[ubuntu-art] Moving things forwards.

[Who]

On Jan 3, 2008 2:16 AM, Andrew Laignel <a.laignel at ukdotcafe.com> wrote:
> I think votes are valuable.  Not for seeing who likes a theme but rather
> who hates it.  Any overly stylised theme is going to polarise people

How does a conventional 'vote for the one you like' allow us to see this?

> into love it/hate it camps which should be avoided at all cost.  Ideally
> a default theme should not be even noticed by the public - being neutral
> and innofensive as possible should be the goal.  A perfect demonstration
> of this is Apple, where the current theme for OSX is crips, clean,
> stylish and probably as neutral as you can get - no loud colours,
> drastic layouts or hard edges.

AFAIK, this has never been the aim for the Ubuntu default theme - and
I don't think it ever will be. Sometimes going for love it or hate it
beats going for bland. At least then people see it!

As long as I can remember the Ubuntu Theme has been part of the
branding, something that helps make Ubuntu known, something for people
to talk about. From this point of view, it has worked very well - if
you see a screenshot of linux and it is brown, you _know_ it is ubuntu
- if you see a blue distro.... who knows...

sabdfl has said this a few times in interviews - I thought in a mail
to this list sometime - but I can't find it...

>
> This problem befell the Compiz logo effort.  I really hated the new one
> and thought the 2nd choice was a much stronger effort.  While the second
> choice did not elicit an equal poisitive response, it also did not get
> the same level of hatred as the 1st choice.
>