On Thursday 07 February 2008 05:17:35 Christian Lohmaier wrote: > Hi *, > > some late comments from me again :-) > > On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 10:30:25PM +0100, :murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote: > > Hi Designers (Ivan, Randy, ...), Louis, and all others, > > > > >>... but the larger contours have indeed been laid out by now. I > > >>personally don't expect huge changes anymore... > > > > > >Okay. I see the virtue of the minimalist design. The drawback of *not* > > >having a centralizing graphic i(or set of icons) s that they eye is > > >not sure where to look. Basic art and design theory and practice. I > > >would strongly advocate putting icons that not only add aesthetic > > >pleasure but also aid the visitor. > > > > A quick mockup of some icons (these definitely need to be tweaked): > > > > http://www.murb.nl/extern/openoffice.org/iconsactionstatement/ > > The learn and download ones are suitable already, but the "do more" and > "participate" ones don't quite fit. The participate ones looks like a > graveyard (maybe that one just reminds me of the cover of Master of > Puppets from Metallica) - and the do more one resembles a red-cross type > thing (like a medicine cabinet) or a patch to heal things. > > And maybe it is just because I'm a gnome user where the help metaphor is > a life buoy - I kind of expected that instead of the questionmark.. > > So suggestions: Instead of the multiple crosses, make it multiple > gameboard-figures (the simple ones with a sphere as head, and a simple > cone as body), the "more one" can be turned away from the cabinet > metaphor by placing the plus inside a round shape, instead of using the > square background (like the questionmark - just put the + inside that > circle and it will look more like "add someting", well to me at least) > Whether to change the help one to a life buoy or not probably is a > matter of taste/focus... > > But apart from that I really think that the proposal will benefit from > any type of icons.
Sorry but I have to disagree. Icons are only useful for speeding the progress of returning users. A sign is only useful when the meaning of that sign is plain. Unclear signage simply leads to confusion and people taking to much time to interpret the meaning of the signs. A good example is here locally in NZ. Signs in Maori mean nothing to a German tourist. Putting pictures in their place would be equally meaningless for that onetime user. The sign, the translation or the picture only become useful with familiarity. The new arrival arrives at the page and sees some vague symbolism but he would have to read the action statements to give meaning to that graphic. The only useful thing about them would be as a target to click in case people got confused as to whether the action statement was clickable. They could in fact be all the same and it wouldn't really matter because they would highlight on mouse-over. The graphic would not need to be a cute icon specific to the action because what the icon is saying is simply: "Click Here" The question is: "Is not having icons a barrier" answer is No The next question then would be: "Is having the Icons a barrier" equally the answer is no. Putting up icons is OK if people feel the need to have them, I have no objections, however in terms of what we are attempting to do they are an affectation and I would object to them if the lack of Icons became the sole reason for not getting the page live. I did actually do some for one of the earlier proposals http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Image:Siteconcept2.png > > ciao > Christian Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Moderator New Zealand www.theingots.org.nz GET DRESSED : GET OOOGEAR Gear for the well dressed OOo Advocate www.ooogear.co.nz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
