Hello Robyn,
Wow! That felt like as if I was reading my own thoughts on the matter.
I need to clear up one thing though: despite what the Gnome team says,
Gnome 3 can be very well modified, even more so than Gnome 2. (The
central user experience, Gnome Shell, has a mechanism to load extensions
which are a lot more powerful than anything on Gnome 2.) No
misundersanding here, this is not a hack. Some extensions are even
provided from Gnome's upstream.
Fedora using Gnome 3 can still be branded as Fedora. What I did on the
design team's mailing list was a polite request to start a discussion
about how to do this best. I have made a simplistic approach to display
a logo there, and asked them to start discussing how to improve upon it.
Then I received some constructive criticism from some people, but
completely negative reactions (and total unwillingness to discuss this)
from the members of the Gnome team.
I completely agree with Robyn, I think that marketing is very important
for Fedora if we want it to spread and be used by many people. And
branding a product is a very important part of such marketing. And a
logo is always the central piece of branding for any product, just like
Robyn said.
So, I have made one approach to displaying the logo on Fedora 15. I have
made it available as an installable package.
I'm looking forward to a civilised discussion about how we can improve
upon that and give the final release a branding so that people can see
and feel that they are still using the Fedora they love. :)
Cheers,
Timur
On 04/16/2011 04:02 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
On 04/15/2011 03:56 AM, Aleksandra Bookwar wrote:
> Hello, everyone,
>
> I would like to invite you to these two particular discussions:
>
> 1) gnome-shell extension that adds a Fedora logo
>
>
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2011-April/004233.html
>
> 2) customization of themes and colors in gnome 3 desktop in Fedora 15
>
>
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2011-April/007130.html
> I don't have problem with the concept per se, but i have a problem with
> the fact GNOME shell on my rather powerful laptop (Core 2 Duo T9300
> 2,5GHZ, 4GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro NVS140m) is very slow. When the first
> preview versions came out it was OK but the newer versions are very
> slow. If it remains like this in the final release i will have to change
> GNOME for something else or use the older gnome-panel. The new concept
> requires some time to get used to but after a while it feels quite
> natural. I don't like the default black theme but i recently stumbled
> upon this page -http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/09/top- ... -ever.html
<
http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/09/top-6-gnome-shell-themes-ever.html>
> which contains a collection of gnome-shell themes (before that i didn't
> even know that there were themes for gnome-shell). Some of the themes
> there are very beautiful. So in my opinion the basic concept is very
> good but it needs some polishing - like improved responsiveness and
> better default theme and icon theme. I also hope that there is more to
> gnome than gnome-shell.
> I think that these topics are important for promoting Fedora 15 to
> end-users and Fedora Marketing Team should be involved.
>
Let me first start off by saying: I wish we had known sooner. While
there was certainly discussion on the design-list about the impact of
branding by modifying/replacing the wallpaper, and discussion of the
fact that there would be no GNOME logo on the desktop, I don't think
that everyone was *acutely* aware that there would be no room for
*any* branding of *any* type on the desktop. I think more awareness of
that would have greatly changed the outcome of the wallpaper discussion.
Also, I have no solution, and I'm just going to mostly rant here about
branding. All views are obviously my own and not of my employer. :p
Branding is about exposure. Yes, there is exposure when the browser
page defaults to start.fp.o - assuming people don't change their start
page, as many people do. Impressions are made at start-up - and then
quickly disappear after the computer boots. The wallpaper, while being
part of our themed identity each release, does not have a Fedora logo
- and people change their wallpaper. The small icon, while admittedly
incredibly small, is seen multiple times, over and over, every day, by
the person using the desktop. And by others around them as well. It
is the singular thing that constantly, always identifies the desktop
at a glance when fully booted up, as Fedora.
I suspect that *anyone* who works in a Branding role would say that to
have no plainly, constantly visible connection to Fedora is a
mistake. We have worked very hard to build that brand, and to
associate the infinity logo with Fedora. To not have a desktop easily
identifiable as Fedora on sight is just brand dilution, IMO.
Let's talk about this metaphorically for a moment.
There are many pieces that make up Fedora. Think of it as cooking
something: We have lots of ingredients. We put them all together, and
after it bakes in the oven for about 6 months, out comes Fedora. Yum!
(Sorry, bad joke, had to do it.) Sometimes the ingredients are
substitutable - empathy and pidgin, for example. Occasionally the
ingredients are modifiable - as GNOME has been in the past. And those
modifications to that particular ingredient are what made Fedora taste
like... Fedora.
GNOME 3 is an ingredient in Fedora - not the other way around. I
wouldn't expect that, if, for example, there was a GNOME 3 Remix of
Fedora, that there would be any trace of Fedora branding anywhere.
Fedora is the major ingredient in a Fedora Remix - but not the end
product. Sadly, and I think mistakenly, the GNOME ingredient is
theoretically no longer modifiable. I don't know that that prevents
us from bringing in another ingredient to help us retain the Fedora
flavor that we know and love.
Imagine if Dell, who has spent a fortune branding their product, was
told by Intel that, rather than having a Dell background as part of
the out-of-the-box experience, there was to be no trace of Dell
branding anywhere, and instead ONLY Intel branding can be present.
That's not going to happen. Why? Because the physical computer is the
final product. I don't expect that, if, someday, Fedora worked its
way into being an option for a PC that one might walk into Best Buy or
other large consumer electronics shop and purchase off the shelf, that
the Fedora desktop wallpaper would be present. It would be the
desktop designed by the manufacturer. Why? Because rather than being
the Final Product, we would now be an ingredient.
The mobile phone food chain works much the same. Would Motorola, HTC,
and Samsung give up the the ability to have their logo or name etched
or stamped into the case of a phone running Android? No. Do they live
with the fact they have to put the Verizon logo on the phone before it
gets shipped to Verizon and put into a saleable package that goes to a
consumer? Of course they do. Despite the fact that the logos are
small. Because *every time* someone looks at their cell phone, they
see the words Motorola and Verizon. Motorola doesn't say, well, they
see the Motorola logo every time they boot the cell phone for a few
seconds, and that's good enough. Verizon doesn't assume that everyone
will simply leave their mobile browser defaulting to the Verizon
wireless start page.
Look around you, at all your gadgets, and products, and food in your
fridge. Everything is *immediately* identifiable as a brand,
generally. Imagine going to a store and trying to pick between Coke
and Pepsi, if both of the cans are labelled "Carbonated Water and High
Fructose Corn Syrup." Saying that we can see the logo at startup is
equivalent to to saying, "Well, if you happen to watch someone open
their fridge, you'll notice that the white can of Carbonated Water and
High Fructose Corn Syrup came out of a red Coca-Cola box." That's
obviously not the same as someone holding the signature Red Coke can,
or a blue Pepsi can. Coca-Cola and Pepsi want their branding visible
ALL THE TIME - that's not an accident.
And now we are essentially going to be Carbonated Water and High
Fructose Corn Syrup.
There is no easy answer here. GNOME 3 has been intentionally designed,
at least as much as I can read into what i've read on the design-list,
to allow no trace of any branding of any type - other than the GNOME 3
look and feel. And basically, in a nutshell, it sucks for us.
Branding at boot-up. and branding in a browser that some people may
or may not use, that directs people to a page that may or not be set
to go to start.fp.o, that they immediately use to go to *some other
location on the interwebz*, is NOT the same as (a) having a Fedora
look-and-feel and (b) having a logo, even if miniscule, making a
constant impression and makes the desktop immediately identifiable as
Fedora, because the Fedora Logo has brand value. (Much more than a
desktop wallpaper that, while being a compromise, is still completely
devoid of a Fedora logo.) And it doesn't just suck for us - it also
sucks for everyone who does a Fedora Remix that wants to change the
look and feel as well and logos as well.
Is trying to hack in a logo the right answer? Probably not. Is adding
that logo into the corner going to really going to destroy the "user
experience"? I can't say anything more than "probably not" to that
either. Can we brainstorm, at this point in the release cycle, about
some way that is more permanent than a browser start page, to keep
logo and brand impressions on people, and then implement it without
impacting the schedule? Probably not. Is a wallpaper, which changes
from release to release and has no identifiable logo and changeable by
the user, in combination with a browser direct to a start page that
people see for a few seconds, assuming they don't change it, enough to
keep our brand in people's minds? I don't know. Does the loss of a
piece of real estate that constantly shows our logo diminish the value
of our branding? I think so.
Ideally I'd really like the GNOME folks to reconsider how their
"ingredient" into other distros impacts the branding for those folks.
But as far as I can tell from reading the design-list, it's not even
something they're willing to consider or discuss. Which is a shame,
because I would expect that the Debians and RHELs and openSUSEs of the
world aren't thrilled about the idea of giving up their
heavily-invested-in, albeit it small, but IDENTIFIABLE, constantly
visible, constantly brand-reinforcing logos on the desktop either.
-robyn