On Fri, 2009-06-19 at 00:31 +0200, Martin Sourada wrote: > My point is -- learn from the mistakes of past and but be also aware in > what we were good at. In all cases where we failed, we failed because we > had to redo the artwork anew late at the process. We should really avoid > this. This is a good point. Although I wonder how much you can really control a creative process. I think the thing that scared me the most about the late nights - I could spend hours and hours and hours and have to throw it away. There wasn't any guarantee after x hours there would even be anything usable. > Yeah, we totally need people to actually do more than just submit > ideas... How do we encourage the follow through we need? :-/ > > > I think that plan worked pretty good until we tried to mingle it > together with release name (in F9)... In F10 we reverted back to it, but > failed, I wonder what exactly went wrong... Ah okay you are right! I forgot about that. > Perhaps we could use a simple bug track to track our tasks? Or would it > be an overkill? I can see the advantages of people being able to more > closely follow the process and also people claiming tasks knowing that > others didn't claiming those yet. Plus people would have better idea of > how far we are. But it would pose additional work on us... I think this is a good idea. Maybe for each piece of artwork that we need, that's in the schedule with a deadline, we open a trac bug in our new trac instance Paul had set up for us? That might work well. > As for having two processes -- yeah, it's probably a bad idea, what I > had in mind something like having some kind of fallback if the process > itself fails... Well, if don't base our artwork on release name, we > could keep it for more than one release, if necessary. But it would feel > awkward if it would be based on the release name... Or perhaps have a > completely new artwork with every odd release and have an > improved/slightly changed version of the previous one with every even > release? Are we really have problems with time, or is it just because we > tend to do the things last minute? Or is it lack of people? I think it's a combo of: - the creative process is hard to control, and it's hard to know how long something is going to take or what odd directions it might take - lack of people - outside of the team folks tend to be very critical of the artwork no matter what and it's demotivating. And I don't think there is so much we can do about the first and last. > > > It seems there are complaints about the process, then complaints about > > changing the process in trying to improve it. How can we improve the > > process that people complain about so much if we can't change it? > > > I think, we often have problems when we change the process completely. > It seems to take some time for people to adjust... Perhaps analyzing > what parts of the current process are worst and how to improve them > would be a better approach than trying a completely new process again? > > > Does anyone want to take up the task of writing and maintaining the > > theme process documentation, and making sure it is well-publicized? > > > We need to decide on the process first, than documenting it... I can put > together a draft of what outlined before tomorrow if people think about > it as a good idea. We can even put different drafts together (although > it seems I and Nicu are not fans of your idea, it does not mean it might > not turn up to be the best after all) and then discuss what might be > best. FUDCon is next week and the release name will be supposedly > reported there, so we still have some time to decide on the process for > F12. I think I really like the requirement that the default be: - original - vector - abstract - theme-related And that we pick, let's say as originally proposed, 4 works from the creative commons / openly-licensed community that are related to the theme as well and have the following breakdown: - 2 general appeal / any age group - 1 appeal to children - 1 appeal to women > > > > The main problem for me is that every time the topic of release art > > > > comes up, I don't think 'fun' and 'cool', I think 'pain' and get a > > > > feeling of dread and despair :( And that's not cool. And after going > > > > through all that hard work and time, still we get negative comments (and > > > > I understand we can't satisfy everyone, but that on top of having to > > > > work so hard and not have much fun, makes it even less enjoyable.) I > > > > feel that this problem should be addressed so we can make theming fun > > > > again, but I'm not sure how. This was the idea I came up with but I'm > > > > very open to other proposed solutions. > > > > > > > > Is this fair or am I being overly dramatic? > > > What I feel when I think about fedora themes is high entry level and > > > confusion about the process. > > > > Do you have a better idea? Can you commit to helping make it better? > See above. But to summarize and perhaps add something more: > * try to change the process slowly rather than radically, based on > experience from previous release(s) Is the above proposal slow enough? We're keeping the inspired-by-the-release-name theme, but clamping it down a bit more by requiring vector artwork and abstractness. We could handle the 4 broader-community readymades as a separate project. > * after each release is done, hold a session (on irc with summary > posted on the list and wiki, or on the list only?) to discuss > what went right and what went wrong and what can we do about it That sounds good. > * better track what needs to be done and who's working on what I think maybe the trac ticketing system can be a big help here. > * create rather abstract themes than photo manip. +999 > * have a direct link to the current release artwork process from > our front page Good idea... and we should also make sure that when we figure out the process, we get some publicity around it: - process announced in Fedora Weekly news & Fedora Forum - process announced on Planet fpo - each phase of the process announced in FWN & on Planet FPO & Fedora Forum - maybe some kind of podcast, www.fpo banner, some kinds of publicity that way to get people involved, similar to how Michael did the fpo banner to solicit picture book submission - Any other venues I'm not thinking of? > * be stricter about deadlines +1 > * don't expect Mo will do the dirty work. Our artwork must be a > community effort, not our leader's all nighters (yeah, I am also > to blame here, but at least I've tried to help with the > wallpapers a little) Yes please :) :) :) And thank you for your patience with me :) ~m _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
