Ubuntu Themes

[Frank Schoep]

On Sep 8, 2006, at 5:21 PM, Alex Jones wrote:
> The new artwork and sound pack in Edgy has just got a whole lot more
> earthy and tribal. I can't help but think I'm using an OS that  
> somebody
> has already applied an "Africa" theme to.
>
> Can we please come up with something more neutral? I think it's the
> drums in the logon/logoff sounds and the sheer darkness of the GDM and
> GNOME Splash graphics that put me off.
>
> If we could come up with a unified way of theming the entire system  
> and
> call the current default "Africa" or something, that would be great. I
> just don't think people will take Ubuntu seriously if the situation  
> gets
> any worse.

I'm CC'ing the artwork mailling list since it seems appropriate.

I appreciate the fact that you stepped forward and voiced your  
concerns on the artwork and sound theme, and I can understand that  
the change of the overall look and feel of the operating system might  
have been in a direction you didn't anticipate.

The artwork team has been working very hard for the past two months  
to create the current uploaded design (thanks guys). We started out  
by defining the artwork philosophy and narrowed down on directions  
and finally produced various sets of artwork.

The current designs uploaded in Edgy are the work of Troy Sobotka  
(troy_s), who has written a detailed motivation on his well-executed  
design on the Wiki:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkPlan/Produce/ 
Incoming/troy_s

The sound work was done by Peter Savage (cbx33) and has undergone  
several revisions before being included as is, yesterday. The African  
themeing is indeed evident but not over the top I think. Both the  
sounds and artwork were designed with the Ubuntu philosophy and  
history in mind:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Documentation/Philosophy

I hope this provides some insight and understanding for the current  
designs. It's hard to "come up with something more neutral" since it  
will take time to evolve new designs based on a different philosophy  
or directions.

Even though you, and others, might not like the tone of the artwork,  
I hope you do appreciate the time and effort that went into it to get  
all elements in line visually as we focused hard on that aspect. Both  
the sounds and artwork have been developed completely by community  
members which I think is a huge step forwards in general and was one  
of the goals I had.

Compared to the artwork in Dapper, we've also made huge progress  
towards unifying the design for usplash (to be announced soon), GDM  
theme, login splash and wallpaper. The current design has also a  
strong visual link with the icon set, making everything blend in  
together.

Although I simply can not offer a solution at this time which will  
please everyone, I hope my e-mail puts things in perspective. If you  
want to see in detail what the artwork team has done, please visit  
the Edgy artwork plan page on the Wiki which contains a detailed  
paper trail on decisions and concepts made:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkPlan
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/ArtworkProcess

Thanks for reading, I hope we can have a nice discussion on this.

With kind regards,

Frank Schoep