[gobolinux-users] 014 aesthethics issue

[Hisham Muhammad]

On 4/17/07, molfar <molfar.ua at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Yes, I think for now we should limit ourselves to a wallpaper contest.
Two weeks for entries and one week for voting sounds fine too me.

> 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.

Not to burst your bubble, but no way that a wallpaper contest for a
minor distro will make it to the news in these sites.

> 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 blog is not maintained by the devteam, it's an independent thing.

> 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.

Sounds good.

> 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.

Err, we'll abide to popular vote, but I think we'd better reserve
ourselves the right to make a decision if we absolutely need to (e.g.,
if the most-voted wallpaper has a naked girl in it then we probably
won't put it as a default. :) (and no, I don't want to think up a full
set of restrictions beforehand.))

> 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.


Ok. It's with great regret that I'll do this, but I will explain the
joke, at the risk of spoiling the whole fun (you asked for it). The
reason why you don't get the whole Gobo thing is... because there's
nothing to get! The whole "mystery" about the thing _is_ the joke
itself. Way back in the olden days when we created the distro we were
all undergrads at the same university, working on research, and I used
to write purposely-crappy and not-always-politically-correct webcomics
for our own consumption. These were the adventures of "Gobo, the
invariant". They were probably not very funny for anyone outside,
because most comics were about events of the day/week and you had to
be there to 'get it' (and the rest were about puns on computer science
stuff, etc.). The major theme of the Gobo strips, though, is that Gobo
himself has never appeared in any strip! No one has seen Gobo, know
how he's like, what he does, etc. In fact, many of the strips revolve
about the recurring theme of random characters showing up to Gobo's
fortress and try to meet him, only to be stopped by his loyal butler,
Fibo. Other recurring characters were Frobenius, the archetypical
villain-with-a-french-accent and his servant with green hair, Mr.
JBuilder; Helvetica The Mystery Woman, the cliché dumb-blonde;
Onossemo, the hero with a Superman body and a Pacman head; Policarpo
Quaresma, the wingless bird; Piped Wind, the piped wind; etc. :)

When the time came to create a mascot for GoboLinux, we took Fibo's
clothing and put it on a penguin. And then we came with the most
obnoxious mascot name we could think of: Que (which means "what" in
Portuguese and kinda sounds like a quack). Que has even appeared
alongside Fibo in a few strips.

-- Hisham
who now fears for his own life