So in short there are two ideas:
#1 have ONE look & logo
_easier to communicate/introduce
_reliable and ready any time
&
#2 have a meta-identity that reinvents itself with each re-incarnation
of the LGM
_expressing the many-sidedness of LGM
_offering new artists and and occasions a fresh look each time
(practicing and preaching LGM ;) )
Did I get that right?
If I did, I propose to focus on having clear and stable HTML markup and
structure of the CMS of choice and go for idea #1. And then #2. :P
I like the idea of having a LGM "brand" that cannot be expressed just in
ONE way, but is easy to recognize in different styles.
Cheers,
Robert
On 08/19/2010 07:17 PM, Louis Desjardins wrote:
Hi Ricardo, Yuval and all !
All this is completely interesting and inspiring !
I have to say that depending on the point of view I am encline to
agree alternatively with both of you !
Coming from the graphic world and owning myself a company that
specialized in graphic design and print, I am fully aware of what a
brand is.
Talking about LGM, here are a few thoughts to add to this discussion.
Some will refer to what Yuval brought up about past LGMs and some will
be echoing the essay from Ricardo !
As an organiser, what I need is communication means that have to be
ready in time in order to promote the event and talk with sponsors.
This has to start right away after an LGM is finished. The
organisation of the next must already be on the go. For that reason, I
much prefer that we keep the logo we have, for instance, so we can
concentrate on the communictations we have to make and not on how we
will look to the outside world.
So, if for instance we would like to modify the logo each year as we
did over the last years, then it would be advisable as we already have
discussed that the design of the logo and website and everything
related to our external communications fall into the same 2-year
process we have established for the venue. This means that we would be
ready with the new design, each year, ahead of time. So the
communications for the next LGM could in fact start immediately after
LGM is over.
Of course, my concerns are pretty practical. It’s not that I don’t
want to enter the discussion about the benefits of keeping the same
brand for years or on the other hand change it every year. No. But I
want to stress what is needed, when it is needed and why it is needed.
For LGM 2011, I would keep the same logo as in Brussels. Unless...
(more below)... What motivates this decision is because otherwise we
would enter a long process for creating and then proposing and
discussing the next logo... I think we need to concentrate on the
sponsors and on the organisation of the event itself. Of course, I
will be glad to read any further thoughts on that ! Maybe in 2012 we
will have a different logo? We would then start working on it very
shortly...
Same applies for the website. What we really need as an organisation
is more functionnalities in the website than a redesign each year.
Once we will have all the mechanics working, including a way of
reserving and paying for t-shirts, food, etc. then we could of course
make the website change in look every year, within a 2-year process...
Then, about the branding itself... By professionnal bias, I would
start by recommending that we keep the brand solid for a few years as
Yuval suggests. But at the same time I completely understand that
Libre Graphics could also be well served by a change every year. The
website itself could list the various logos so we could click on them
to access the previous LGM websites... It would show the dynamism of
the LG community. Not a bad idea. We could thus interest — and even
make it a contest? — artists to participate to this change. The name
would not change, so it’s already a solid tree. The branches and
leaves and ground and background would be different each year...
Really, my main objection is to work into a time frame that can
obviously only lead to improvisation or a misuse of time. Doing things
the right way at the right time would allow such changes that could be
completely inspiring...
Another way to look at this is, if we want a change for 2011, think of
how we would make a transition. Use the Brussels logo and change the
name of the city and dates and use this for early communications with
sponsors... And then sometimes in Autumn, unveil the new brand... This
might work, what do you think?
Louis
2010/8/19 ricardo lafuente <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Hi Yuval,
Thanks for raising this issue. Now that some projects are gaining
traction, it's the right time to discuss how the Libre Graphics
community presents itself to the public.
I do have some reserves as to the proposed way to tackle this
challenge. If i understand correctly, your idea is to set a fixed
'brand' for the Libre Graphics community, and a set of design
guidelines to apply to most/all of the materials that are created
for and from it.
In art school, i went through 2 years of corporate identity
design. Even though LG is not a corporation but a community,
what's being talked here is the creation (or rather,
consolidation) of an identity. Identity guidelines and style
manuals are commonplace in the corporate world, defining what you
can and cannot do in order to style something as belonging to your
'brand'. This is because corporate image needs very clear
boundaries so that new designers don't end up unwittingly tweaking
the identity and creating confusion in brand recognition.
However, my impression is that this kind of 'top-down' identity
definition might not be appropriate once we get out of a corporate
context. Namely, i find it downplays the role that new designers
might have in creating new directions for an identity by setting
in stone some directives that they can't stray from.
Of course, one consequence of not having fixed and thorough style
guidelines is that identity gets diluted according to the creative
perspectives of different people. This in an issue for a company,
but less so for a free-culture oriented community. I'm reminded of
the discussion around OSP's logo proposal for LGM2010, which
strayed from the de facto LGM identity so far (the ink splatter).
That discussion was tremendously relevant to me, since it showed
that the identity of an event or community is much more defined by
what's done there, rather than its outward presentation. And that
having multiple, coexisting perspectives on the graphic identity
of the community might actually be a Good Thing(tm), even though
it challenges principles that we're accostumed to when dealing
with brands and identities.
It's very interesting to confront coding principles and graphic
guidelines like you did (never thought of it that way), but i
think those metaphors can only go so far. For instance, Linus's
law -- "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" -- doesn't really
apply to graphic work: not only do many cooks run the risk of
spoiling the broth, but the 'success' of a graphic piece is not
measurable by efficiency guidelines, as lines of code can be. The
same regarding your comparison to a 'coding style guide' -- their
purpose is efficiency, since mixed writing styles make reading
code harder; however, should we really constrain the decisions of
designers who might join the boat later, and who might have
something new and unexpected to introduce? Given your proposed
5-year timeframe, i think this is an issue.
You mentioned the danger of 'reinventing the wheel'. Again, i
think this does not apply to creative and aesthetic perspectives,
which are closer to an evolving and ever-changing set of loose
(and often unwritten) guidelines like a cake recipe, than a
functional tool such as a wheel or a hammer. No sense in
reinventing the wheel, sure, but it's a good goal to aim for a
tastier cake at each go. And since everyone's taste is their own,
it's safe to say that no one cake will be ideal for each and every
one of us -- which doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep on working
on fancier recipes.
Finally, i think that one of the most rewarding parts in design
work is having the freedom to experiment and express our own
aesthetic perspectives -- which can seldom be described verbally
or textually --, something that's simply not allowed in a context
in which all decisions were made a priori, where the designer is
not a decision-maker or creator but a simple executor.
I think you made very good points, and please don't understand
this as a dismissal of your proposal -- it's very possible to find
common ground between our multiple views. How can we have a good,
solid Libre Graphics presence and still be open to ever-changing
internal views, be them aesthetic or pragmatic? I'd risk an answer
now, but i'd love to know your thoughts before.
Pardon my large essays, but i hate to feel that i missed some
points i wanted to make.
:r
On 08/19/2010 02:09 PM, Yuval Levy wrote:
On August 19, 2010 03:51:18 am Camille Bissuel wrote:
I'll be glad to provide visuals for the Create community,
and from a
designer point of view, it's always a good idea to have
some charter to
base on.
exactly. It's like a coding style guide for developers. I
don't remember any
such charter presented here in the past five years. It would
be a major step
forward, like a coding style guide is a major step forward for
a software
project: it solves a significant chunk of potential bike-sheds.
But I don't what to bridle anyone creativity (on the
magazine for example)
just because I'm the first one to provide something...
furthermore LG
Magazine #0 was here first, and I didn't base my designs
on it.
Your intentions are noble. Fact is that if we are to evolve
to the next
level, we must stop fiddling at this level. There is a
trade-off to be played.
Creativity has to be directed to areas that have not been
exploited yet.
So, it really have to be a consensus, especially from the
concerned
designers.
Actually more a consensus of the "customers", i.e. the
projects represented in
LG or the LG Board. Without the weight of some governance,
the consensus will
not last beyond a single edition, while ideally it should last
for a few.
Without governance every new designer that joins the fray
could see this as a
free game and reinvent the wheel from scratch.
The weight of governance makes the difference between a mature
project (that
IMHO LG should strive to be) and a greenfield startup (the
impression I have
when looking at it from an external perspective).
On August 19, 2010 07:06:28 am ginger coons wrote:
I would suggest that the magazine, being a slightly
different beast from
the site, the logo, the conference, might in fact have a
different
aesthetic. Because we're not talking here about a
mouthpiece for the Libre
Graphics movement, a brochure, we're talking about a
magazine with the
space to grow and change and in fact, build up a community
that doesn't
really exist yet: a strong Libre Graphics user community.
I think that
could be quite a different thing from the official face.
Mostly agree. Growth and change are not necessarily
synonymous and you want
to mix them wisely. Sometimes growth is change, but sometimes
it is the
maturity of consistency. You print professionals know it
better than the rest
of us: make a good template, use it for a few editions (e.g.
a cycle of say
four regular editions and one or two special editions) and
revisit when the
content starts breaking the barrier of the media, not the
other way around.
Yuv
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