Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
I've actually got ideas for what I think would make a good lineup of icon sets in the future: 1. Something like the current Gnome icons. They recently dropped their Tango ones on 2.30 and these new ones are rather interesting. 2. Something Metro-like. This could satisfy a need for more plain/monochrome icons for high/low contrast users, may also fit in well on the Android version too, and give us a good native look for Windows 8 users 3. Something bright and colorful for Windows XP/KDE/etc. On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Kévin PEIGNOT peignot.ke...@kpeignot.fr wrote: Hi Mirek, great to read you. Hi all(again) 2012/2/22 Mirek M. maz...@gmail.com Hi everyone, If we are to make an icon set, I would prefer it to be designed from scratch. I don't think we can achieve good quality by transforming the Tango icon set or the High Contrast Galaxy set (frankly, it's much harder for me to decipher the icons from the HC than the standard icon set). I tried from high contrast (see my last mail), I think we could achieve good quality. But, for sure, not the best one for most of the icons. I was thinking we could begin with a simple icon set for Android. We'd probably need to make this set anyway, as LibO would look really out-of-place on Android if it shipped with Tango icons. And the initial plans for the Android port are to make a high-fidelity document viewer, so we won't have to make many icons initially. As the Android port develops, the icon set would grow, and when it grew big enough, it would be suitable for the desktop version. I am totally in. Anyway, we will have to design a monochrom icon set. So it's good making android viewer one first, and to see, then, whether it can adapt to desktop, because it follow TDF plans and it permit a first feedback on the icons. As for active vs. disabled icons, Android has guidelineshttp://developer.android.com/design/style/iconography.htmlfor this: 30% opacity for disabled icons, light or dark. To truly achieve good quality, though, we need someone experienced to coordinate the project. Nobody's raised their hand so far -- perhaps we should ask some prominent open-source icon designers ourselves or raise money on KickStarter if nobody was willing to help with this for free. Do someone know one of them ? Steva ? (from Sun) ? I'm in for the kickstarter project, for sure, but I hope we could make without it. P.S. Also take a look at Adobe Buzzword's icons: http://www.writerstechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/buzzword-screenshot.png Quite beautiful. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
2012/2/22 Bhaavan Merchant bhaavanmerch...@gmail.com I think a good first step would be to clearly document all the icons needed in LibreOffice, naming conventions and other criteria (size, uses, fileformat, etc...) Maybe the result could be a sort of icon-map table (similar to a character map) for LibreOffice. Maybe this exists already but I haven't found it yet. There's some useful info on https://wiki.** documentfoundation.org/Design/**Whiteboards/LibreOffice_**Initial_Icons https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/LibreOffice_Initial_Icons . I agree, maybe we should use a wikipage for that (Something like that http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/NeededIcons http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/NeededIcons- Scuse me I don't have time to make more today but it's a starting point) Yes, I believe this will be a good idea and we can have guidelines for reference. The institutional and Darkish ones, as they are monochrome, can be considered as One icon set to design I suppose, just changing their colour then... Maybe changing color is possible within the software (having a basic icon, and software change it's color automatically ?) The colorful one can stay the Tango one in my way (even if I prefer Human) And we mustn't forget the High Contrast one IMO, as we are an office suite, our final icon set should match an institutional need of icons. In my opinion, dark, sober and sharp monochrome icons qualify with this requirement. Thus, I feel, that the icons must be of monochrome nature. For the colour, I think Mirek proposal is great, because, using Android guidelines if I remenber, it explain cases for dark as for light Background. The first problem for me is : *How do we decide if we make a monochrome icon set or a not monochrome one ?* Wikipage for voting ? In terms of design, I like the icons which Google Docs ( http://www.ezoubi.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/new_old_look_icons_google_docs.png ) use, and am thinking on that lines. Google using this seems to show it's not a too bad idea ;) Also the basic icons visible in the this Citrus Mockup ( http://cdn.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/find1.png) look clean to me. Again, this is a personal view and choice may vary from person to person. In terms of implementation, i believe that it would be a save of time and effort if we begin with using an existing theme. I am not sure if we have a tool which could apply some property (say something like a monochrome layer over the icon) across an entire icon set, and I will do some research into this. If we do manage to get this as a script, we could run it to create mono-chrome versions of a few icon-themes like tango, and then see the result and choose and modify accordingly. Great Idea. And then making one icon set (I mean color) and including this script in the software to generate the others colors ? Should we ask on dev mailing list if this is possible / if it would need lot of CPU/memory resource (The script idea may be a bit naive and I am not sure of the intricacies involved, but I am willing to work for this if I get a positive response). -- Bhaavan Merchant -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
Hi all, I'd like to avoid to give an opinion on whether a monochrome icon set does make sense, but ... Am Mittwoch, den 22.02.2012, 18:47 +0100 schrieb Kévin PEIGNOT: In terms of implementation, i believe that it would be a save of time and effort if we begin with using an existing theme. I am not sure if we have a tool which could apply some property (say something like a monochrome layer over the icon) across an entire icon set, and I will do some research into this. If we do manage to get this as a script, we could run it to create mono-chrome versions of a few icon-themes like tango, and then see the result and choose and modify accordingly. Great Idea. And then making one icon set (I mean color) and including this script in the software to generate the others colors ? Should we ask on dev mailing list if this is possible / if it would need lot of CPU/memory resource I don't think that will work well given our massive number of icons and the need for easy understandability. Even today, scalable icons (SVG) are not used for small icon sizes, because these need to be tweaked by designers to achieve reasonable quality. So, removing the information channel color automatically might not lead to sufficient results. However, wouldn't be easiest thing to pick some icons and to use a graphics program like The Gimp to apply some effects to continue the discussion? Here is - for example - a link to the Galaxy icons (don't know the license): http://www.openoffice.org/ui/VisualDesign/gifs/Icons/example_galaxy_icons.png Then it should be possible to test whether active icons, highlighted icons and disabled icons can actually be recognized easily. Maybe Björn can jump in and help us with some icon usability testing ... Stella (the former designer at Sun) did something similar when working on new disabled icon effects. That worked well to get an idea about the finally desired effect: http://www.openoffice.org/ui/VisualDesign/OOo_galaxy_disabled.html Cheers, Christoph -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
Hi all I tried modifying official hicontrast theme (I choosed default one just because it was in the repos and easy to test ) . Hicontrast is a good basis because It's maybe the more complete theme of all. Here is the result for 5 icons : http://ubuntuone.com/7HLYSzrN8lfimbXLYUiOw5 I used Android Guidelines colors, as adviced by Mirek (I didn't choosed well colored / non colored parts, but it's a first start to see whether it's possible to have something OK based on highcontrast, easily) I tried using little and big icons sizes, they are or too big or too little. Link to high contrast theme : http://ubuntuone.com/4UaF2dRGZS87xL1qMOGlc0 So, how to decide whether we use - or not - monochrom icons ? Kévin 2012/2/22 Christoph Noack christ...@dogmatux.com Hi again, I think I need to reply to my own mail ;-) Am Mittwoch, den 22.02.2012, 19:29 +0100 schrieb Christoph Noack: Hi all, I'd like to avoid to give an opinion on whether a monochrome icon set does make sense, but ... Am Mittwoch, den 22.02.2012, 18:47 +0100 schrieb Kévin PEIGNOT: In terms of implementation, i believe that it would be a save of time and effort if we begin with using an existing theme. [...] Great Idea. And then making one icon set (I mean color) and including this script in the software to generate the others colors ? Should we ask on dev mailing list if this is possible / if it would need lot of CPU/memory resource I don't think that will work well given our massive number of icons and the need for easy understandability. Even today, scalable icons (SVG) are not used for small icon sizes, because these need to be tweaked by designers to achieve reasonable quality. So, removing the information channel color automatically might not lead to sufficient results. Kévin, I've read your mail again and noticed that Mirek makes decent use of colors in his mockup. That made me think of the High Contrast icons / graphics I was working on some time ago - maybe a good starting point would be the High Contrast theme. The number of colors is rather low, so it should be possible to reduce the contrast a bit (maybe also exchanging some colors), so that the desired effect of monochrome icons can be realized rather easily. Please have a look at one of the graphics (randomly chosen): http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/1.1/images/accessibility.jpg On the plus side, using the old Galaxy HC icons would bring us better icon quality than we have today with the Tango set (that lacks some icons in the less used places). However, wouldn't be easiest thing to pick some icons and to use a graphics program like The Gimp to apply some effects to continue the discussion? [...] Finally, sorry for the additional mail ... Cheers, Christoph -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
Hi Mirek, great to read you. Hi all(again) 2012/2/22 Mirek M. maz...@gmail.com Hi everyone, If we are to make an icon set, I would prefer it to be designed from scratch. I don't think we can achieve good quality by transforming the Tango icon set or the High Contrast Galaxy set (frankly, it's much harder for me to decipher the icons from the HC than the standard icon set). I tried from high contrast (see my last mail), I think we could achieve good quality. But, for sure, not the best one for most of the icons. I was thinking we could begin with a simple icon set for Android. We'd probably need to make this set anyway, as LibO would look really out-of-place on Android if it shipped with Tango icons. And the initial plans for the Android port are to make a high-fidelity document viewer, so we won't have to make many icons initially. As the Android port develops, the icon set would grow, and when it grew big enough, it would be suitable for the desktop version. I am totally in. Anyway, we will have to design a monochrom icon set. So it's good making android viewer one first, and to see, then, whether it can adapt to desktop, because it follow TDF plans and it permit a first feedback on the icons. As for active vs. disabled icons, Android has guidelineshttp://developer.android.com/design/style/iconography.htmlfor this: 30% opacity for disabled icons, light or dark. To truly achieve good quality, though, we need someone experienced to coordinate the project. Nobody's raised their hand so far -- perhaps we should ask some prominent open-source icon designers ourselves or raise money on KickStarter if nobody was willing to help with this for free. Do someone know one of them ? Steva ? (from Sun) ? I'm in for the kickstarter project, for sure, but I hope we could make without it. P.S. Also take a look at Adobe Buzzword's icons: http://www.writerstechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/buzzword-screenshot.png Quite beautiful. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
2012/2/20 Sveinn í Felli svei...@nett.is Þann mán 20.feb 2012 20:00, skrifaði Christoph Noack: --- Am Mittwoch, den 15.02.2012, 14:08 +0100 schrieb Stefan Knorr (Astron): --- On 15 February 2012 13:50, Charles-H.Schulz charles.schulz@**documentfoundation.orgcharles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: - Do we want a reference set of icons? Mostly, we want to have a well-maintained set of icons. Weither it is called reference set, or well-maintained set, I strongly agree to the general idea here. Currently, none of the themes meet that definition, as all of them lack icons for certain actions. That's one of the reasons why I am not exactly 100% behind creating a completely new icon set – I think, fixing Tango should go first. Why? Tango may not be everyone's favourite theme (neither are monochrome icons, ... I digress), but a) it has an established visual style b) it's not so hard to find free/license-compliant Tango icons on the internet c) the theme already exists and only needs extending and updating. Nevertheless, if people come up with a new, substantial set of quality icons, I'll do my best to get it into LibO. Well, I'd like to add two additional thoughts here: * If we stick with Tango, we might loose some people interested in icon design, since working on something established is usually less desired than creating something new. But, since creating something new (a huge set in a good quality) is an enormous task, going for Tango seems indeed better. * I know from talks with Stella (the designer of the e.g. Galaxy icon set for OpenOffice.org) that she needed lots (!) of time to cope with the enormous number of icons and thus unique metaphors. So working on an existing set will help us to create a basis for a new set. --- However, since we discuss this issue from time to time, wouldn't it be helpful to document a decision by the Design Team? But, of course, this needs some consensus ... basically, it is a sub-decision about the general visual design of LibO. Opinions, anyone? Some (humble) feedback: I think a good first step would be to clearly document all the icons needed in LibreOffice, naming conventions and other criteria (size, uses, fileformat, etc...) Maybe the result could be a sort of icon-map table (similar to a character map) for LibreOffice. Maybe this exists already but I haven't found it yet. There's some useful info on https://wiki.** documentfoundation.org/Design/**Whiteboards/LibreOffice_**Initial_Iconshttps://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/LibreOffice_Initial_Icons . I agree, maybe we should use a wikipage for that (Something like that http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/NeededIcons - Scuse me I don't have time to make more today but it's a starting point) Working on a couple of existing icon sets (Tango + Oxygen?) should not be that difficult if there are good design guidelines for each and if interested people could easily see which icons are missing. Then there might be work on new sets; personally I would never use a monochrome set (even with some integrated color coding) - but I admire Mirek's design in its simplicity and I think it will appeal to many people. Guess my visual detectors are spoiled with colors and forms ;-) I'm sure we should officially maintain one icon theme (and its variant as High Contrast) not more. But to choose whether to maintain a monochrome (as Mirek Proposal) or colorful one, we should list positives and negatives for each case, UX speaking (not thinking It is beautiful / It's not beautiful : Everyone will have a different opinion on this), just thinking : How can it help users of LibO ? And list this on the Wiki. So, I really think there should be choice by default, e.g. one darkish stylish theme, an institutional one and a cheering colorful one. For example. The institutional and Darkish ones, as they are monochrome, can be considered as One icon set to design I suppose, just changing their colour then... Maybe changing color is possible within the software (having a basic icon, and software change it's color automatically ?) The colorful one can stay the Tango one in my way (even if I prefer Human) And we mustn't forget the High Contrast one Finally; even though the compilation/creation of icon themes for LibreOffice should be coordinated at LO/TDF, shouldn't we explore the possibility of doing the actual design in cooperation with other icon-design sites, especially for the existing themes ? Just thoughts. Best regards, Sveinn í Felli Kévin -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@global.**libreoffice.orgdesign%2bh...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/**get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-**
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
Monochrome icons are the way to go. Look[1], even Microsoft has introduced them into Visual Studio (a toolbar-based UI app) and it lloks just great. [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-49-52-metablogapi/1464.image3_5F00_0ECF28C7.png -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
Hello Kevin, Bhaavan, all, Le mercredi 15 février 2012 à 18:04 +0530, Bhaavan Merchant a écrit : I couldnt agree more with the fact that a flat and OS independent icon set will help LibO. This is my +1 to the idea. however, i also believe, that the codebase for the single icon set much be such that later on, it must be possible to change icons using extensions. Well you don't even need an extension to change icons (just go to the Options Display ...) but indeed, it would be nice to redesign new icons. The question I think, should answer a few parameters: - Do we want a reference set of icons? - Should we have specific icons for each platform (Tango anyone?) - What about the accessibility (C. Strobbe?) I'm sure there are more; so yes for new icons, but let's just ask ourselves what it is we'll do with them. In the meantime, creative and designers should be welcome to start using their pencils :-) Best, -- Charles-H. Schulz Co-Founder Director, The Document Foundation. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: New icon set
Hi, On 15 February 2012 13:50, Charles-H.Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: - Do we want a reference set of icons? Mostly, we want to have a well-maintained set of icons. Currently, none of the themes meet that definition, as all of them lack icons for certain actions. That's one of the reasons why I am not exactly 100% behind creating a completely new icon set – I think, fixing Tango should go first. Why? Tango may not be everyone's favourite theme (neither are monochrome icons, ... I digress), but a) it has an established visual style b) it's not so hard to find free/license-compliant Tango icons on the internet c) the theme already exists and only needs extending and updating. Nevertheless, if people come up with a new, substantial set of quality icons, I'll do my best to get it into LibO. - Should we have specific icons for each platform (Tango anyone?) Only if we can afford it. Currently, we can't really, since there are so many icons and they are so disorganised and also none of our themes is complete. - What about the accessibility (C. Strobbe?) That might be of the areas where well-done monochrome icons could actually help. Our current high-contrast icons, as you might know are a mixture of very pixely Ooo 1 to Ooo 3 icons and are not very consistent. Regards, Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
