Re: [Snowy] Design Concept of Snowy/Tomboy Online

[Brad Taylor <brad getcoded net>]

Hey Manuel,

> I really like the idea of Snowy and Tomboy Online and I appreciate the
> work you have done so far. I thought this is a good time to start
> contributing to the Snowy/Tomboy project. To make things clear I study
> Applied Computer Science and seriously I'm not a designer. But I
> thought about how a design concept of Tomboy Online and/or Snowy could
> look like in the end.
> 
> 
> Recently, I've taken the time to push some pixels around and I've
> ended up with three mockups which you can find here:
> http://manuel-uewwy.posterous.com/mockups-for-tomboy-snowy-tomboy-online

Like Sandy said, these mockups look fantastic!  I'm really glad that
you're interested in contributing -- Sandy and I could totally use the
help.

> Let me describe some of my ideas...
> 
> 
> Tomboy Mockup
> In general, I've tried to remove as much clutter as possible according
> to the philosophy of Tomboy. I think this is a big advantage of Tomboy
> and should be reflected by the design of all Tomboy sites.

I could not agree more.

> There was already the idea that Snowy as the django instance and
> Tomboy Online as the hosted service should get two different logos. So
> I've made two mockups for Tomboy Online and for a Snowy page.
> 
> 
> The logo of Tomboy Online shows two poles with notes attached to the
> wires. If you see the poles as telegraphy poles there is really no
> doubt that your notes are "on line". But you can also see them as
> electricity poles which expresses that Tomboy Online is powerful, of
> course.

The concept of Tomboy notes being put on "wires" is definitely
interesting.  Maybe we can recruit a designer and run through a couple
iterations of this concept.  I'll put out a blog post in the next couple
of days and see if anyone is interested.

> Each mockup also shows a video panel on the first page. This is
> according to the Blank Slate UI Pattern
> (http://ui-patterns.com/pattern/BlankSlate) and should give users an
> impression on how easy it is to making use of the Tomboy technology.

This is a great idea to get people interested in our three efforts.
Nice!

> Snowy Mockup
> The Snowy Mockup shows the site where you can download the Snowy
> instance to set up your own Tomboy Online service. You can expect that
> the users which accesses the site are more the technical kind of guys.
> Therefore, the screen cast on the page could show how you can set up
> your own Snowy instance. 
> 
> 
> Obviously, the Snowy Logo is not that much different from the Tomboy
> Online logo.  The Logo shows the poles without the wires. This should
> express the Do It Yourself character of Snowy, so that you just have
> to wire it up. Snowy (the little dog) is helping you to set it up very
> easily. And just because of the name there is snow on top of the
> poles.
> 
> 
> Tomboy Homepage Mockup
> To end up with a consistent design for all Tomboy related sites we
> might also have to update the design of
> http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/. Therefore I've also made a mockup
> and logo for this page.
> 
> 
> The Logo here is a note posted on a energy-efficient bulb. The idea
> behind that is, that Tomboy can make you more efficient and productive
> and it's all about expressing the slogan "Powerful ideas..." right
> within the logo. Because of the poles in the TO/Snowy logo you might
> also see a relationship between the TO/Snowy logo and the Tomboy logo.
> 
> 
> Resources
> - To put up the mockups and to design the logos I've used Adobe
> Fireworks. So, the logos aren't plain vector graphics, yet. But of
> course, I can hand over the editable Fireworks files. 
> - The fonts used in the Mockups are Arial, Harabara
> (http://www.dafont.com/harabara.font) and Gill Sans.
> 
> 
> Don't hesitate to share your opinion, ideas and doubts on this stuff.
> So what do you think? We might be able to iterate over the mockups and
> end up with a suitable design concept. At least, we could take this as
> an input for real designers ;)

I think your concept is very well thought out, and I appreciate all the
effort that went into not only the mockups but the design theme as well.
I would love to work though a couple of iterations of the design with
you, hopefully incorporating a designer into the mix.  In particular,
I'd be interested to see what you think the interaction model for
viewing and editing notes would be.  I'll try to send out a blog in the
next couple of days looking for a designer to help us out.

Once we nail down some good mockups, I'd be happy to assist with the
HTML/CSS and django template integration.

As far as next steps, I'm pretty much going to defer to you since not
only do you have a good idea of your concept, but you have a
considerable amount of enthusiasm, and I don't want to get in the way of
that!  I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Best,

-Brad