[ubuntu-art] Design Now, Default Later.

[Who]

Hi all

I have written twice to this list in the last cycle hoping to help
people distill ideas into productive work away from the default them.
It hasn't really worked... As a team, I think our actual (polished,
published) output is a tiny fraction of what we *could* achieve. We
need to investigate why, and fix it.

Here are the reasons I think we aren't performing as we could. Add
yours, tell me I'm wrong, suggest a way to fix them :)

1. Design by committee is very difficult to get right: Dan Winship
puts it nicely here:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-February/msg00115.html
so we will get further if we have _leaders who make decisions_ and
_carry their vision through to completion_

2. There are too many people and ideas here to make producing a single theme
rewarding or sensible. We need not to get caught up with 'default' and
work on great artwork. If we _did_ make one theme that everyone
contributed to, it would likely suffer from the difficulties described
in (1) anyway.

3. The process for getting feedback about work that might be good as a
default theme is slow and sufficiently ill defined to make working
specifically towards 'being default' a dangerous and potentially
frustrating thing. Thus, it is better to allow those with close
contact with sabdfl to help the team on these aspects, but not make
them the central focus.

4. We need to meet hard deadlines and handle our packaging from the
very beginning of the release process. If you make some artwork, and
tick all the packaging boxes _your work will be eligible to be in
Universe_. Don't expect the packaging to magically occur - we have to
see ourselves just like any other part of the Ubuntu machine, we obey
the same rules, use the same tools, and have the same goals.

As I've said before - we've solved these problems in the past by
having 'theme teams'. Here is an email I wrote about these for the
last cycle:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2008-January/004821.html

I wanted to copy it in verbatim, but that seemed excessive. If you
think I'm right about the 4 points above, please try and read that
email and skim the responses.

Can anyone tell me why we didn't get more uptake? Are people only here
to make the default theme?

It comes down to this: If you have an idea for a theme, YOU need to
push it forward, YOU need to make it happen, YOU need to package it,
put it through REVU, use Launchpad...etc. kwwii deals with the
official theme and liaises with sabdfl, but ANY good theme can go into
the repositories. After all, if the default theme was to change
radically, it would need to be to a theme with proven success,
packages and maintenance. NetworkManager was an optional extra before
it was default ;)

So, I suggest we stop worrying about 'default' for now - and go and
enjoy doing some great, original design. Make it work, make it
available, and watch as people all around the world choose to use it!

It can happen :)

Who
(Jonathan Austin)