2.16 logo and banner



An element that escaped from Vincent's plan for the 2.16 release notes
was the banner to be featured at least in the wgo homepages. Luckily
Andreas not just thought about it but also brought PingunZ (forgot to
ask the name), who has a first alpha:

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/6264/gnomesplashpx5.png

We had a brief discussion in #marketing. Basically I said that it looked
like almost nothing had really changed since 2.14, what could be true
but I'm not sure if this is what we want to communicate.

He asked for constructive feedback, but I didn't know what to say since
we haven't discussed 2.16 novelties, concepts to promote and so on.
However, after some thoughts...

I suggest to have a banner with:

- A slogan saying something like "GNOME 2.16 - The Smooth Desktop".

- Populated with a unsorted carrusel of wonderful icons, meaningful to
people that hasn't seen them before.

- We could add icons of the new modules added to 2.16 (Orca, Tomboy,
etc). Even if the outsiders won't recognize, they will contribute to the
aesthetic coolness of the banner.

- Playing with icons of different sizes, including some extra-large
details of icons escaping from the banner framework. 

- A visual and colorful universe that looks integrated thanks to the
observation of the
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines in the banner
itself.

Rationale:

If the target of this banner are ___new___ GNOME hobbyists, ISDs and
public deployments (the current users will upgrade to 2.16 at some point
anyway, and they depend more on their distro than on gnome.org), then I
find the 2.14 banner and the 2.16 alpha like void, almost meaningless
for a non-GNOME user. It doesn't show anything, and the banner has a
surface big enough to show things.

So, I think we could play with the concept of Smoothly Integrated
Coolness. GNOME 2.16 is a bunch of cool pieces that integrate much
better now, resulting in a smoother experience where coolness is
multiplied.

How to show this? Certainly not with a foot, 2 words and a hug single
color background. This would be a good description for "unity", but we
are more than one. 

Perhaps a remarkable aspect of the 2.15 release cycle has been the
icon-tango activity. It's not something we can verbalize easily in the
release notes, but this is something we can show nicely in a big banner,
and it will make GNOME look cool, attractive and at the same time
professional to non GNOME users, while being equally cool and
interesting to the GNOME users.

In fact, we could produce an additional version with standard banner
sizes, and I'm sure some enthusiasts will put in their sites as well.

Have you ever seen new tango-friendly icons in big (huge) sizes? I did
once, and I was impressed. Andreas was working on an icon in the
GUADEC's Vestíbul UPC, I just was passing by and I saw the screen of his
laptop with that huge, wonderful detail of an icon he was retouching.
Tango icons at 800% are just so nice.  :)

This is why I suggest the banner described above.

-- 
Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org | http://guadec.org

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