[ubuntu-art] Some guidelines for consideration

[Michiel Sikma]

On Aug 22, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:

> Hi guys
>
> We had a fantastic experience at LinuxWorld San Francisco last  
> week, with tremendous interest in the community and commercial  
> stands for Ubuntu at the expo. Jane briefed me on feedback from the  
> conference, and there were a couple of items that I think are worth  
> passing on to you, because they relate to the branding and style of  
> the desktop.
>
> The first comment was that the "big bold brand" of the GDM login  
> screen is very visible and that people LOVE to have their desktops  
> configured to show this login screen at conferences. I think we  
> want to preserve that goodwill - whatever new login we select for  
> Edgy should have the same characteristics:
>
>  * large, prominent Ubuntu name and logo
>  * distinctive colour
>
> Similarly, in many presentations, even though the presenter was  
> showing an application, or slides, or web pages, it was clear that  
> they were using Ubuntu because the desktop is so distinctive. In  
> this case I think we are on the right track for Edgy because all of  
> the concepts I've seen preserve the "brown" feel - and in fact many  
> that I have seen are even better than ones we've had in the past.
>
> So please bear the importance of bold, clear, distinctive looks in  
> mind!
>
> Mark
> -- 
> ubuntu-art mailing list
> ubuntu-art at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art

Hey Mark,

I'm glad to hear about those experiences. :) I also share the  
enthusiasm about the Ubuntu login screen. It's a very powerful login  
screen because of the prominence of the logo right in the middle of  
it, and due to its simplicity. It very well conveys the feeling that  
Ubuntu itself wishes to convey, and even if someone doesn't know the  
system at all, it's powerful enough to make one want to get closer  
and figure out which operating system that login screen belongs to.

It's a little unfortunate that the "shut down", "restart", etc.  
buttons are now in a drop-down box, which I think kind of seems out  
of place when opened. I'd rather have those buttons on the GDM screen  
itself, like Breezy did. Maybe that is something to consider.  
Although I personally will spend time elsewhere than trying to  
improve on the GDM theme.

> Similarly, in many presentations, even though the presenter was  
> showing an application, or slides, or web pages, it was clear that  
> they were using Ubuntu because the desktop is so distinctive. In  
> this case I think we are on the right track for Edgy because all of  
> the concepts I've seen preserve the "brown" feel - and in fact many  
> that I have seen are even better than ones we've had in the past.

I think that a lot of it is also the heavy contrast that is  
associated with Ubuntu. We've got dark brown to work with which is  
then contrasted against full white. It's different from Fedora Core  
5, which uses "plain vanilla" blue, a tried and true but not as  
interesting combination. Given, blue does work very well in operating  
system design because it can be both very bright and lush as well as  
dark and contrasting, but brown is simply much more distinctive.

I do find it too bad that it lacks the ability to work as well in  
bright shades as blue, which is why I applaud the direction towards  
combining brown with orange and even yellow/red hue accents that  
Dapper made possible.

Michiel Sikma
michiel at thingmajig.org