[libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-design] Initial icon design

Hi Ivan, all,

Ivan M wrote:
> Hi Bernhard, Christoph, all,
>
> This is a little late, but when putting things into practice, small
> details come up.
>
> First, the good part: I managed to get some headway in Inkscape and
> create basic designs for 16x16 and 32x32 document icons that are
> pixel-perfect (the preview image doesn't show this) [1]. They're
> missing the application icons - I tried to adapt existing ones from my
> own designs and Bernhard's designs, but in order to be pixel-perfect,
> they have to be drawn specially for smaller icon sizes, otherwise
> there is quite a lot of distortion, particularly at 16x16. Since I'm
> no good at manipulating objects in Inkscape, I'll leave that for
> someone more skilled.

At least the 16x16 icons need pixelwise adaption of the colors too - we 
should work on them, when the design has been agreed upon.

One point I realized: Your icons are broader than the TDF logo.

I don't know if this is on purpose, but if we want the icons be based on 
the logo (I'll reply to Christoph's mail on this topic), proportions should 
be the same IMHO.
> Now, the ambiguous part: working with the color pallet at [2], I found
> some small points of possible improvement. Mostly that applies to
> perceived lightness of colors (which, in my experience, is not always
> equivalent to the actual luminosity value in the HSL color model). For
> example, Green 4 appears much lighter than Blue 4, so that a gradient
> that goes from Green 4 to Green 3 appears more distinct than a
> gradient that goes from Blue 4 to Blue 3. At the same time, a gradient
> from Blue 2 to Blue 1 appears darker than a gradient going from Green
> 2 to Green 1 - try it out and let me know if you see it that way too.

It seems to depend very much on your monitor's calibration.

While I fould your point very reasonable when I looked at your 
DraftReference.png [3], here at work it looks quite different:
With 16 bit colors (can't  be modified by a user) the colored right upper 
corner is much darker in the Calc icon than the others (especially than 
Writer and Base).

I created my second version [B - left icons] with the unmodified color palette.
Here on this monitor th corners look similar bright in blue and green, while 
the gradients of the inner fill are different on the document icons: green looks 
lighter than blue (but similar in the darker gradients on the application icons).

I don't know if this is a special case because of the color restrictions here 
on my system - and how many monitor's options are similar. 

> Based on this, I created a reference image [3] that (for me at least)
> had the greatest apparent consistency between designs. It's imperfect,
> but out of all the possible combinations, this worked best
> subjectively. That doesn't mean I propose we use these colors, but
> rather that we make small adjustments to the existing color table.

This should be done for the "Community Branding". 

As Christoph already pointed out, the present palette might have been used 
for marketing material and other stuff already. Slight modifications could be 
done without much negative effects, but larger ones (like moving Blue1 to 
Blue0) might  be problematic.

For smaller modifications I consider our time too precious to spend on this 
topic (just use the best color from the palette, even with Blue2 instead of 
Blue1 the general impression will stay consistent with our branding), larger 
should be postponed until the community branding starts.

This is just my personal opinion - don't hesitate to express yours...


> It would be ideal if we could use the same corresponding colors from 
> each set of colors (i.e. use Blue 1 for the Writer icon where Green 1 is
> used in the Calc icon...)

+1

Best regards

Bernhard

[B]: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Draft1_2.png
> [3] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/9/9d/IvanIconDraftReference.png





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