Steven Pauwels wrote:
I took a look at the style draft and these are some of my findings:
- Is the style document for OOo in general only or should it be used
for the components too? If so, the specs for the components are not
sufficient.
The components are not separate from OOo; it's an "all or nothing"
package. Therefore, the marketing needs to be consistent. The guidelines
for OOo in general apply to promoting individual components as a part of
OOo, with the listed exceptions for colors.
Incidentally, the style guide is in dire need of updating since we do
have files on-line now. I think Bernard and I were doing the bulk of it,
but it's kinda fallen off my radar recently due to the demands of
opening my new practice. :-)
- My experience in both the directive and practical work relationship
with 'artists and designers' has learned me that the guidelines for
any style can not be specific enough. The true designer is the one
that is creative within the set bounderies and it is my oppinion that
these should be as strict for the graphical elements as they are for
the text elements. At this point, I find this not to be the case.
When guiding a community it is of crucial importance to set very
strict but realistic bouderies, guides and specs.
eg: "Go play!" is a clear parenting hint to a 5 year old. So it seems.
The 5 year old will ask: "With what?" So the hint should be: go play
with that?? No. The hint should be; Go play with that in this way. (Go
play woth your Duplo ans make daddy a nice -whatever favourite animal
the kid has or whatever thing he or she was last fascinated by -)
Style specs should be:
- These are the ghraphical elements, colors, fonts, specs and
guidelines. You can do this and that with them. You CAN NOT do this or
that with them. Within these limits, feel free to experiment. There
should be seperate style guidelines for each medium!.
While that's all true in a corporate environment--and I would agree
wholeheartedly in that context--working with volunteers in an open
source environment is a completely different animal. There's no way to
truly enforce standards, and most of the people doing the work are
probably not going to be professionals. They do not understand the
importance of strict guidelines and become easily frustrated with
"bureaucracy" interfering with their artistic impulses. (Bear in mind
that open source projects share, to some extent, an attitude and
sensibility of anarchy.) At the point where guidelines are perceived to
be overbearing or draconian, volunteers either just ignore the
guidelines altogether or stop volunteering their time. The biggest
lesson I gleaned from my time making a living as the coordinator of a
non-profit volunteer program is that there's a real balance that has to
be struck between providing guidance and not restricting creative
freedom. That's the balance the current guidelines attempt to achieve.
If I had my druthers, the style guide would be extremely detailed to the
point where it almost micromanaged every piece produced, right down to
what kind of paper would be used for printed pieces and how they would
be arranged. However, that's not realistic in this type of environment.
- When creating a specific task or posting a demand for a logo,
banner, button or any other, the specifics for that use should be
included. fi: within the limits for the style for printed promotional
media we would like you to create a layout for a RV Triplet 4A flyer,
to be distributed at exhibits or shows and thus meeting its specific
needs. In addition to the style for printed promotional media, we
would like you to introduce one new colour on a maximum of a 3th of
the RV triplet A4 for the introduction of the 2006 OOo conference. If
witheld, this colour will then be used when creating the 2006 OOo
conference style.
Creating specific guidelines for every single use would be a monumental
and ultimately futile task, because there are an infinite number of
pieces that may or may not need to be produced. Typically what happens
for web banners et al is that volunteers decide sua sponte to throw them
together for fun. For printed pieces, there's usually a specific need,
and the person who has the need either puts the piece together herself
or requests someone to do so. Again, there's not a structured corporate
environment here with separate departments and managers and such. Nobody
is handed "assignments" with an art sheet that lists requirements. Thus,
the guidelines are meant to be very general to allow people who don't
know what an "RV triplet" is the greatest flexibility possible while
keeping at least a minimum of consistency.
Overall oppinion: I like OOo. I do not like the name, the website, its
fuzzyness, ... I do not know the people behind it all so for now; I
like them all :-p
It may be that the the name doesn't translate well in Dutch, and the NL
project may need to think about a better translation of the name. I
don't know. The name, I think, is fine (although I hate the ".org" as
part of the product name). I agree that the website could be more
promotional in nature, and possibly could use some re-organization (part
of the problem of large, sprawling projects like this which are,
essentially, done by committee is that they tend to be sprawling and
disorganized), but that's about the extent of my criticism of it.
--
Steven Shelton
Twilight Media & Design
www.TwilightMD.com
www.GLOAMING.us
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