Hi Tobias!
Am Dienstag, den 08.02.2011, 16:37 +0100 schrieb Tobias Bernard:
hi
first of all, i'd like to say that i love libreoffice and would like to
help you guys in some way.
Great! And we love people who like to help us ;-)
these days, i've read that the new libreoffice icons are going to look
like this:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9MZR46ZEuS8/TURcYGZPRkI/AAAAAAAAAuE/si2R_93DT_M/s1600/New256pxIcons.png
More or less, since these show only the huge icons - that are only used
in special cases (e.g. Mac OS X dock, Windows XP Preview, Windows 7).
i don't know if the icons will remain that way, but personally, i don't
like how they are now. In my opinion, the main problems are:
- the colored border: it's fine for blue and green, but yellow and
orange look really bad
Mmh, in what way - are they less distinctive, or do you think the chosen
color looks weird, or reminds of something?
- the pictograms inside the sheets: too comlex, too many colors that
don't go with the border color
That depends on the complexity. According to the wiki page, we decided
"Note: Basic symbolism will be used for 16px and (partly) 32 px icons.
If the icons are larger, then decoration elements can be added to make
them more pleasing."
For example:
* Calc: Shows a diagram that is re-used for the Chart icon to show
the diagram in full size. The colors adapt the (currently used)
Sun Branding colors from within the chart dialog. I adapted them
to use the LibreOffice branding palette. That means, that the
colors are consistent to both the object, and the behavior
within LibreOffice.
* Draw: The green handle grips mimic the ones in Draw - also
"green".
If you look at the smaller icons, there is less detail. Here is an
(outdated) example:
http://luxate.blogspot.com/2011/01/libreoffice-initial-icons-milestone.html
so, my major suggestions are:
- leave the border black/grey for all the icons
We decided to go for the color, to better distinguish the main
applications from the important applications. I think, initially we had
the black/gray.
By the way, we also decided (as the wiki page states, implicitly) to
re-use "our" document symbol for marketing reasons - instead of using a
standard document. Once LibreOffice and TDF is more known, we may roll
back to more default icons.
- choose some simple, monochromatic pictograms for the single programs
See above please, the smaller icons work that way.
- maybe color the inner part of the sheet, instead of the border
:-) I initially did that, and Nik proposed to change that, to better
mimic the idea of real paper pages for the document icons (currently
document icons and applications icons are the same). The team decided to
go that way ...
Here is an old version with color:
http://luxate.blogspot.com/2011/01/icon-as-con-i-can-2.html
i did these faenza-inspired libreoffice icons, because i didn't like to
see the openoffice faenza icons on my gnome-desktop. When you see them,
you'll have an idea of what I mean.
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=138257
Cool, thanks for sharing. But here we have to somehow consider the
guidelines of the other platforms as well. I think the current approach
fits somehow (even if not perfectly) on most of the platforms. What do
the others think? Personally, I'm currently perfectly happy with what
we've achieved so far and would like to address the many other work
items still left untouched ... maybe you can jump in here as well?
if that's possible, I'd like to help improving the icons, which i think
don't have yet the style they deserve.
Help is always appreciated, but as I said, I'm fine with the current
ones for the next few releases of LibreOffice. But if you want to
improve them, I propose to touch only a few ... that helps us to discuss
that within the team.
But - maybe this might be even better - I'd like you to have a look at
the general Design Team stuff. We are currently kicking of our team, so
you might be interested - are you? Here is some starting point:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Kick-Off
i work with inkscape and gimp on ubuntu maverick.
Great, at least these are my favorite FLOSS tools as well.
greetings
tobias bernard
Tobias, did that help somehow? Do you like to know more? Do the others
want to share their thoughts?
Cheers,
Christoph
