Hi Bernhard, all,
I hope that everyone on the art list will add their views on this
subject. The speedy response to the logo design proposal suggests that
there is a widespread desire to have an impact on OOo's visual
branding/artwork/design/identity, so I hope that this discussion will
become just as vibrant.
On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Bernhard Dippold
wrote:
[...]
>> Bernhard, if it weren't for you, the art project would probably be
>> experiencing deafening silence right now. Many of our very talented
>> and active members have disappeared, and I suspect a lack of impact
>> (by the Art project on OOo's artwork) would be the major cause of
>> this. Personally, I was inspired to join the Art project when I saw
>> your presentation at 2006 OOo Convention [1]. The vision contained
>> in that presentation is yet to be realized, but I stick around
>> because I am optimistic that it can be done.
>
> I've been off the project (the entire OOo community) for nearly two
> years - don't know if I had been able to realize at least parts of it...
There was a concerted effort, but sadly there were few concrete
outcomes. There were issues with submissions dedicated to new icons,
branding bugs, OOo's logo, splash screen, the font ... etc [1]. All
the Art project managed to influence for OOo 3 was the splash screen,
but the process there was not very collaborative (i.e., we only had
one round and no time to comment on the winning design until
afterwards).
[1]
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/buglist.cgi?Submit%20query=Submit%20query&component=marketing&subcomponent=art&issue_status=NEW&issue_status=STARTED&issue_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=exact&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=exact&emailreporter2=1&issueidtype=include&issue_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&issue_file_loc=&issue_file_loc_type=substring&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=substring&keywords=&keywords_type=anytokens&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&order=issues.issue_id
[...]
>> The community needs to take a more active role to create a
>> consistent, powerful and effective visual identity for OOo. The
>> latest issue with the ODF mimetype icons demonstrates that the art
>> project is either not well known to major decision makers, or it is
>> not considered relevant/useful. It is partially up to us to make sure
>> that these sorts of things do not happen again in the future.
>
> That's the reason for me to poach in areas Stella (and Sun in general) is
> used to work on her own.
>
> Of course it's much easier and time sparing to discuss, create and decide
> with the colleagues from the next office than to involve a community of
> individuals with many different (sometimes strange) ideas, educational and
> professional levels, and alternative designs that need to be commented -
> perhaps to be integrated in your own work.
True, but it's up to us to prove otherwise - take the new OOo logo
design proposals - that took off very quickly. It shows we can
mobilize and be very responsive in a relatively short period of time.
Here is one possible approach: the community could have the option of either:
a) inheriting StarOffice artwork (currently the default case, and it
could be the same in the future) or
b) designing its own (this option has been missing in the past)
This could be done on a case-by-case basis. In other words, Sun would
be free to continue as is with artwork related to StarOffice, but we,
as a community (which would of course have people from Sun), should be
able to decide (or have greater say in) what OOo will look like by
being able to provide our own artwork, rather than automatically
inheriting StarOffice artwork in the majority of cases.
> On the other hand: This is an open source project with a dedicated
> sub-project. Even if the Art Project started with creating marketing
> material, it became much broader in directive during the last years.
>
Perhaps "Art Project" is too small as name - "Visual recognition"
or "Branding Art" comes to my mind...
>>
>> Visual Design already exists [2], but Stella is the only one I can
>> see taking part in it.
>
> IIRC she built these pages in order to share her work with the community. As
> she seems to be the only OOo designer at Sun, I don't wander about other
> contributors to the website and the wiki.
>
>> A lot of important branding and artwork
>> activity happens on those pages, but we aren't really made aware of
>> their existence or involved in what goes on.
>
> We did know about them, but haven't been involved at all.
The visual design pages are there, but there is no consultation with
the art project (with the exception of the splash screen) so there
might well be some people who don't know about it at all (i.e., we
don't instruct new members to keep an eye on the Visual Design pages).
OOo 3's mimetype icons provide one illustration -
