[Design-team] Gnome-shell extension that adds a Fedora logo

[Paul W. Frields]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 05:18:20PM +0200, Timur Kristóf wrote:
> 
> > There's no requirement to re-brand upstream stuff.  After all, we
> > don't change the appearance or logos in Eclipse, GIMP, Inkscape, etc.
> >
> In this case, why do we rebrand KDE, Xfce, and all other desktop 
> environments that are included in Fedora?

I said it wasn't a requirement.  If the design of these environments
has a place for it, I don't see a problem with doing so.

> > I think it would be more useful to work on something like the
> > start.fedoraproject.org site, and have that page be a better resource
> > for building brand.  (If you look at it currently, you'll find that
> > it's improved, but still has a lot of room for improvement.)
> >
> That is a completely unrelated issue. But I agree, that site could use 
> some improvements.

It's not unrelated at all, if the point of this exercise is to build
brand, as opposed to "make GNOME 3 look like GNOME 2."

> > After all, this start page is part of the new browser tabs in Firefox
> > that the vast majority of users will open.  It has more room for
> > meaningful content than a simple logo on a menu.  Putting worthwhile,
> > substantial material where people will see it is more effective for
> > building our brand than trying to force an old idiom into a design
> > that doesn't need it.
> You didn't really answer my question.
> If we don't have any branding on Fedora's default installation, how will 
> users be able to distinguish between Fedora and any other Gnome 
> distribution? Changing a start page in Firefox doesn't really cut it.

This did answer the question.  Almost every user will presumably open
the web browser, and that will allow them to distinguish what they're
using.  An omnipresent logo is not the one and only way one can make
distinguishments.  In fact, in the larger sense, Fedora has
distinguished itself over the years by presenting the best upstream
work while trying to avoid imposing hacks on it.

> I'll give you an example. Back then when I was about to decide which 
> distribution to use, Ubuntu and Fedora looked largely the same, they 
> only differed from each other in a few colors and a logo.

I think we can safely say this is no longer the case, though, so this
example may not be the best one.

> Having no expertise with Linux at all, I liked Fedora's artwork better, 
> so I decided to choose Fedora. (And I haven't regret it.) However, by 
> giving up all Fedora identity from our default desktop, users will see 
> no difference from other distros either. And this is a mistake.

The arrangement was made to do this for GNOME 3 in Fedora 15 through a
number of conversations between the Desktop and Design teams.  Perhaps
Fedora 16 will have a different background wallpaper, because this
decision was made purely regarding Fedora 15.

There aren't really any ways to tell whether doing this is or isn't a
mistake.  It's something happening especially for this release, and
next release the approach may be different.

> By giving up its identity, not only will Fedora look the same as any 
> other distro that happens to package Gnome 3, but none of their users 
> will feel like trying it either, becuse to them, looks are the deciding 
> factor.

Again, there's no proof this is the case.  There have been enough
stories about GNOME 3 and Fedora in the press already that I believe
we're going to end up attracting a lot of people who are interested in
seeing this new desktop environment.  Which one of us is right?
There's no way to tell, and I accept that.  But I'd rather see Fedora
sporting (and supporting) the latest innovative approach and not
trying to hack it into an old idiom.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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