[Design-team] Constantine

[Michael Beckwith]

I read through it but haven't given too much thought to them, I'll give 
it all some time a bit later and see if anything strikes me. Research 
may be needed on my part to facilitate ideas

On 07/06/2009 10:11 AM, � 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! :)
>
> If it sucks let me know.
>
> ~m
>
> On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 20:09 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>    
>> On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 17:46 -0500, Michael Beckwith wrote:
>>      
>>> Keep in mind everyone that just because the codename is "Constantine"
>>> doesn't mean that we HAVE to include the guy in the theme somehow. We
>>> can go off on some inspiration derived from reading about him and
>>> whatnot and just make sure the tie in is there.
>>>        
>> I found some inspiration in W.B. Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium' [1].
>> There are some interesting themes in there (and even a link to steam...
>> er.. byzantine-punk). I'll just throw these out there; they may all suck
>> but crappy ideas can inspire awesome ideas so if they inspire something
>> in you let's talk about it:
>>
>> - 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.
>>
>> - 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.
>>
>> - 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.
>>
>> - 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
>>
>> - 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.
>>
>> ~m
>>
>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_to_Byzantium
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> design-team mailing list
>> design-team at lists.fedoraproject.org
>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
>>
>>      
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> design-team mailing list
> design-team at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
>    


-- 
~Michael
http://michaelbox.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/attachments/20090706/cb001956/attachment-0001.html