Re: Brand Guidelines Update

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Allan:

We typically have our lawyers review official documents that relate to
legal issues such as trademark before we make changes to them.  Is this
because the Wiki version of our Guidelines is not yet official?  Most
official GNOME legal documents should probably be in
http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing.  The Wiki makes more sense for
draft documents.  I am not trying to pick on you Allan since I know
The GNOME Foundation has not been so good about keeping our fgo website
up-to-date. (e.g. bugzilla bugs #629334, #644932 for two examples of
issues with just the licensing page).

At any rate, can you also ask the legal-list gnome org mailing list to
encourage our legal experts to also review these changes?

My personal thoughts are that I think it is good for the Brand
Guidelines to highlight GNOME 3, to discuss any particular guidelines
that relate to using the GNOME brand with GNOME 3, differences in how
the brand should be used with GNOME 3 versus earlier versions of GNOME,
etc.

However, I think statements like "The principle product that is
produced by the GNOME Project is GNOME 3" and "GNOME is a word in and
of itself. It primarily refers to the GNOME Project, designating the
organization which produces GNOME 3, GNOME Applications and GNOME
Developer Technologies." may need some rewording (e.g. "principle"
or "primarily" only associated with version 3 of GNOME).

Why do we want to use language that may even give the appearance of
limiting how the GNOME community can reasonably use its own brand?

Brian


> I spent some time elaborating our brand guidelines [1] today. The
> sections that I added are marked as draft status. Feedback would be
> welcome.
>
> To date, the guidelines only addressed the GNOME logo and its usage. My
> aim with the update is to expand them to cover terminology and
> additional visual design patterns, such as font usage and colour
> palette. The updates I have added roughly correspond to the approach
> that was developed for the new gnome.org website. They also attempt to
> reflect the recent moduleset reorganisation.
>
> Some of the terminology guidelines are a departure from previous
> practice, particularly in the use of 'GNOME 3' instead of 'The GNOME
> Desktop'. Likewise, the inclusion of a GNOME Project tag line - 'We make
> great software available to all' - is a major step. So, give me your
> thoughts!
>
> Best,
>
> Allan
>
> [1] http://live.gnome.org/BrandGuidelines