RE: [libreoffice-design] Re: [Libreoffice-ux-advise] Libre Icons.zip

I will create an account, and put my proposal on the wiki. Your e-mail helps me to understand how 
to explain the nature of my suggested improvement. First, I'd like to hash it out with you some 
more.

> > It looks like the icon for a generic file, which makes it
> > ambiguous.

> It looks a bit similar to a "standard" document icon, but I don't
> consider this as problem or fault: LibreOffice *is* (or at least should
> be) the product to open and work on a variety of documents, so it's
> positive in my eyes, if people consider our icon as a generic document icon.

I don't mean a generic document icon. I mean to say that it looks similar to an icons that 
operating systems use when they don't know what program to use in order to open a file. If you were 
to do something like "touch ~/Desktop/file.xyz", then that icon will be similar to the LibreOffice 
icon.

> > Now on to your proposal. I am sorry, but I don't think it currently
> > has the necessary quality:
> > * Its meaning is unclear to me—it looks like a "double traffic light"
> > and doesn't seem to have any relation to documents/a suite/an office
> > etc.

> I don't understand the reason for eight corners - the icon looks like a
> shield, it resembles rather a virus protect product than an office suite.

> If you want to refer to the sub-applications, I would think of adding
> the symbolism of them at least in the larger scales...

> > * Google Images suggests that by BSG you mean Battlestar Galactica...
> > if that is what you mean, please bear in mind that LibreOffice is
> > supposed to appeal to wide international audience and not everyone
> > will be able to make this connection.

> I don't see any reference to BSG, my ZIP file contains .png images only.
>
> > Even in case you now decide to quit icon-making, you should know that
> > as a manager of what is probably a larger deployment of
> > Openoffice.org/LibO you can might be able to make a few good proposals
> > for usability improvements.

Here was what I was thinking when I made the icon: I made a shape that is the same as the paper 
they used in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. All of their paper had the corners cut off, 
making it an irregular octagon. I even looked up the exact dimensions of the paper used in BSG. 
Then I added six hexagons. Each hexagon is the color of one of the six applications presented in 
the LibreOffice starting screen. I even went so far as to take a screenshot, and then use the color 
picker to get the exact right color for each hexagon. In each case, I "picked" the color from the 
center of the triangle in the upper-right corner. Formula is the exception. I just went with black 
for that one.

I know that the quality is poor. That's why I included a 512x512 version: I am a poor artist, so I 
would expect that a talented artist on your team would want to edit the icon to make it look more 
professional. The smaller PNG's are only for folks to imagine what the icon COULD look like at 
various resolutions after an artist has his or her way with it.

I'm neither a programmer or graphic designer. My profession is keeping servers healthy, but you 
undoubtedly already have a good hosting provider. I can't talk my employer into donating money; 
we're a government agency, so that would be considered the crime of "gift of public funds." I look 
for ways that I can contribute to FOSS. A suggestion for a new icon theme seemed to be one of those 
ways.

I'm also working on getting my employer to host a page that publicly thanks the makers of all the 
FOSS that we use. So far, my only argument that such a page isn't an illegal government endorsement 
is that whitehouse.org publicly acknowledges using and contributing code to Drupal. Then I have to 
convince the webmaster's boss that we should pay a few hours' salary to design such a page. The 
whole thing is progressing very slowly, but it *is* progressing :)

Respectfully Submitted,
R. Toby Richards
Network Administrator
Superior Court of California
In and for the County of San Luis Obispo
(805) 781-4150
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