[art] My thoughts on the new start center and icons
Just to throw my hat in on this whole bit, I've added this to My Talk and may update as I go... http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_talk:Traag1 Ever since Oracle took over Sun and OOo 3.2.1 was announced, there has been a buzz about the new colorless icons. Most of the feedback I've seen has been negative since, let's face it, Oracle is breaking a widely used and recognized color format in favor of colorless icons, all of which say ODF and look very reminiscent of Adobe's file icon set (Which are, by the way, themselves color coded). While they do look clean, and perhaps more professional, than the old icon set, they add nothing to the usability or accessibility of the suite. In fact, they seem to do quite the opposite, forcing you to squint to see what is what. Without the adjacent text to explain what each icon is, most people might be completely lost, particularly on Windows machines where extensions for known file types are hidden by default. I appreciate that Oracle is taking OOo under their wing and putting any effort to release new versions and make the look and feel of the product more their own, but I do question the wisdom of colorless icons, and I also question the effort put into the new start center. In my humble opinion, the new start center, and icons, look rushed. Evidence of this can be found not only in the very sparse look of the start center and it's lack of color, but also in the minute details. Look, for instance, at the placement of the text next to the icons. They appear as if they were haphazardly thrown there. Also, on the Mac, the blue selection glow around the box that pops up when you hover over something kind of gets cut off. Look at the picture here: [1] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/File:Unbalanced.png Notice how the text and selection boxes line up perfectly, but the icons kind of float wherever. It's just kind of sparse and clunky, and I think even a light tinting of color would have been nice. I'll be the first to admit that past versions of OOo sometimes went way too far with the color and busy graphics, and I applaud Oracle for scaling it down a bit, but I kind of feel as though they may have scaled it down a bit too much. Time will tell whether this is a beginning or an end, but I feel that it is a beginning, and I encourage the Oracle team and all of the OOo community to keep moving forward. To end on a positive note, I will say that I love the new Gull Orb thingy and the new, friendlier logo. -Brian
Re: [art] Branding/ODF icons
Hi Andy, all. I was under the impression that we were waiting to hear the results of some sort of branding talks or something. Every time I've contributed anything it has been brought to my attention the there were discussions about new branding going on and that anything following the old branding might soon be irrelevant. Yet the new branding is uncertain? So I don't know about anyone else but I've just been waiting to hear what's going on. I had no idea new logos were even being considered. -best -Brian On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Andy Brown a...@the-martin-byrd.netwrote: Hi all, Has there been any head way made on the new colors/icons/logos? I have not seen any thing come through the art,branding or marketing list nor on any of the web sites. Andy - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [art] Branding/ODF icons
Hey to follow up I just went and looked at the branding page subscribed to the branding mailing list and both are empty as can be; maybe everyone's just as confused as I am? -brian On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Brian Coale coale.br...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Andy, all. I was under the impression that we were waiting to hear the results of some sort of branding talks or something. Every time I've contributed anything it has been brought to my attention the there were discussions about new branding going on and that anything following the old branding might soon be irrelevant. Yet the new branding is uncertain? So I don't know about anyone else but I've just been waiting to hear what's going on. I had no idea new logos were even being considered. -best -Brian On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Andy Brown a...@the-martin-byrd.netwrote: Hi all, Has there been any head way made on the new colors/icons/logos? I have not seen any thing come through the art,branding or marketing list nor on any of the web sites. Andy - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [art] OpenOffice.org Logo
Hi all! Andy wrote: Also the aspect ratio needs to be 5385 X 2265 to make the final image sharp on the banner. just my 2 cents: I would recommend NOT using this size until a final proof, or near-final proof is being made. Otherwise we'll be mucking up the OOo server and emails with HUGE files that are of tremendous size. Also, it would almost certainly have to be a vector graphic, which would be sharp at any size regardless. Dr. Bernhard Dippold wrote: We are just starting an initiative to create a more consistent branding throughout all areas of OOo (I'll have finished my summary of the branding meeting at Hamburg this weekend), so we can't tell you now about the design we'll have for the anniversary. I'm ready to toss around some ideas for this, but I've been waiting to see what the results of the initiative are going to be. I'm am interested, as obviously you are, in CONSISTENT branding ideas that we can ALL use as a springboard for more relevant and constructive design concepts. in the meantime... standing by... ;) -Brian
Re: [art] OpenOffice.org Logo
Hello Andy, all, On 1/26/2010 4:19 PM, Andy Brown wrote: I only note the aspect ratio as that is what the companies web site say is needed for a banner the size I am looking at. Not being a graphic designer all I can do is pass on the information. Absolutely understandable. My comment was more aimed at members of the art project who are thinking of giving it a go as a precautionary statement not to send rough drafts of that size through the email system or on the wiki. The proper dimensions for the final product will of course be observed. This site list the following as allowable graphic files. Adobe Acrobat Document (*.pdf) (recommended) Adobe Illustrator Artwork (*.ai) (recommended) Adobe Photoshop Image (*.psd) (recommended) Bitmap Image (*.bmp) CorelDRAW Image (*.cdr,*.clk) GIF Image (*.gif) JPEG Image (*.jpg,*.jpeg) Microsoft Publisher 2003 Document (*.pub)[-- :O !? ] Microsoft Word 2003 Document (*.doc,*.docx) PCX Image Document (*.pcx) PICT Image (*.pic,*.pict,*.pct) PNG Image (*.png) PostScript File (*.ps) Windows Enhanced Metafile (*.emf) Windows Metafile (*.wmf) Thanks. Andy Good to know. Did they happen to mention the dpi, or do they not care so long as it meets the pixel dimension requirements? High-end graphics generally, as a rule, tend to be around 300dpi, but sometimes larger designs meant to be viewed at a distance are much lower, maybe 100dpi. Thanks again! :) -Brian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [art] :: New Web Buttons ::
Hello Bernhard, everyone, On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Bernhard Dippold bernh...@familie-dippold.at wrote: Hi Brian, all, I'm back again from Hamburg, but will post about the meeting tomorrow... Hope you had an excellent and productive trip :) For now just a few remarks regarding your new web buttons, Brian: Brian Coale schrieb: [...] I posted some new Glass web buttons here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Art/Gallery/WebButtons#Brian_Coale for anyone who wanted a nice fancy button on their site showing their support for OpenOffice.org. The buttons really look fancy and glassy, but you already mentioned: [...] they don't follow the standard design and colors of much of the marketing material, You know that we try to strengthen the visual impression of OpenOffice.org by reproducing the same look and feel in every representation of our product and our project. Even if your buttons look good, they don't provide the positive recognition of the product - mainly because of the colors differing quite a lot from the blue tone of our logo or the application colors from the icons. This is a very good point, and I have addressed this issue by re-releasing the glass set using only official colors. There are less of them now, but sometimes less is more. but what I've noticed is that many, many web buttons out there (for many different products) only loosely follow branding guidelines. You are totally right, most of our web buttons don't respect the idea of a unique OOo branding - they are quite old, but we didn't have newer ones. But this doesn't mean that we don't want to have a strong branding and a good recognition by our users. I added the standard information about official and additional galleries to the wiki page, but even if the official buttons are very much outdated, I'm thinking about adding another, more stronger suggestion to use the official ones to the page. As it will hopefully not take too much time to come to a consistent branding for OOo, I don't want new official buttons to be created now - we need to define the style before. I understand your concern here, but standing by and waiting for a new direction to go is no way to come up with fresh ideas. As artists we should always create, even when the creating is futile and frivolous; and although it might be decided tomorrow the the logo is to be completely changed and the new official color is red, I would not regret creating these unofficial and unsupported tidbits in the meantime as a way to throw around my ideas. However, the OOo logo is unaltered The smallest logo doesn't contain the gulls - without them the logo is modified in a way the trademark holder doesn't want to see in public (neither do I ;-) ) If this is the case, I would suggest that no web buttons smaller than 88x31 pixels be made. As it is, in my opinion, not possible to fit the logo, with the gulls placed just as they are, in a button only 15 pixels tall and have it still be legible. I've already omitted mine. except for being reverse-type, which is typical usage for logos shown over dark backgrounds. White logos are possible on dark monochrome background, for colored background the colored logos (on dark: whiteblue) should be used. I can hardly read your logos, I'm quite sure that this is caused by the small difference in brightness between the logo colors and the text. The problem here is if the background color is the official blue, and the text on the logo is official blue, what do you have? Nonetheless, after some thought about your email, I went about lightening the background with a gradient using only official blue and white, and used the original logo colors. I think it actually came out quite nice. Also I've used slogans I've seen on other marketing materials I've seen around the project. Whether or not these are official slogans, I don't know. The present official slogan is Open. For Business, but it has been established in 2006 IIRC. Other slogans are even older, so we need to define a slogan fitting with our new position in market, our anniversary and other parts of the main marketing strategy. It's a pity that neither this strategy nor a resulting slogan has been considered on the general marketing mailing list d...@marketing.openoffice.org. But the active people in the marketing project don't have had the time to do so... Yes, it really wasn't very clear what, if any, official slogan was being used. I went ahead and used the one you suggested. It's a good one. Thanks for putting me straight on that. I've offered them in dark gray and blue, other colors are available upon request. The only color that might fit with our goals could be the dark blue (RGB 6,52,140) from our logo. Right, then I revoke the offer. Let me know what you think, comments, criticism and faint praise are welcomed! Sorry for not being totally positive
Re: [art] OpenOffice.org Identity a little close to that of Coffee Sweetener?
Hey everyone! Nice to see so much discussion over this, it really shows that this is an active community and that you care about what you are doing here. That's a definite positive for me. On 1/7/2010 4:24 PM, Dennis Smolek wrote: To all, I would re-examine when EQUAL started using this motif and branding image. Equal isnt generally kept up with in standard design blogs so I cant really find the date of the change. I really don't think who did what first matters as much as having a strong branding identity, perhaps we should look at it from this point of view rather than that of entitlement. But I have seen plenty of equal boxes that DONOT use this design or standard. I think it may be a bit of mirror thinking in the regards to the designers of the equal packaging. Honestly I cant see a relationship between the colored dots and the actual product, where the dots in OOo are representative of the software within the package. After I read this I actually had to go back and look at the splash screen and the start up screen to try to see which dots corresponded to which applications. This representation is so loose that I totally missed it. The shape of the 'dots' certainly have nothing to do with the software in the package, and the colors, well maybe you can make an argument there, but as I count 6 applications and 7 dots it leaves some questions as to what goes with what. Whereas Nik was able to come up with all of this just from looking at the Equal packaging: - Their dots are following a curve that originates from the q in equal, a strong brand motif, based on the peak and trough in the curve, you get an impression of equilibrium. Hence equal, Like a sine curve. - The dots they use relate to the product itself, little pieces of refined sweetener. I assume the multi-colour refers to the introduction of flavour or taste. We use colours because of the different applications, but why do we use dots? where is the relevance of circles as applications? Even squares would be more appropriate. not bad... - The wireframe gulls (which are showing their age as Design elements) Although they bear a direct relation to the OOo branding, they are not an indispensable element of the branding itself, and I have to agree, they look very dated. Our splash screen curve is based on the SUN reverse-s, but when its lying down, where's the association? I think the reverse-S should always be vertical. Otherwise it dilutes the brand. This would be something for the new project to consider. I absolutely agree with this. OpenOffice.org, after all, is a product of Sun Microsystems, and should be treated as such. I would really like to see the branding and image more closely relate to the branding and image of, hmmm, say Java? Sun and Java are household names in the computer industry, and I think reminding people that they are related will only strengthen the branding and legitimacy of OpenOffice.org. When I told my boss we should migrate some of our dated Microsoft Office systems of OpenOffice.org she said who?, but I bet you if I told her we needed to update our Java she wouldn't even blink an eye. I'm only saying this because I feel strongly that the coloured dots should not be added to the OOo identity, not with such little relevance or thought, And this is a very valid point. Every element in a design should have a purpose, not just thrown together because it looks good; Personal preference should take a back seat to the message and the mission of a design piece. If we are serious about helping this product become a real competitor, we have to be absolutely serious about it's image and branding. I do not think there would be much of a LEGAL argument here, the design is simply a motif used by equal(a food product) compared to a representative element of a software package. This I agree with, they are not competing products, so there is little issue of legality, and besides, the branding is not SO close as to be considered theft. I LIKE how OOo uses the dots, and unless we really want to engineer a new concept I think we should keep it. -Dennis We can agree to disagree on the dots ;) --but I absolutely agree that unless something solid is ready to take its place that all or most of us can agree on, then keeping it will be a moot point. On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Bernhard Dippold bernh...@familie-dippold.at wrote: Hi Steven, Nik, all, Steven Shelton schrieb: On 1/7/2010 7:31 AM, Nikash V. SINGH wrote: The similarities are FAR too coincidental, and unintentional or not, this issue needs to be addressed otherwise it could lead to legal issues, or more pressing from my point of view, it would compromise the integrity of the Art project. I don't really see this as a major issue. At least in the States (and I'm assuming its similar elsewhere), there could only be legal issues of the similarity of the logos would tend to
Re: [art] marketing blog
Florian Effenberger wrote: I was thinking of having the whole blog in the OOo site design, with the blue gradients and such. What do you think about that? So do you mean exactly like the OOo site Wiki, or based on them? And if we make it axact, will that ruffle some feathers as it will be emulating official pages? I mean I suppose it will never look exact, but if we might get it really close, depending upon several things. I do like the idea though, the official pages are very clean. -Brian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [art] marketing blog
Christoph Noack wrote: Hi Florian, Brian and Dennis! A similar discussion has been started quite recently on the website-dev mailing list. To be honest, it has been started by me and the number of responses has been ... concise :-) Maybe that can be easily changed with your help. Basically, there are several more or less independent blogs/planets/information sources which miss a common design and a central location. For example: the marketing blog, the NLC planet, GullFOSS, the UX team blog, ... Since about one year we have the OpenOffice.org Planet which aggregates information and also allows to set-up sub-blogs. Might this be helpful for the marketing? And, since they are based on the same structure, other planets and the main site would have some benefit, too. Please read on here (and come back for the rest of the mail *g*): http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=devmsgNo=11193 FYI: This link didn't work for me... Florian, the UX team faces a pretty similar situation. That is how we try to address it: * Blogs: The Sun employees do use GullFOSS exclusively. Since only few people have an own blog, we set up a Blogspot blog for the community (similar to the ooomarketing, see [1]). * Aggregation: We use a sub-planet of the official OOo Planet to aggregate our postings from Sun and other community members. That allows us to present UX topics only [2]. * Aggregation²: We added the same sources to the official OOo Planet to present it to the whole community. The advantage is - when having only few postings - that there is sufficient traffic which covers the whole world around OOo. [3] * Blogspot design: Some time ago, I started to adapt the simple theme to better match the OOo colors. I know that it is fa...ar from perfect, but maybe it is a starting point. [1] http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/ [2] http://planet.services.openoffice.org/ux [3] http://planet.services.openoffice.org Aehm, there are still some unresolved issues. But anyway, I hope it helps a bit to continue the discussion. Maybe there is a chance to not only improve marketing stuff, but also all kind of news und buzz around OOo ;-) By the way, it seems that there are no links between ooomarketing and OOo Planet - and vice versa. Strange... This, to me, is one of the main issues with the blogs: Accessibility. It took me some effort to find the Marketing Blog and I was specifically looking for it. Am Samstag, den 02.01.2010, 13:28 +0100 schrieb Florian Effenberger: Hi Brian, I'm new to the project, so it took me a little while to find it, but I found the blog, and yes, it does look a bit spare. I noticed you're using Blogger for the backend, I don't really have much experience with Blogger as I tend to use Wordpress (my Wordpress blog is http://briancoale.com/blog/ ), but I'd be happy to help out with what I can. I can provide artwork, ideas, and if you'd like me to look at the backend to see if I can figure out how to integrate it into the blog (I'm not sure if Blogger uses themes and such?), I'd be happy to. Just some nice artwork a little tidying up would make that blog look a lot nicer, and it'd be a shame to scrap the whole thing for what seems to be a solvable aesthetics issue. Let me know. thanks for your reply! We currently use Blogger, but I plan to set-up an own blog, self-hosted, and import the existing postings. WordPress is one option, so we are rather flexible later on. The main problem at the moment is, that there are not many postings to the blog. Having a nice blog is good, but without much of content, it's not representative. So, next to the design, I also look for regular contributors :-) Aehm, seems the issues are identical to the UX blog ;-) Have a nice day, Christoph I don't know the politics of the different teams groups in the community, but I for one am positive on the thought of unifying some of the disparate elements. For one, it will make ALL of the information easier to find, and secondly it will likely drive more traffic to the blog. More traffic = more posts = greater interest in the blog. Since most blogs separate posts into categories there's little need to worry about organizing posts from differing groups (e.g. category=Marketing, category=UX, etc). I'm not sure exactly what all of the particulars would be, but I do believe the community could benefit from a more unified blog space. Also, I personally would recommend Wordpress over Blogger. Obviously it's nice that Blogger hosts you blog for you, but it seems to fall well short of the kind of customization and extensibility Wordpress offers. Plus it just seems to make sense: Wordpress is Open Source and is supported by a large community of people who write plugins and themes, and offer technical advice and support for, the project. Sound a little familiar? The only downside is
Re: [art] marketing blog
Florian Effenberger wrote: Hello, I hope everyone had a beautiful start into the year -- health, success and happiness to all of you in 2010! As the new year starts, I'd love to talk again about the marketing blog that has been in service for two years now. Thanks to the great efforts of Gabriel Gurley, we had some very interesting posts recently. However, the blog still is not attractive at all in terms of layout, and still, we have not many contributions. As the marketing blog is considered an official part of the marketing project, thus representing OOo, we should put more efforts into it. Are there interested contributors for writing regular blog entries? Are there members from the art project who like to contribute with a fresh design? If we don't manage to bring the marketing blog to a higher level, I'm in favor of archiving the current entries and shutting the blog down until we have something that is much more representative. What do you think? Florian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org Hello Happy new year! I'm new to the project, so it took me a little while to find it, but I found the blog, and yes, it does look a bit spare. I noticed you're using Blogger for the backend, I don't really have much experience with Blogger as I tend to use Wordpress (my Wordpress blog is http://briancoale.com/blog/ ), but I'd be happy to help out with what I can. I can provide artwork, ideas, and if you'd like me to look at the backend to see if I can figure out how to integrate it into the blog (I'm not sure if Blogger uses themes and such?), I'd be happy to. Just some nice artwork a little tidying up would make that blog look a lot nicer, and it'd be a shame to scrap the whole thing for what seems to be a solvable aesthetics issue. Let me know. Regards, -Brian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [art] marketing blog
Florian Effenberger wrote: Hello, I hope everyone had a beautiful start into the year -- health, success and happiness to all of you in 2010! As the new year starts, I'd love to talk again about the marketing blog that has been in service for two years now. Thanks to the great efforts of Gabriel Gurley, we had some very interesting posts recently. However, the blog still is not attractive at all in terms of layout, and still, we have not many contributions. As the marketing blog is considered an official part of the marketing project, thus representing OOo, we should put more efforts into it. Are there interested contributors for writing regular blog entries? Are there members from the art project who like to contribute with a fresh design? If we don't manage to bring the marketing blog to a higher level, I'm in favor of archiving the current entries and shutting the blog down until we have something that is much more representative. What do you think? Florian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org Hope I'm not jumping the gun, but I figured I had an idea so why not go with it? If you don't like it my feelings wont be hurt, I'm a professional that way, heh. Anyways, here's a link to a new header idea, as that's as good a place to start as any, and if it is of interest then we could talk about likes, dislikes, adjustments and perhaps a game plan for the rest of the blog: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/File:Blog-Hdr.png Happy New Year! -Brian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: art-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: art-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
