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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