Re: desktop artwork for wheezy
Hi Paul
On 10/10/11 01:41 PM, Paul Wise wrote:
I'd like to put something together. It will probably take a month or so to
do something reasonable.
Could you share your ideas with us?
Well, I haven't started with anything yet, but here are some thoughts
I've had on it so far...
== Icon Theme ==
I'm taking over the ITP for the Faenza icon theme, it's a *really*
popular icon theme and also very complete. The author is really quick to
create any new icons as well and it already includes icons for
Debian-specific icons (like Iceweasel/Icedove/etc). I would probably end
up proposing this as an icon theme for Wheezy. I spent some time
improving the packaging but since the icon theme is GPL-2 and the source
package only shipped the .png files, I need to go back and fix it so
that the source package contains the SVG files instead and creates the
PNG's when the package is built.
Faenza Icon Theme: http://tiheum.deviantart.com/art/Faenza-Icons-173323228
ITP: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=595106
== Wallpaper ==
The spacefun theming and wallpaper in Squeeze did one thing really well,
it made Debian a bit less intimidating. Debian has a reputation for
being something that's "for nerds" and the spacefun theme brought some
playfulness and friendliness to the appearance of the system. Where it
failed though was being universal enough to be appropriate everywhere.
People who are deploying in corporate and professional environments
complained that the spacefun theme was too playful and that it looked
more appropriate for a children's variant of Debian.
I don't have a wallpaper yet, but I'd like to keep the following in mind:
* Include a light variant and a dark variant of the wallpaper so that
you can have contrast with your panels whether you use light panels or
dark ones
* Avoid text (hard to translate and might be cut off / scaled badly)
or anything that resembles buttons/functionality (some users will
inevitably want to click on it), so basically I'd like to avoid having
the Debian logo on there alltogether
* I'd like to avoid some really tired cliches, sure, a picture of a
leaf with drops on it is pretty, or some stones in a river, but it's
*so* done. So are swooshes. And possibly space images. Have I just
eliminated 90% of all wallpapers?
* I realise Wheezy is a Toy Story character, but I doubt Pixar would
license anything broadly enough to be included in Debian, so I probably
won't spend too much time thinking about a Toy Story / Wheezy character
angle.
== Desktop Environments ==
There's a *lot* I could say here, but I'd like to have the popular
desktop environments as consistent and Debiany as possible. So, same
panel colours, icon theme and fonts across desktops. I like the Ubuntu
font but it currently has licensing issues which prevents it going into
main. I guess it's also a good idea to have something a bit more
distinct. The Droid family of fonts are really nice and are in main
already. It also has fairly good internationization including language
support for Arabic, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hebrew,
Japanese, Korean and
Thai.
What's the process? Will it be a competition again?
I'd like to see all the completed themes uploaded to the archive and
included in wheezy so users can choose their favourite theme.
I guess a competition works OK, some sort of co-operative process
would be interesting too, but I've never heard of any digital art done
using open-source collaborative methods.
I've been followed many discussions on that in the past and it mostly
ended in flamewars. Competitions are frowned upon by quite a few
artists. I personally prefer something more collaborative, but I also
like having the possibility of many people trying many different things
and a competition seems to be one way of achieving that.
I know I don't have anything to show yet and this is a lot of talk, but
I'd really like Debian to look really good. I don't mean to criticize
any previous efforts, but Debian has lagged a bit behind some other big
distributions in the looks department, and it's time that changes!
-Jonathan
Reply to: