Hi all! A very interesting discussion - I wished this one would have started about one year within the OpenOffice.org project. So my personal thoughts ...
For reasons of efficiency, I'll refer to the Wikipedia article considering branding [1], although some things are different if a product is shaped by a community. But however, the main thoughts are identical. Am Sonntag, den 07.11.2010, 12:23 +0100 schrieb Bernhard Dippold: > In the most extreme definition branding is the umbrella for marketing, > art, user experience and user interface... Yes. We start with a plain user - what does he perceive when finally using our software? What is his experience? Having in mind, that most users don't know the community and what Open-Source-Software really is about... He will perceive the functionality (maybe a "just works"), the issues ("grrrr" and "never use it again"). This starts from the initial installation of the software until the (hopefully not) removal. Usually people refer to that being the (overall) "User Experience". One part of that is the visual appearance - including logo text, graphics, claims. In the best of all worlds (no issues, just pleasing experience), the visual design exactly matches and emphasizes this positive experience. So the logo and the visuals express the already perceived feelings and emotions. But ... The world isn't that optimal - so the branding does (at least in parts) communicate what the creator(s) of the product had in mind - whether they achieved the goal or not. So creators want to communicate a certain "feeling" or "emotion" whether the product will create it or not (usually producers of sweet beverages communicate the social aspect within their promotion activities). However, an example that is more valid for us: A very extreme and progressive branding (new, innovative, cutting edge) will fail for most people - because we (finally) cannot prove that this is correct (no trust after a certain time). At the moment, we can provide something like: versatility, productivity, quality. Another aspect is, that we are a group of individuals and companies who create a software - together. So we also think about our own motivation - and usually want to express that. A famous example is the Ubuntu logo - three people in a circle, warm colors. (By the way, Ubuntu has some very good reading at [2].) Finally, a good branding considers all of these aspects. It shapes how we want to be perceived, but also what we currently stand for. It considers our users and our community. If things are too different, then we have to work on separate brandings for both software and community. This is far more important than a simple logo. But this has to be done without rush ... > ... but I don't think that this will be shared by the majority here > and in the other teams involved, so I don't want to define a mega > category inside the community. At the moment, we make up the "initial branding" without exact knowledge what all the people here think, without a long-term product roadmap which might have influence. So - to come back to the initial question - we currently work on the "Visual brand identity" [3] and are assuming some of the issues mentioned before. To make sure that this is correct, we have these discussions on the "object" (logo, presentations, colors) - although we should discuss about values and visual language. When I initially made up the branding page, I tried to quickly summarize my assumptions [4] based on our discussions / previous experiences within OOo (to be continued). This is now. I'm really looking forward to work with more experienced designers, more knowledge about our project and the software we want to shape to make up the "community branding" for LibreOffice. In the meantime, thanks for your patience, support and the discussions to - at least - create something that will work for the next release! @ Bernhard: Still thinking about the structuring proposal :-) Cheers, Christoph [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand [2] http://design.canonical.com/the-toolkit/ubuntu-brand-guidelines/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Visual_brand_identity [4] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Branding#Branding -- E-mail to marketing+h...@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to unsubscribe List archives are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/marketing/ All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted