Calligra Branding Presentation & Draft of Guidelines

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Wednesday 16 November 2011 Nov, Jaroslaw Staniek wrote:
> On 16 November 2011 13:35, Boudewijn Rempt <boud at valdyas.org> wrote:
> 
> >> But they do for Qt which has even more formal rules. Where do you see
> >> the enforcement? The guidelines are for exactly opposite reason: to
> >> limit risk of (usually unintentional) fork of visual identity.
> >>
> >> Sometimes rules have to be explicit in this unfriendly world, if not
> >> formally then via explicit guidelines.
> >> I am OK with you not happy with this document but it's clear that it
> >> has one of the simplest form within communities.
> >
> > Well, both KDE and Debian are much simpler. I would like to be as close as possible to KDE with our "rules", if not exactly the same.
> >
> 
> In reality KDE rules have no very cental page but is not as simple as
> it seems to be:
> - http://kde.org/stuff/clipart.php
> - http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Guidelines/CIG/KDE_Logo (and
> this is an outdated crystal logo, reported weeks ago)
> 
> No guidelines means upside down logos for KDE is equally ok as the
> default ones. And I wouldn't promote or even use this a sign if we do
> not show we care about that. It's better not to define anything.
> 
> Google for  'kde logo' images. 99% of that looks like broken identity
> to me. Almost as bad as overusing of blue. We also made so much
> anti-promotion ourselves by creating the random splash screens. I am
> afraid of comparing that to GNOME.

Okay, yes -- those examples are very convincing.

> I have no problem with distorted calligra artwork as long as this is
> not no longer reference to Calligra project.

Hm... Do the updated guidelines allow that?

> Creativeness is of lower priority than visual identity to me. There's
> nothing really wrong with more explicit message that that we wish to
> maintain our visual identity. In some countries, especially the USA,
> public appearance of nonprofits, usually foundations, is much more
> like of companies (in good sense), see Linux Foundation, Mozilla,
> GNOME (http://foundation.gnome.org/licensing/index.html). In my
> opinion we and KDE general are work in progress compared to that. I
> have not seen single complaint that authors cannot be creative because
> visual guidelines are defined for the above entities. We're not
> foundation so we're only talking about guidelines and not complicated
> trademark rules.

Right. I am convinced by you -- I withdraw my earlier objections.

> 
> Obviously we'll need a vote.
> 
> >> Compare to
> >> - Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Logo/UsageGuidelines
> >> - openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines
> >
> > Distributions have their own set of legal issues they need to take care of.
> >
> >> - finally, LibreOffice http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Branding
> >
> > That one is nice (even though they are pretty stupid in specifiying cmyk values, on their own those are meaningless).
> 
> We have CMYK BLACK/WHITE so we're done, good for someone who printed
> in color and failed...

:-)

> 
> > They don't talk about not allowing people to make merchandise unless they are libreoffice developers, for instance. The whole page has a way more open, community-oriented feel than the proposed guidelines for Calligra, which feel extremely corporate to me.
> >
> 
> OK but we do not have this (Debian's) restriction already after we
> agreed to do so yesterday. The link at
> http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Logos#Guidelines points to draft 2,
> I blogged about this last night.

Okay, about draft 2, some practical points:

page 2, point 1: would Nokia be able to use the Calligra logo in the about box (if any) or promotional literature (if any) for the Harmattan Documents application? I'm not sure, but I would love seeing the logo used in connection with that app. Same for SKF: they use Calligra in their app, could they put the logo in their about box or manual? (Without the interference of the e.V. membership who are, I'm afraid, very prone to perpetual indecision.) Can I use the Calligra logo on the KO GmbH homepage to link to the calligra website? Can we use it in the experimental windows installer?
 
Point 2 would say "yes", but then the "decided using the rules in 1." thing makes it hard to figure out. I feel this needs to be clarified.

Page 3: I'd still prefer to speak about black on white, or white on suitably dark backgrounds, but I am willing to defer to Evgeny's opinion on this.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt
http://www.valdyas.org, http://www.krita.org, http://www.boudewijnrempt.nl