[Design-team] Summary of today's meeting / ideas for council presentation

Tue Oct 6 20:19:31 UTC 2015

Hi,

We had a meeting today, and myself, mleonova, riecatnor, and tatica 
attended. Here is a quick run-through of what we discussed; ***please*** 
feel more than welcome to reply here and continue the discussion:

Tickets
=======

#360 Fedora LiveUSB Creator artwork
-----------------------------------

https://fedorahosted.org/design-team/ticket/360

mbriza joined us for this discussion; mleonova created a mockup of two 
variations, one with the spins/labs icons in fedora blue, another with 
the spins/labs icons in a patterned grey. (the concern to be addressed 
with this is that the gray icons looked like they were inactive / not 
selectable in the UI context.) We decided to go with the patterned gray 
versions.

mockup: http://i.imgur.com/6BXS7lF.png

#403 Icons for new FAS website
------------------------------

https://fedorahosted.org/design-team/ticket/403

riecatnor shared her first drafts of the icon designs and asked for 
feedback. Some points that were brought up in the discussion:

- the first row and fourth row were the favorite designs.
- we weren't sure what the 'platform' icon should be in the original 
request; riecatnor will ask reporter
- we wanted to see the icons in context in a UI screenshot, but the app 
was down during our meeting so we couldn't see what the app looks like 
to try to imagine the icons in context. riecatnor will ask reporter for 
screenshots / to set site back up so she can take screenshots and maybe 
mockup the icons in context.
- need to confirm with reporter the target icon display size - may need 
to snap artwork to the pixel grid if its sufficiently small
- try in the group icon to maybe do a shoulder line for the center 
person and taper it off about halfway down

New Meeting Time
================

So far the largest number of folks can make 9 AM EDT / 1 PM UTC on 
Wednesdays, but we are waiting on more folks to respond to the survey. 
If you have not filled out the meeting time survey, please do so now at 
this URL:

http://whenisgood.net/hype2fi

Design Team Fedora Council Presentation
=======================================

We'd like to make a presentation about the status of our team to the 
Fedora Council. Matthew Miller posed the following items as suggestions 
as to what the preso could cover:

<mizmo>   - the current state of the subproject
<mizmo>   - future plans
<mizmo>   - things the team needs from the rest of the project
<mizmo>     - any blockers we can help unblock
<mizmo>     - big resource requests?

Here's what we talked about, but if we missed anything or if you have 
big ideas, please let's discuss here on list!

Current State of the Design Team:
---------------------------------

Our current state is good.

We had a Fedora Activity Day this past January 2015 
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_DesignTeam_2014) as a sort of reboot 
for the team, and we accomplished lasting progress at that time. We 
cleaned out our ticket queue and set up a new system for ticket filing 
and reviews, and we re-established our regular meetings which we're 
still doing. Our ticket queue remains fairly clean and sane 
post-cleaning, meaning our maintenance processes are likely working. 
Similarly riecatnor and threebean redesigned the Fedora Badge design new 
ticket submission process and are getting more detailed and 
better-written badge request tickets as a result.

One upcoming issue is that I've been running the meetings and will be 
out on medical leave Nov/Dec - Feb/Mar, so we need to get on a new 
meeting schedule ahead of time to try to get into a routine with other 
folks leading the meetings.

Future Plans:
-------------

mleonova is working on a project to clean up our swag assets and put 
together a directory with print-ready, pre-approved Fedora swag designs. 
More on her project here: 
https://mashaleonova.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/sharing-in-open-source-and-swag/

mizmo has been working on the Fedora Hubs project 
(http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/category/fedora/fedora-hubs/ ) and ongoing 
updates to Fedora websites (e.g. redesign of www.getfedora.org for new 
Atomic focus http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2015/09/15/fedora-atomic-logo-idea/ )

Any other folks with big plans please shout out so we can add them to 
our list!

Things Design Team Needs from the Rest of the Project:
------------------------------------------------------

This is where we spent the bulk of our discussion time. :)

1) Design Team FAD 2016

We talked about potentially holding another Design Team FAD (Fedora 
Activity Day) sometime in 2016, after March, and the focus could be both 
recruiting new folks (maybe hosting at a university or colocated with a 
design event where we could get some recruits) and working on badge 
artwork. Riecatnor mentioned the badge artwork queue is quite long and 
we need help.

2) Show Me the Content!

We often get asked to design materials without being given content to 
use. Sometimes this manifests in designs filled with lipsum that end up 
needing substantial changes when the real content comes in, sometimes it 
manifests in designers writing the content themselves. For the rest of 
the project, the takeaway here is that we really need the content before 
we can do a workable design in a timely and efficient manner.

3) Recruiting and Retention

We do struggle a bit with recruiting and retention. One idea we came up 
with was to have more events - virtual events - like office hours where 
new folks can show up to get help. In terms of retention a frequent 
reason we're aware of for folks leaving the team is different work 
schedules or general business.

4) Need Specs + Printer Info + Reasonable Time Please

Commonly we're asked to do design tasks that involve printing (paper 
items or swag) but not provided specs or contact information for the 
printer/producer of the items. This ends up causing extra work for the 
designers who sometimes need to completely reformat a design for when 
they finally get specs for the printer, and unfortunately sometimes 
results in the design being produced incorrectly (riecatnor cited the 
Flock Rochester booklets as an example of this.) The integrity of our 
designs should be treated as seriously as the integrity of Fedora's 
code, so we need appropriate specifications and printer information to 
ensure the designs are produced correctly. (And enough time to do this 
all in!)

5) Need a Better Swag Strategy

This is kind of my personal pet peeve, but we did talk about some kind 
of higher-level strategy regarding the swag art we produce for folks 
making swag since from the design team's standpoint it's rather ad-hoc:

- Is there a place for discussions about how much swag we produce, the 
environmental impact, the strategic necessity of the swag being 
produced, etc.

- Could we put some bounds on swag production to help manage it, for 
example, certain types of swag like T-shirts are okay to produce for 
premiere Fedora events (Flock, FUDcons) but for smaller events like FAD 
we won't do it or we'd have less impactful items available (like stickers?)

- Could we consider alternatives to T-shirts, and maybe produce 
higher-quality shirts (like high quality polos) that are given 1 per 
contributor and per event make collectible pins available that could be 
put on the shirt or bags or other items? (E.g., like these sort of 
things: 
http://images.channeladvisor.com/Sell/SSProfiles/10033428/Images/pelk15.jpg 
)

- There are some regional differences in swag production; Tatica 
mentioned LATAM does not have more than one T-shirt run a year and not 
many shirts are produced. So any changes in policy would need to 
consider regional differences.

Any other thoughts or ideas, please feel free to throw in!!!

~m