----- Original Message -----
On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 08:22:44AM -0500, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > The high level goal is: It is important to increase Fedora brand reach
> > and recognition.
> This is good, can you expand more about the goals?
Sure. I'm actually working on a Fedora Marketing language document, and
that's probably relevant here. Brand isn't the logo — it's the emotions
and ideas associated with Fedora. The Four Foundations are part of
this, and the Fedora Infinity mark nicely encapsulates the "freedom,
infinity, voice" that was our earlier motto and still part of our
project DNA. (See
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Logo/History)
The goals of distinguishing between Fedora and Debian and Arch in
specific situations are a step or two zoomed-in, I think.
We want people's daily use of their Fedora systems to tie in with the
positive associations of being a Fedora user, and more than that, being
part of the Fedora community. Visual cues which are special to Fedora
are a powerful way to build and emphasize this connection. We want
people who are not yet Fedora users to see that and be part of it. And,
again, recognizable visual cues are important here.
But those are 2 different things. If you want to make the UI a better
connection with the user, you'll quickly run into the need to make deeper
changes than just adding logos, and there's no reason why those (researched
and justified, designed in short) changes can't be driven upstream. But
then you lose your specificity, the changes that would make it stand apart.
There are also changes to make Fedora "warmer" that go against the Fedora
visual identity. Starting with the cold and at times quasi-dystopian
backgrounds, using "cold" colours (blue, black) instead of warmer ones
(bright green and yellow, reds) seen as the defaults in most OSes.
In short, "photo of Fedora-branded cupcake on a wooden surface" is good for
the end goal, "creepy monster-filled island" isn't.
We're doing an excellent job with technology (and in putting
that
technology together in a way that users can consume easily with little
frustration or difficulty). This is awesome. (And GNOME and the
Workstation team are a large part of that. Again, awesome.) Each happy
Fedora user, every time someone does something cool with Fedora, every
problem someone has that we solve — these things together build up our
brand. Logos and other recognizable cues help tie that all together
into a package that reinforces people's sense of belonging, trust,
connection, pride.
I'm sorry for being terse earlier, but this is why I balked at the
comments about the Details panel. That's somewhere you go when you're
looking to solve a problem. It doesn't address day-to-day interaction
at all.
It's something that was requested as well. If it's not important, then
I wonder why it was such a big deal at the time, and why we should spend
any time on it. It's not a great feeling for those who put time into
the feature, only to be told that it's not important.
The wallpaper overlay is more... omnipresent (when it's not
behind windows), but I think it feels kind of tacked-on.
See above.
I do like your terminal prompt idea, especially combined with other
terminal enhancements we can provide — that's great, really.
I think we need some GUI equivalents to that as well.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe not the ones you asked for. Maybe not a plymouth
theme. But before getting there, there's a boatload of work to be done
on the research, possibly user testing, before touching a single line
of code or packaging.
I think it's worth looking at the process Canonical just went
through
in adopting aspects of the Unity desktop to their new GNOME-based
environment. I don't agree with all of the specific decisions and don't
think we should copy them, but I think the *process* is important: as
they transitioned the underlying technology, they also worked to keep
the visual branding consistent. This helps them retain the trust and
goodwill they've built. (And this is the same reason I've asked the
design team for a consistent color scheme and overall sense for the
wallpaper from release to release.)
I really don't think that there's much to take away from that process.
They tried to mimick an existing design as closely as possible given the
timeframe and developer resources. The design decisions are now twice removed
from the original design, whether it was good or not. And this is the problem
we don't even know if it was for good reasons or not.
So, yes, it's consistent. Is it any good? Probably not as good as the
"original". They'd need to start afresh to evaluate those. I'm fairly
certain that wasn't the case.