Re: [gNewSense-art] Artwork proposal updated

[Sam Geeraerts]

Luis Felipe Lopez Acevedo wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> I updated my theme proposal with a modified version of the original
> gNewSense logo
> and some other usable things.
>
> ...
>
> Please, tell me what you think about it!
>
> Regards,

As I already said, it's looks great. Don't let the following remarks 
make you think otherwise. :)

* nuevo_sentido-logo:
- What are the three specs in the middle supposed to be?
- As you already mentioned, it doesn't scale very well to small sizes. 
That could be impractical if this is to be the new logo. (Much more so 
than changing the theme, the decision to change the logo should not be 
taken lightly, but that's another discussion).

* nuevo_sentido-meaning:
- When I first read this I was inclined to pour a nice glass of wine, go 
sit under a tree and enjoy the view. Then I realized that the weather 
was awful. With the magic gone I read it again and it sounded a lot 
fluffier this time. Tranquility, trees and waiting patiently are not the 
first things that come into my mind when I think about free software. 
But a text about Stallman and the GPL is probably not going to win the 
hearts of the common folk. The strength of this text is that it 
associates gNewSense and free software with positive thoughts and 
carefree living.
- "place _over_ the roots" sounds a bit strange. Then again, English is 
not my first language. How about "between the roots"?
- "want to make part of it" should probably be "want to be part of it"
- "just like a gnu": my first thought was that gnus don't 'want' 
anything, but then I got that instead of "just like a gnu wants to be 
part of it" you mean "just like gnu is part of it". :)

* Background: I like my desktop background to be out of the way, so I 
vote for the background-tree one, because the logo is too distracting.

* Start here icon:
- Black and white squares: doesn't seem like it fits with the rest of 
the theme
- Current (plain) logo: if you're going to change the logo, go all the 
way and throw the previous one out
- Current modified logo: looks better than our current 'rendering' of 
the logo and I wouldn't be against cherrypicking that to use in our 
current artwork. But again, if you're changing, go all the way.

* Splash screen: I like it a lot in itself. It has this whole 
path-to-freedom thing going on. Even made me think about the Wizard of 
Oz a bit (although that's probably not relevant). But this one also 
feels a bit off (though not as much as the start here icon). The rest of 
the artwork is all very slick and kind of savannah/Africa-themed, while 
this one is grainy with flowerbeds.

In conclusion: you're definitely on to something here and a bit of 
tweaking would make it even better.

Some other thoughts: maybe the artwork team would do good to discuss a 
general and specific direction. I mean, a tree seems to be the gNewSense 
thing, so you could pick one kind of tree (real of fictional, e.g. 
sirgazil's nuevo sentido tree) and some general keywords (e.g. freedom, 
new sense, ...) and have that as the base for all the artwork. Then you 
differentiate that further (e.g. Africa, savannah, ...) for every new 
major release (and maybe even further but to a lesser degree for minor 
releases (e.g. lions, elephants, slick, grainy). I know that artists 
like their artistic freedom, but setting some boundaries to work in 
brings focus into the project which probably leads to higher quality and 
more consistent results.

Regards,

Samgee