On Sun, 2009-06-28 at 17:46 -0500, Michael Beckwith wrote: > Keep in mind everyone that just because the codename is "Constantine" > doesn't mean that we HAVE to include the guy in the theme somehow. We > can go off on some inspiration derived from reading about him and > whatnot and just make sure the tie in is there. I found some inspiration in W.B. Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium' [1]. There are some interesting themes in there (and even a link to steam... er.. byzantine-punk). I'll just throw these out there; they may all suck but crappy ideas can inspire awesome ideas so if they inspire something in you let's talk about it: - Mortality vs Immortality - Byzantine art & culture flourished over 1000 years (330-1453) and is still known of today - We can relate this to Fedora - Fedora does not try to only look 'cool' on the surface and not have much substance underneath; Fedora is very concerned about quality and doing the right thing. Fedora hopefully is at the forefront of promoting a culture/philosophy and producing a quality system that will bring order and the right way forward. A few ideas on representing this: have a simple & transparent (or not quite drawn-in) subject grow in complexity & depth and become more opaque maybe. Or go from weak to saturated colors and/or values. The message would be along the lines of Fedora's hopeful grasp towards greatness/eternity. - The natural/impermanent/imperfect vs. technology/permanent/perfect - building on the above theme... Yeats makes reference to Byzantine Emperor Theophilos' singing mechanical golden birds (he also had mechanical golden lions as well, hmmm... :) ) I feel like themes that deal with technology vs nature usually pose technology in the 'bad guy' light and nature in the 'good guy' light, so it might be interesting to send a message that poses technology (Fedora) as an ally of nature (the people using Fedora) to make it better (to improve Fedora users' lives). Visually this could maybe take a steampunk bird form hehe. - Order from Chaos - Constantine was known for bringing order to the chaos of the Roman empire at the time he began rule and Constantinople seems to have served as a central hub / symbol of that order. Perhaps Fedora is the Constantinople to the chaos of crappy, proprietary software. The message would be that open source software is inevitable and is the way forward to order and progress. - Liberation through enlightenment - '... Consume my heart away; sick with desire... gather me Into the artifice of eternity.' Liberation of the soul from worldly desires... liberation of the software and more generally culture from worldly desires...? worldly desires = closed firmware and patented codecs? hehe - Unity/Coming together to make something great - and could quite easily be communicated with the golden mosaic designs already being discussed - alone one tile is nothing special, but the tiles together can make a beautiful piece of art. Along similar lines, Constantinople itself was a trading center where many cultures intersected. ~m [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_to_Byzantium _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
