[Design-team] Sharing brand with upstream [Was: Building Brand Together]

[Nicu Buculei]

On 06/18/2009 11:30 AM, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
>
> Actual proposal from them sounds like:
> We have selected our codename for future Fedora release and our design team
> prepare artwork (or mockups, depends on time), upstream joins this effort and
> they combine our theme with their current theme (so now it's Leonidas and Air
> = Airy Leonidas :D) to match together.

<sarcastic>This is a good thing, we can give an initial concept and 
forget about theming, leave the KDE guys to the job so we can play with 
our personal pet projects: picture books, comics, games and so on. And 
we won't have to pay a dime for that, someone will put many hours in 
doing this work and at a high quality level.</sarcasm>

Sarcasm aside, consider the F11 case, when the graphics were changed, 
due to the received feedback, so late in the development cycle (Beta), 
can you see how that would cope with such joint effort? I think they 
would pretty much drop the ball, for not having enough time and manpower 
to react.
Or the F10 case, when we were not able to reach a consensus and had tu 
just select a final theme *extremely* late in the devel cycle.

> What does it mean for us?
> Visually consistent and rich desktop environments with strong brand feeling
> for both upstream and downstream.

I am afraid it is more like each our spins to have its own visual identity.

> What we have to/should do?
> We need our artwork as soon as possible and after F11 process I think we
> should reconsider design strategy. I know where the problem was, from Mairín's
> comments in my blog post. We should do our best to avoid it for future
> releases. Of course - it means lot of communication and you know...

As soon as possible: we don't have that much time from one point 
(codename) to the next (alpha release) and the supposedly final one (beta).

> Only for KDE and Fedora?
> No, OpenSuse, (K)Ubuntu already accepted this offer, I'm not sure if Gnome is
> planning anything similar. This is really in beginnings and maybe some IRC
> meeting with all interested parties would be useful.

AFAIK, neither GNOME, XFCE or LXDE have such plans.

> I think it's a nice idea, sounds great (even I'm not Apple fan :D) and it can
> be considered by other DE's teams (upstream/downstream) either. All sides
> could gain profit from it. So what do you think about it?

I think the solution is so much simpler and natural: if any upstream KDE 
designer is truly interested and concerned about Fedora, they can join 
this mailing list and get himself involved in the process from the 
earliest stages, right from the concept and help drive the design either 
with active development or with feedback.

There are a number of upstream GNOME designers (hello andreasn!) here on 
list and on IRC intervening when hey feel is needed.

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