[ubuntu-art] The colour fight

[Mish Greer]

I´m new to this forum and have just read all the posts. I think it would be 
nice for everyone to get an unbiased viewpoint. (I am an artist using 
digiatl means)

The brown/brown orange verse blue debate.

My personal opinion is that you shouldn´t even consider blue at this stage, 
for one simple reason - branding. You want to be different. You want Ubuntu 
to stand out from the crowd. Once you have reached the 100 million user mark 
- sure give all the options. At this stage you do not want to be considered 
a linux clone of microsoft... that would be an injustice to all your great 
work - it may even start to raise unnecessary legal issues. Just because, 
and because you are free, be cautious.

I personally like the brown and orange combo - for exactly the reason that 
the orange says alive... something is going on here so look at me. Yes it 
mustn´t look flat but I don´t feel its as bright as a lot of people are 
making out. I can also tweak that by adjusting my monitor. You´ll be 
suprised how many users know how to do that.

You also need to consider something bigger. The autumn colours are extremly 
popular in the so called third world countries. Its Europe and the States 
that are blue obsessed. Surely going forward these areas will no longer be 
your major users - given the free nature. I live in Brazil - they love the 
autumn colours here, as do the african, asian and rest of South American 
arears.

The thing which concerned me more then any colour issue was that there seems 
to be some flaring on the writing. Is the font crisp enough ? You may find 
that a number of visual concerns go away if this is looked at.

Refering to Mark S´s comments on progress bars and how the touch the end. 
Something that you may consider using is an end point marker before the 
"very end" a straight thin black/brown/orange line that means to the user 
done. Whatever you decide. Make the progress indicator lag the actual 
progress. It is much much nicer to get a suprise when the end arrives just 
that little bit before the marker. Psychologically it tells me my computer 
is running faster rather than the progress indicator is behind. On MS it 
irritates the heck out of me when the progress monitor shows something is 
complete and then a minute later it only completes in reality.

And if it is simply a level indicator rather than a progress monitor all you 
want to know is where maximum is.

My two cents worth.

FreeUs

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