Nicu Buculei wrote:
There is a very active thread going on the Marketing list [1] about
the need of a Fedora mascot and an important number of Ambassadors and
community people are in agreement about this need (see the link for
comments, ideas, proposals).
I think we, the Art Team, can come *as a community* with a nice,
friendly and cute mascot which users will love.
The marketing-list thread seems very focused on animals; a mascot could
be a character too, though, right?
Actually, so this is totally inbred I think, but - for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat has put out a series of little videos that
simplify and explain the technology coming out with RHEL 5:
http://www.redhat.com/videos/real_tech/
They've got these cute little tofu-like characters in them that
represent systems. Very simple, but cute, and I think they bring a
friendly face to the product. I think that is kind of what we are
looking for, right?
From the thread on marketing-list and some comments I saw in our IRC
channel, I think some of the main points being brought up as issues to
solve are:
1) the Fedora logo is somewhat impersonal
2) it's not 'ours' - eg the community didn't create it and doesn't own
it so we're restricted in using it
3) it's not very good fodder for plush animals :)
4) it seems many suspect it doesn't reach out to as broad an audience as
a well-done mascot might.
I think probably the main goal for a mascot for Fedora, then, to be
derived from the list of issues above: a community-created and
maintained mascot for the Fedora project that brings a friendly
personality to the project and reaches out to our target audience.
Of course, a very difficult question I think is: who is our target audience?
One idea for moving forward would be for us to think of what
characters/mascots/ even TV commercials we associate with different
products and try to figure out what we like/don't like about each. We
could go through youtube.com, for example, and look for popular/funny
commercials that worked, that people liked and uploaded.
As for some preliminary rules, I think we need something:
- Free, so it can be used without any restriction (not even trademarks);
+1 I wouldn't say public domain though? Maybe just a plain CC
attribution (attribute the Fedora Project) - derivs are OK.
- lovable, this is the purpose of a mascot;
+1
- produced by the community, it should not be someone's baby but our
community's baby.
+1
~m
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