[gobolinux-users] 014 aesthethics issue

[molfar]

On 4/17/07, Hisham Muhammad <hisham.hm at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, let's make a wallpaper contest then, but let's decide on the rules
> first. :) How much time should we give for sending entries? How will
> voting take place?
> Any ideas?

Well, for starters, there is a question of contest goals.
If you are only ready to get some new wallpapers and nothing else,
than 2-3 weeks for entries gathering and 1 week for public polls
should suffice. Preferable format is SVG, since it can be easily
edited and thransformed to any raster image without losing the overall
quality.

There has to be a major announcement on the main site and gobo-blog as
well. Bear in mind, that getting the news to OSnews, Digg, Slashdot
resources and maybe some others is A MUST! Not only will it draw
general attention to our distro, it may be quite helpful to get to
know many artists and web designers that are not *nix-savvy, but are
interested in participating.

You don't have a Forum on your site, thus you can't provide for a
separate 'topic' in it, where you could post all the coming entries
for public review. However, it can be done in your gobo-blog. Not only
will it spare your main site from increased bandwidth, but it will
help to spark some life in your blog (btw, you could give it some love
too - make it more customized, don't go simply for generic Blogger
templates). Another possibility is a Flicker, of Picasa folder for
storing all the works.

The voting should be held openly, with a public poll provided on the
blog. There should be 3 prize places, with the winner having his work
provided as a default in next Gobo release and possibly onwards. The
works of 2 and 3 place winners can be also included in the distro.
There is no need for developers to have any 'decisive' vote in this
contest because it doesn't change the brand from the ground-up. What
people like is what they get.

Only one complication remains. Most of the outsiders don't get the
whole "gobo" idea. If you don't understand smth - you don't improve
it. That's why the contest may be rather limited in this regard. And
that's why I'd suggest the overall concept, and logo overhaul.
That doesn't necessary mean that we should abandon current name and
mascot. Actually, it's not bad and is rather funny. However, I'd
strongly insist on making that 'internal joke' thing more
comprehensible by anyone other than from the inner circle of
developers)), otherwise the distro won't get far with gaining
popularity, despite all the innovation that it introduced. People need
brand and not only technical peculiarities. Take a look at Ubuntu, or
FreeBSD or many others that have provided for such a feature.

To achieve this, the first and most important step would be providing
for a good and thorough explanation of all the things 'goboish'. Make
it your distinctive feature, be proud about it, but don't make it
cryptic - you won't get anywhere this way!
Someone on this mailing list already suggested, that there is a kind
of text in Portuguese, depicting the adventures of Gobo and Fibo.
Well, for shame without a doubt, but I don't know Portuguese. And I'm
sure, many other foreign users don't either. So please, could you
provide it at least in english and on your site? That would really
help. There is nothing really to prevent you from expanding on
gobo-mythology either later on. Once you make preliminary explanations
the story will live on its own, but this time, on a much larger scale.
And that what gets us to the main question of logo redesign. Once
people comprehend the idea behind the mascot and all they'll be less
restricted in their ideas on how to improve it.
And that is where you can open a new and much more successful contest,
having the overall distro style refurbished. That's smth that FreeBSD
guys did last year (if I'm not mistaken), and the results they
achieved are most inspiring (http://www.freebsd.org/logo.html).

Well, that's all for now. I could go on and on, but will spare you of
the pain of reading all this flood)))

Regards,
molfar