[ubuntu-art] Themes for polishing

[Matthew Nuzum]

On 3/2/06, Pascal Klein <4pascal at tpg.com.au> wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 10:46:57 +0000
> Who <mailforwho at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi, and hello list!
> >
> > I thought, given what Mark has said recently about getting some high
> > quality, polished themes into the repositories soon, that we ought to get
> > straight to discussing which themes will be 'operated on'.
> >

Pascal,

I will not be able to attend the meeting this weekend, but let me
contribute some food for thought.

The art-list until now has been a place where people tossed out ideas
and art they have done. This is fine, but if the goal is to get art
into Universe so that it can be considered for inclusion into main,
maybe there should be a discussion as to what the decision makers want
to see.

It is much easier to hit the target when you can see the target.
Blindly shooting arrows into the sky may result in a direct hit, but
it's not likely. I'm still using Breezy and Hoary, so I can't see what
graphical elements have been proposed for Dapper and therefore can't
make direct suggestions, but here is what might be asked and therefore
decided upon:

 - what colors should be used?
  - is there a theme that should underlie the artwork? (for example,
when RH released blue curve, there was a definite theme and coherency
to the artwork)
 - what are our greatest needs?
 - the difference between a slick, polished, enterprise grade
application and something that looks like it was hobbled together is
the attention to detail. Therefore, identify areas of the interface
that look 'fine' or 'not bad' but don't have the professional 'shine'
that we want to be represented in the Linux community for the next 5
years (the expected support life span of dapper).

Dapper is going to be around a while, and if anyone on the art-list
wants to be relevant to the upcoming project, they need to think
long-term when they think about this release.

Five years from now there will be people saying, "Well... it's about
time we upgrade those old Dapper computers..." Their thoughts about
the look and feel could be one of the following:
 - "Remember when these came out? They really set the bar for the next
few generations of desktops."
or
 - "Wow, can you believe someone thought this looked good?"

This weekend's meeting can decide what people will be saying when that
day comes.
--
Matthew Nuzum
www.bearfruit.org