Re: GNOME colors

[Joakim Ziegler <joakim helixcode com>]

On Sun, Dec 17, 2000 at 12:00:31AM -0500, digitect wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 16, 2000 at 09:05:25PM -0500, digitect wrote:

>> See my mail to Ryan Muldoon for a comprehensive explanation of the
>> background for the current www.gnome.org design.

> (which were): "Well, those might be your opinions, but the last redesign
> was met with
> roaring approval through all stages of the design, by the entire GNOME
> marketing group, and considered an improvement in all ways."

> Several points:

> 1. The marketing group's opinion is not gospel. I am interested in
> alternative perspectives, those which do not necessarily play well to
> the masses and therefore the business/marketing side of things. I'm sure
> there are many individuals in the GNOME movement that would agree,
> that's why half of us are here in this alternative OS anyway.

The marketing group was as close to gospel as you could get at that point. It
included both people explicitly working on promoting GNOME, like Bart DeCrem
and me, and generally the leaders of the project, such as Miguel, Federico,
and Elliot.


> 2. <grin> I would hardly classify even the most enthusiastic artistic
> critisizm as "roaring". Really, why are we even talking about re-design
> if there seems to be general approval for the site as it stands?

The reactions to the current design were along the lines of "This is a
kick-ass website design". But I digress. There are several reasons why we
decided to redesign, and thus why we're here. First of all, I wanted a site
that was easier to maintain, since my time is somewhat limited. This means
that stuff like images for text, although having several advantages, such as
compactness, would have to go. Secondly, I want to get rid of WML and Auto*,
because it's hard to maintain, and makes it difficult for people to get
involved in maintaining the site, again making a lot of maintenance fall on
me, instead of on the people who need it done, even though they have CVS
access. Additionally, there's the desire to coordinate the look and feel
throughout the GNOME sites, which wasn't a consideration originally, and thus
the current design isn't made for expanding to, for instance, news.gnome.org.


> 3. Aesthetic critique is nothing to get defensive about. Neither Ryan or
> myself are discussing your artistic sensibilities or talents. I can't
> speak for him, but I'm just expressing some of the appeal that the old
> scheme appealed to me.

I'm not being defensive. I am, however, pointing out some historical reasons
for why the current design is what it is, and they're well worth observing.
In particular since one of the stated reasons for that redesign was to, and I
quote (don't remember who this was from, might have been Elliot) "Get rid of
that horrid brown".



>> As mentioned elewhere, you're not going to be staring at the GNOME website
>> for 10 hours every day. Also, please read the literature on the impact of
>> contrast on legibility and comprehension (Nielsen has a few good passages on
>> this).

> As you probably know, ultra-high contrast (red on blue for example) is
> also extremely illegible. So then we must be talking about a balance
> point somewhere in between, a matter of suitability and appropriateness.
> To simply say "black on white is correct and nothing else is" fails to
> appreciate some of the finer subtleties of design, as I'm sure you would
> agree. What we're all trying to do here is to agree on what is legible
> and what isn't, not conduct some sort of physiological lightwave rod and
> cone interface analysis in 4 out of 5 dentists. Indeed, my own comp uses
> a white background with charcoal text, which I think is perfectly
> readable. But I'm open for other people's alternative suggestions, too.

Red on blue is a simultaneous contrast, and I can't remember proposing that
anywhere. Nielsen, for instance, has interesting numbers on the impact of
black-or-close text on white-or-close backgrounds on readability, as compared
to just about all other combinations. We don't need to do this analysis,
since people have already done it for us.


> And I'm not saying that good-looking isn't important either. But it's
> easy to get enticed by a lot of fancy colors and miss the point. GNOME
> is about quality and that quality comes through the character and the
> philosophy that created it. I don't think we should compromise our
> principles just because it plays well to the 5 second visitor.

I don't think we have a "principle" that would be compromised if we used a
certain set of colors over another.

I want that 5 second visitor. There are a lot of them. We want to reach them,
we want to pull them in, we want to show them what GNOME is about.


>> Personally, I find these colors to be awfully bland and boring. Others
>> might disagree.

> Heh. It's not trying to be exciting, just informative. Roadway signs
> aren't the most exciting thing I've ever seen either, but they get me to
> where I'm going. (We all seem to be disagreeing lately, aren't we? But
> you're entitled.)

Most color schemes get you where you're going. Of that rather large set, it's
a matter of choosing the one that has the most additional advantages, like
being attractive, immediately appealing, etc.


>> There are many good reasons for *not* encouraging a
>> spread/bastardization of
>> the design, such as the confusion that would arise, with people
>> potentially
>> confusing random project sites and the main sites, possibly with
>> content
>> whose quality or reliability we can't vounch for, etc. This is known
>> as brand
>> dilution, and is considered a Bad Thing.

>> So let's create this design with the GNOME sites in mind, not with
>> generic
>> project sites, for whose sake we need to be bland and nonintrusive.
>> Gods know
>> it's a big enough job as it is.
 
> Wait a second. Have we started selling GNOME lately and nobody told me?
> Has the GPL been revoked?! I thought that the whole idea behind the
> GNOME desktop was Free extensibility among as many applications as
> desire. Since when does the brand of GNOME matter? Let's leave branding
> up to HelixCode and Eazel, GNOME is more about a philosophy of software
> development.

Branding/marketing and freedom are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, freedom
matters little if few people know that they can have it, and crave it.

The GNOME Foundation charter states rather specifically:

Public Image and Voice
-----------------------

The foundation will be the principal entity with the ability to make official
public statements for GNOME, such as press releases. The foundation will also
be responsible for maintaining the "GNOME brand," and will have to determine
the appropriate uses of the associated trademarks. The foundation will also
be a hub for joint-marketing efforts by those organizations (corporate and
non) which want to make GNOME-related announcements. Regional groups, created
to promote GNOME in specific areas, may wish to make their own announcements
about their efforts.


Leaving branding and marketing up to companies are not an option. I love
Helix Code, it's why I work for it, but I wouldn't want marketing and
branding of GNOME to be handed over to Helix Code or any other corporate
entity. It's far too important for that.


> All I'm saying is that the GNOME web site should have an identifiable
> *character* and resulting style which is suggested through many subtle
> (and perhaps some more obvious) artistic vehicles. My point is that
> these vehicles need to align with the character of the desktop, not be
> attention-begging flares for a desktop desparate for market share.
> Truely, if GNOME is the best (and Free) than it can't help but succeed.
> Again, let's not overstate the point.

I know what you're saying. I just think that the desktop and web site are
sufficiently different in target audience, goals, medium and usage patterns
that it's completely responsible to not maintain a very strong visual
consistency between the two.

Additionally, there's no such thing as assured success for the best
contender, as shown by many real life examples, but that's a different
discussion. I just think "GNOME is best anyway, so it doesn't need marketing"
(or arguments of that nature) are rather missing the point entirely.


>>> As I've said countless times, feel free to create a wonderful site
>>> design
>>> using these colors. I'm still not willing to let the use or non-use of
>>> brown
>>> become a deciding factor in whether or not a design is "good enough
>>> for the
>>> GNOME sites".

> Well, at some point we have to evaluate our interpretations of color. I
> am fundamentally opposed to a red background, for example. Brown (as you
> call it), on the other hand, conveys to me the soft-spoken, earthiness
> of a product that doesn't mind standing on it's own substance and
> merits. To quote Martha Stewart, "This is a good thing!" It is
> introverted, which means the visitor has to *ask* questions about GNOME,
> a sure way to get them *more* involved (as Socrates would tell you).
> Maybe not quite as many, but definitely a better caliber of folks would
> stick around. Of course this is all subjective. But that's why we're all
> talking about this, right?

Actually, it's not entirely subjective, although it's taken a rather
subjective turn. There are in fact very well accepted theories of color that
deal with what sort of message and feel certain colors convey (although this
isn't global, it's fairly uniform in the western hemisphere, at least. Let's
not get into design and color choice for maximum market impact worldwide,
it's the realm of million-dollar consulting companies.)

And yes, an approach like that would certainly attract a certain group of
users. But we're really talking mass-market appeal here, especially for the
main www.gnome.org site. We're charged with an extremely important
responsibility, namely to be the GNOME project's face to the world, and to be
the main gate through which the project recruits both new users, developers
and supporters. There is significant strength in numbers, and I don't want to
lose a single one of those potential users because our chosen design appeals
to "a better caliber of folks".

There seems to be some conception that we're mainly making a set of sites for
developers. We're not. Developers are important, they get their part of the
site, but GNOME is just about ready to go onto the mass market of desktops,
and to take on Windows directly. That's what this is about, offering a
high-quality, free alternative to all those average users out there.


> Ok, that's all I have to say. GNOME is a pretty cool thing to me, and
> has some refreshing qualities that aren't so popular these days. I'm
> just fighting for a chance to maintain that character in the web site
> because I care about it.

I think there are many ways to convey GNOME's character through the graphical
design, feel and content of the website. Assuming that we have to use the
same colors on the web site as are prevalent in the icons (which make up a
very small area of the desktop) to do so is in my opinion an extremely
simplistic view.

-- 
Joakim Ziegler - Helix Code web monkey - joakim helixcode com - Radagast IRC
      FIX sysop - free software coder - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
            http://www.avmaria.com/ - http://www.helixcode.com/