Hi,
I'm working on flyers for the Fedora products on behalf of the marketing team.
This is what I've made for the workstation product, for example, and the server and cloud products will follow the same template - with different text and screen-shots and so on inside.
A "notumble" version so you can read the text easily: https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/fedora-flyer-workstation/fedora -flyer-workstation-notumble.pdf
This is how it'll actually look: https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/fedora-flyer-workstation/fedora -flyer-workstation-tumble.pdf
Jiri, on the desktop list, said he received feedback that the front was too plain, and not attractive enough. Would you folks have some suggestions on how I could work on that? Maybe add a slogan to the front? The workstation is using "This is the Linux workstation that you've been waiting for." for F22, for example. (I don't think adding a screenshot or another image would improve it, personally.)
Hi Ankur,
On 06/02/2015 11:43 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I'm working on flyers for the Fedora products on behalf of the marketing team.
Can you give us a little more context around the project? We talked about this a little in our team meeting today, and for example - one thing that came up is that the content is very release-specific and thus not very 'timeless' in that if a large print run was done, the extras wouldn't be able to be used for very long. Do you know what the plans are in terms of printing process, quantities, regions, etc?
Just to illustrate where our thinking is coming from, I think a good example of tri-fold brochures we've done in the past are the SXSW 2011 design software brochures that Emichan created -
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/SXSW_Materials#Brochures
They talk about general / core features of different applications in Fedora and the approach has made these flyers very reusable. (Which is good, because our first print run was very large :) )
In contrast, I have a huge box full of Fedora 15 Design Suite DVDs I can't bear to toss because I know how much they cost right next to my desk at Red Hat - not quite so reusable :(
Jiri, on the desktop list, said he received feedback that the front was too plain, and not attractive enough. Would you folks have some suggestions on how I could work on that? Maybe add a slogan to the front? The workstation is using "This is the Linux workstation that you've been waiting for." for F22, for example. (I don't think adding a screenshot or another image would improve it, personally.)
I recognize the basic design as resembling a very simple template I had made some years ago for LibreOffice that could be updated easily by non-designers. I think we could probably rebuild the template in Scribus with a much nicer design to enable non-designers to be able to update the content but still have a nicer look and feel. I would suggest once we get a little more info about the background / goals / target audience / etc of the project that we could open up a design team ticket and have a designer work on that for you?
Hope this helps,
~m
On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 13:13 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Hi Ankur,
Hi Mairin,
On 06/02/2015 11:43 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I'm working on flyers for the Fedora products on behalf of the marketing team.
Can you give us a little more context around the project? We talked about this a little in our team meeting today, and for example - one thing that came up is that the content is very release-specific and thus not very 'timeless' in that if a large print run was done, the extras
wouldn't be able to be used for very long. Do you know what the plans
are in terms of printing process, quantities, regions, etc?
Just to illustrate where our thinking is coming from, I think a good example of tri-fold brochures we've done in the past are the SXSW 2011 design software brochures that Emichan created -
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/SXSW_Materials#Brochures
They talk about general / core features of different applications in Fedora and the approach has made these flyers very reusable. (Which is good, because our first print run was very large :) )
In contrast, I have a huge box full of Fedora 15 Design Suite DVDs I can't bear to toss because I know how much they cost right next to my
desk at Red Hat - not quite so reusable :(
Jiri, on the desktop list, said he received feedback that the front was too plain, and not attractive enough. Would you folks have some suggestions on how I could work on that? Maybe add a slogan to the front? The workstation is using "This is the Linux workstation that you've been waiting for." for F22, for example. (I don't think adding a screenshot or another image would improve it, personally.)
I recognize the basic design as resembling a very simple template I had made some years ago for LibreOffice that could be updated easily by non-designers. I think we could probably rebuild the template in Scribus with a much nicer design to enable non-designers to be able to update
the content but still have a nicer look and feel. I would suggest once we get a little more info about the background / goals / target audience / etc of the project that we could open up a design team ticket and have a designer work on that for you?
Hope this helps,
Thank you for discussing this at the meeting.
At the moment, I'm simply trying to provide the community with flyers that they can use at events. There hasn't been any discussion about it that I know of. I had made a workstation flyer for F21 and EMEA was happy to use it at their events (FOSDEM was one I think). I was just updating it to F22 so that people had something to give out at events that they attend/organise.
I know about the generic release independent one that you refer to - I updated it a while ago[1]. It'll be nice to have that updated to reflect the changes that Fedora.next brought - it's also on my TODO list.
Ideally, the community should have material ready to use at events and things, and the workstation flyer is just one of these things. (I'm also working on versions for the server and cloud products.) I must admit that I do not know who creates the flyers and marketing collateral - marketing or design or do they do it together - they haven't been done for a while. Ideally, marketing collateral should also be on our task lists, but it isn't on either the marketing teams' or the design teams' :(
https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-22/f-22-marketing-tasks.html https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-22/f-22-design-tasks.html
The flyers are in LaTeX because I happen to be the only person working on them - and I basically chose what fit me. I'm no designer, and LaTeX at least makes them look clean, and professional :). However, if others in the community do want to update and modify them (even though this doesn't seem to happen often), LaTeX is certainly not the best tool to use.
What I had in mind was something like this: - generic "timeless" flyer -> produced in large quantities since it can be used release after release - product and release specific flyers -> produced in smaller quantities so that they're not left over
The ambassadors do have an idea of how many they'd need - they have estimates for media production and those could be applied to flyers as well.
I know that we have marketing collateral and things on the wiki, but I don't know if the ambassadors are aware of this. I had made a page for F20: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/For_Ambassadors/Fedora20 and I was hoping to put it up again for F22 - actually I was hoping to have a better page - maybe press.fp.o: https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/press.fp.o/press.fp.o-mockup.png - that people could refer to all the time, instead of the wiki.
The marketing team is supposed to "brief ambassadors about release" - I've never seen this happen but I was hoping to do it this release - I wanted to have at least a set of flyers for the ambassadors before I asked the marketing team to prepare a "release kit" sort of thing.
So, this is all just routine stuff really, stuff that I think should be around all the time, and at each release :)
[1] https://github.com/sanjayankur31/fedora-release-flyer -generic/tree/master/flyers/2013-05
Hi,
On 06/02/2015 04:36 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
At the moment, I'm simply trying to provide the community with flyers that they can use at events. There hasn't been any discussion about it that I know of. I had made a workstation flyer for F21 and EMEA was happy to use it at their events (FOSDEM was one I think). I was just updating it to F22 so that people had something to give out at events that they attend/organise.
So what is the motivation to give them out at events? What is the goal of making them available? How are ambassadors using them at event tables? Do we have any specific feedback from ambassadors about how useful they were, specific feedback about how booth visitors use them / how the ambassadors might use them to direct a conversation / etc? Are there specific ambassadors we can talk to in order to get this information? Are these only meant to be given out at events or are there other anticipated applications?
I know about the generic release independent one that you refer to - I updated it a while ago[1]. It'll be nice to have that updated to reflect the changes that Fedora.next brought - it's also on my TODO list.
Are both the release-specific ones and the generic one meant to be handed out at the same event? (I would anticipate some confusion?)
Ideally, the community should have material ready to use at events and things, and the workstation flyer is just one of these things. (I'm also working on versions for the server and cloud products.) I must admit that I do not know who creates the flyers and marketing collateral - marketing or design or do they do it together - they haven't been done for a while. Ideally, marketing collateral should also be on our task lists, but it isn't on either the marketing teams' or the design teams' :(
https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-22/f-22-marketing-tasks.html https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-22/f-22-design-tasks.html
This is definitely not a recurring item on the design team's task list because the design team does not (well we try very hard not to) come up with content and we honestly don't have the manpower to update something like that every single release - the cost / benefit analysis doesn't really show a good payoff there for the effort expended vs other projects we typically have on our plate. Providing outdated material IMHO is worse than providing no material at all. I also strongly believe any material we do produce needs to have a well-defined goal and purpose so we can assess whether or not it is successful over time and tweak it to keep it useful (or drop it if it no longer is.)
The flyers are in LaTeX because I happen to be the only person working on them - and I basically chose what fit me. I'm no designer, and LaTeX at least makes them look clean, and professional :). However, if others in the community do want to update and modify them (even though this doesn't seem to happen often), LaTeX is certainly not the best tool to use.
I think Scribus may be the best tool for the balance of design capability and easy edit-ability (we can even drive it using external text files so someone editing content would just need to edit particular text files and be able to generate an updated version.)
What I had in mind was something like this:
- generic "timeless" flyer -> produced in large quantities since it can
be used release after release
- product and release specific flyers -> produced in smaller quantities
so that they're not left over
How would these four pieces of material (1 generic + 1 per Fedora edition) interact though? Remember that folks at conferences are picking up an awful lot of stuff, and there needs to be a clear story about the relationship between the materials we offer. (I'm not saying there isn't, just that I don't know what it is.)
The ambassadors do have an idea of how many they'd need - they have estimates for media production and those could be applied to flyers as well.
I know that we have marketing collateral and things on the wiki, but I don't know if the ambassadors are aware of this. I had made a page for F20: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/For_Ambassadors/Fedora20 and I was hoping to put it up again for F22 - actually I was hoping to have a better page - maybe press.fp.o: https://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/press.fp.o/press.fp.o-mockup.png - that people could refer to all the time, instead of the wiki.
The marketing team is supposed to "brief ambassadors about release" - I've never seen this happen but I was hoping to do it this release - I wanted to have at least a set of flyers for the ambassadors before I asked the marketing team to prepare a "release kit" sort of thing.
So, this is all just routine stuff really, stuff that I think should be around all the time, and at each release :)
I think probably a lot of this should be driven via the marketing team - are you in contact with them so this is on the team-wide radar?
~m
On Tue, 2015-06-02 at 16:55 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Hi,
On 06/02/2015 04:36 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
At the moment, I'm simply trying to provide the community with flyers that they can use at events. There hasn't been any discussion about it that I know of. I had made a workstation flyer for F21 and EMEA was happy to use it at their events (FOSDEM was one I think). I was just updating it to F22 so that people had something to give out at events that they attend/organise.
So what is the motivation to give them out at events? What is the goal of making them available? How are ambassadors using them at event tables?
Well, all I can say is "spread the word on the new products and about Fedora in general". I can ask Jiri about how they were used at FOSDEM. As far as I know, they were kept at the booth and people that came by and were interested took them.
Do we have any specific feedback from ambassadors about how useful they were, specific feedback about how booth visitors use them / how the ambassadors might use them to direct a conversation / etc?
Not that I know of. I'm not aware of any metrics that ambassadors collect that could answer these, and neither am I aware of a structured method that ambassadors follow to "direct a conversation" and so on..
Are there specific ambassadors we can talk to in order to get this information?
I would think FAmSCo would know, and I can file a ticket requesting them to gather this info.
Are these only meant to be given out at events or are there other anticipated applications?
Public facing events that a Fedora volunteer is present at. I cannot think of any other uses at the moment.
I know about the generic release independent one that you refer to
- I
updated it a while ago[1]. It'll be nice to have that updated to reflect the changes that Fedora.next brought - it's also on my TODO list.
Are both the release-specific ones and the generic one meant to be handed out at the same event? (I would anticipate some confusion?)
This is up to the event owner. Like I said, FOSDEM only had the workstation ones, since the others were either outdated or non -existent. :(
My plan was to make these so that they have the option to choose what fits an event that they're going to - different events often have different focuses, different target audiences.
Ideally, the community should have material ready to use at events and things, and the workstation flyer is just one of these things. (I'm also working on versions for the server and cloud products.) I must admit that I do not know who creates the flyers and marketing collateral - marketing or design or do they do it together - they haven't been done for a while. Ideally, marketing collateral should also be on our task lists, but it isn't on either the marketing teams' or the design teams' :(
https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-22/f-22-marketing -tasks.html https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-22/f-22-design -tasks.html
This is definitely not a recurring item on the design team's task list because the design team does not (well we try very hard not to) come up with content and we honestly don't have the manpower to update something like that every single release - the cost / benefit analysis doesn't really show a good payoff there for the effort expended vs other projects we typically have on our plate. Providing outdated material IMHO is worse than providing no material at all. I also strongly believe any material we do produce needs to have a well-defined goal and purpose so we can assess whether or not it is successful over time and tweak it to keep it useful (or drop it if it no longer is.)
Makes sense. I thought so too.
The flyers are in LaTeX because I happen to be the only person working on them - and I basically chose what fit me. I'm no designer, and LaTeX at least makes them look clean, and professional :). However, if others in the community do want to update and modify them (even though this doesn't seem to happen often), LaTeX is certainly not the best tool to use.
I think Scribus may be the best tool for the balance of design capability and easy edit-ability (we can even drive it using external
text files so someone editing content would just need to edit particular text files and be able to generate an updated version.)
Ah, nice to know. I'll have to look at it though - I haven't used it in years!
What I had in mind was something like this:
- generic "timeless" flyer -> produced in large quantities since it
can be used release after release
- product and release specific flyers -> produced in smaller
quantities so that they're not left over
How would these four pieces of material (1 generic + 1 per Fedora edition) interact though? Remember that folks at conferences are picking up an awful lot of stuff, and there needs to be a clear story about the relationship between the materials we offer. (I'm not saying there isn't, just that I don't know what it is.)
Well, I would think that people at conferences belong to one or more of the target audiences that the different products have - and I'd expect them to take the flyer which applies to them. Since we had moved to the products, I only thought of product specific flyers - that a generic Fedora flyer would no longer fit in to the system.
I guess "timeless" product specific flyers could be done instead of release specific ones, with a single release "what's new in this release" flyer to show off the new stuff (if needed at all).
The ambassadors do have an idea of how many they'd need - they have
<snip>
I think probably a lot of this should be driven via the marketing team - are you in contact with them so this is on the team-wide radar?
Yes. There are trac tickets on the marketing trac for each flyer, and I regularly send updates to the ML about them. Anyone that keeps up with the ML and trac should be aware of what's happening.
The points that have come up here make me think that the marketing group needs to first speak to someone - either the WGs or the Ambassadors or the Ambassadors that are also part of the WGs - to figure out exactly what marketing collateral is needed in the first place. The flyers and everything is all "pre fedora.next". (I can't recall if fedora.next discussing marketing of the products - I don't think so.) Once this is known, the implementation is where the design team will come in. What do you think?
design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
Ankur Sinha -
Máirín Duffy