[Design-team] Constantine

Nicu Buculei nicu_fedora at nicubunu.ro
Tue Jul 7 10:15:18 UTC 2009


On 07/06/2009 06:11 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> Was wondering if anybody had thoughts about this - I put a bit of work
> into it and haven't gotten any feedback yet! :)

Ops! It was a long message with a lot of intense content, so I scheduled 
it "later" and then forgot about it...

> On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 20:09 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>> - Mortality vs Immortality - Byzantine art&  culture flourished over
>> 1000 years (330-1453) and is still known of today - We can relate this
>> to Fedora - Fedora does not try to only look 'cool' on the surface and
>> not have much substance underneath; Fedora is very concerned about
>> quality and doing the right thing. Fedora hopefully is at the forefront
>> of promoting a culture/philosophy and producing a quality system that
>> will bring order and the right way forward. A few ideas on representing
>> this: have a simple&  transparent (or not quite drawn-in) subject grow
>> in complexity&  depth and become more opaque maybe. Or go from weak to
>> saturated colors and/or values. The message would be along the lines of
>> Fedora's hopeful grasp towards greatness/eternity.

Something like tatica's blue mosaic, well defined in the center and 
fading towards the edges. Or the coin idea some were talking about, also 
can be fading in/out.
We need the strong subject/metaphor for greatness/eternity.

>> - The natural/impermanent/imperfect vs. technology/permanent/perfect -
>> building on the above theme... Yeats makes reference to Byzantine
>> Emperor Theophilos' singing mechanical golden birds (he also had
>> mechanical golden lions as well, hmmm... :) ) I feel like themes that
>> deal with technology vs nature usually pose technology in the 'bad guy'
>> light and nature in the 'good guy' light, so it might be interesting to
>> send a message that poses technology (Fedora) as an ally of nature (the
>> people using Fedora) to make it better (to improve Fedora users' lives).
>> Visually this could maybe take a steampunk bird form hehe.

Paul's idea about vines resonate with me, when I was playing with the 
steampunk concept for F10 I was thinking "the next one may be something 
more connected to the nature with vines and stuff".
We are going far from the "simple, vector" target but I can't stop 
thinking about a being half mechanical (steampunk?) half organic (vines?)

>> - Order from Chaos - Constantine was known for bringing order to the
>> chaos of the Roman empire at the time he began rule and Constantinople
>> seems to have served as a central hub / symbol of that order. Perhaps
>> Fedora is the Constantinople to the chaos of crappy, proprietary
>> software. The message would be that open source software is inevitable
>> and is the way forward to order and progress.

There is great potential in this and I think we may find a way to 
approach it with something simple. Order is simplicity.
Firther reading: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28order_and_disorder%29

On a second thought, reading the link above, isn't the "Cathedral and 
the Bazaar" exactly the opposite, with the proprietary development model 
an ordered cathedral and FOSS a chaotic bazaar? Maybe we talk about a 
new king of "order", not one imposed from the above, but one growing 
naturally from the foundations?

>> - Liberation through enlightenment - '... Consume my heart away; sick
>> with desire... gather me Into the artifice of eternity.' Liberation of
>> the soul from worldly desires... liberation of the software and more
>> generally culture from worldly desires...? worldly desires = closed
>> firmware and patented codecs? hehe

And the sinners can see the light and redeem themselves... we are 
*almost* religious here :p
Or, by contrary, we are anti-religious: enlightenment breaking the dogma 
and bringing personal and collective freedom.

I think we may try to illustrate this in a simple way with an 
eruption/explosion of light.

>> - Unity/Coming together to make something great - and could quite easily
>> be communicated with the golden mosaic designs already being discussed -
>> alone one tile is nothing special, but the tiles together can make a
>> beautiful piece of art. Along similar lines, Constantinople itself was a
>> trading center where many cultures intersected.

This one is also good, a distro is *a lot* about integration and more 
than the sum of its parts.
And we have a lot of stories to tell about the combination of our four 
fonndations.

-- 
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/
photography: http://photoblog.nicubunu.ro/
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/


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