New GNOME-Office Web Site

[Ryan Pavlik <abiryan ryand net>]

Hello, AbiWord friends, and those of you who I am not acquainted with on 
the GNOME Office list!

I have been trying to help out by rebuilding a GNOME Office 
branding/marketing home page.  I have a fair amount of materials and 
ideas already put together, and mostly just require the go-ahead from 
the requisite people and some information.

I have now subscribed to the GNOME Office list, so I will be able to 
keep up better with this situation.

I have uploaded a mockup of a sort of a "splash image" 
/theme/marketing/design motif on my Abi web page: 
http://www.ryand.net/oss/abi . I am excited about this design and the 
possibilities it brings to the projects.

I would like to explain the design a bit.  As I understood that there 
are problems with using the GNOME foot icon, I wanted the logo to match 
the theme and style of the GNOME logo, without actually using the foot.  
I also learned that the goal of GNOME Office is to build a suite on 
common components, namely GNOME and the GO libraries.  This inspired a 
concentring circle design.  I have placed on the inner most (outside of 
the suite name), darkest ring, the two "core" apps as they were 
suggested to me.  Around this ring, on a lighter, more distant ring, I 
placed icons of a few of the programs listed to be or potentially become 
part of GNOME Office.  I have also designed special "GNOME Office" 
splash screen images for the programs when distributed as a part of the 
GO package, and am working on creating several "levels" of unified 
package, containing the programs from various levels in the hierarchy 
(the core apps, tentatively known as "essence", a slightly larger, more 
inclusive package, and a fully inclusive one).  The GNOME Office 
acronym, GO, also provides numerous "catchphrase" marketing 
opportunities, and one of these can be found at the bottom of my mockup. 
("GO beyond.")

As you may have observed, I am committed to revitalizing the Internet 
presence and customer vitality of GNOME Office.  I believe that with 
appropriate, creative, effective design and marketing, the GNOME Office 
project can grow from a "meta-project" into a vibrant customer and 
developer community, and the GO brand can become a "household name" in 
the minds of the project's target customers, as OpenOffice.org, MS 
Office, and to an extent, KOffice have done.  There is much potential in 
the collective resources of the GO community. 

I have even more extensive ideas than those I am able to detail in this 
message.  They will be posted to the above web site once they have 
reached an appropriately completed level.

I would be honored to volunteer to recreate the web page of GNOME 
Office.  I have received offers for help from the AbiWord list, and have 
already received a partial SVG version of the Gnumeric logo, in addition 
to the AbiWord logo that I made.  If project leaders or developers have 
any ideas as to how I could improve my plans, re-organize the project 
hierarchy, or even just an SVG logo from the projects, it would be 
greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Ryan Pavlik