I think the mailing list is useful for this purpose rather than the wiki or Launchpad. The three styles that have been defined are: - Failsafe -- the original theme style that has been used since Ubuntu 4.10. - Rounded -- a more subtle version of failsafe with rounded corners. - Circles -- an ambitious redesign that incorporates circles rather than rectangles. Then there are two looks: - Matte and gloss -- glossy foreground elements with dim matte background elements. - All-out gloss -- glossy elements on both the foreground and background. See the details at the propose phase results page: https:// wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkPlan/Propose/Results The easiest way to find out which style you will probably like best is by seeing which combination you intuitively would like to work for based on the knowledge that you can get from that page. Then you can begin to rationalize your thoughts and figure out what really is the reason why that combination seems good to you. Personally, I haven't been very captivated by the all-out gloss look, simply because I believe in a firm and well-established contrast between foreground and background elements (granted, matte and gloss is also very low on contrast between foreground and background, but this would seem more easily fixable than in all-out gloss). Other than that, I have been thinking about continuing my contributions to the failsafe style, as I think it has already become a very distinctive style that no other distro seems to have so concisely. Just rounding the artwork seems like a novelty feature rather than a substantial design decision to me, while on the other hand, the circle look is interesting. I think it's very beneficial to get this discussion going a little bit. What do you guys think about the styles and looks? Regards, Michiel Sikma [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
