Niclas Hedhman wrote:
I have just hired a Graphics Designer here at CodeDragons, and we don't
think we will manage to fill his pipeline with commercial work from the
start. I have previously promised that he will be available some of
the time
for work at Cocoon. He knows html and css a little bit, but it is not
his
main skill. He makes graphics. Icons, logos, photo assemblies and so
forth.
I have not hired him for Flash work, but I think he know a bit of that
as
well.
His name is Thien Luh Tay, and will shortly start subscribing to this
list,
which is probably as alien as a Hortoculture mailing list would be to
most
of us. He is also not experienced in open source, nor doing work on
distance. So, I am requesting a few things;
1. Any thread you start that you want him to read, put [graphics] in
the
subject. That would make it real easy for him to filter the scary
noise.
2. Start thinking of what kind of stuff you want him to do.
3. Try to educate in a friendly manner, the principles of OSS
collaboration.
OK, well, I have in mind a Cocoon task for a graphics designer!
There've been discussions here before about how the main Cocoon site
needs a face-lift... compare cocoon.apache.org with maven.apache.org or
springframework.org, the latter two sites have a clean, light look, and
they feel "modern". The Cocoon site looks heavy, kinda thick and
blocky and "old-school".
I'd like to see some choices for a new treatment of the masthead/banner
region along the top of the page. Just that. Not looking for a full
page design here, just a different look across the top. The real site
revision would incorporate some other things as well, like different
visual styling for the nav sidebar, but for now let's just concentrate
on the masthead.
Here are the branding "rules" I would propose...
1) Elements that must be retained from the current design:
(a) the Apache feather logo (though preferably reduced in size from
how it appears on the site today)
(b) the Cocoon logo. The cocoon logo may appear in either of two
forms: (i) as unadorned, stylized text, as in the current masthead on
cocoon.apache.org, or (ii) as text within its traditional "frame" of a
bordered, oblong field with rounded ends as seen on
cocoon.apache.org/2.1 under the heading "Apache Cocoon". I think the
Cocoon logo is cool and conveys a strong identity, we should keep it.
But see below w.r.t. color...
2) Elements that need not be retained (may, but need not be):
(a) the text "the Apache Cocoon Project"
(b) the text "http://cocoon.apache.org";
(c) any of the current color scheme. I'd like to see a range of
concept samples using variety of color palettes. In particular, the
colors used by the Cocoon logo can be varied. I think I would still
like the logo text to be either black or white depending on the
background color, but the background color can be anything that looks
appealing with the rest of the artwork and color palette.
From there on out, it's wide open! I would love to see a half-dozen or
so different ideas, and then we can see which ones people think are the
coolest :-).
I think it's hard to promote our light, agile framework from a heavy,
clunky, chunky looking site :-). Someone will say "well, it's the
content that matters..." and I agree — however, improving the content
vs. styling require different skill sets and don't really compete for
resources, so I say let's work on both at the same time, 'cause visual
impressions matter, too :-)
WDYAT?
—ml—
