[CREATE] LGM 2010 Website

[Stani]

I am really happy with all the positive energy of the current LGM
participation. I remember to read all mails by Femke and co, and
thought "Wow, the next LGM will be great!" I am afraid however that
the discussion of the new website is mixing "How do you like this
website?" with "Should we profile ourself with a consistent style
(logo, website, color palette, ...) across the years?".

Right now it looks like that there is no fixed style for the LGM.
(There is of course always the one from previous year. Although it
might have the preference of many, there will be always others to
disagree with it.)  When there is a call for organizing the next LGM,
using a certain style is not part of the task as far as I know. By
consequence the style gets reinvented every year, which is not
surprising if you give freedom to creative minds. In my humble opinion
this means:
- We should respect the autonomy of the current organisation and give
them the final say in the current design. Feedback is welcome here,
but nobody can impose its will the organisation.
- The current design can't be imposed for future editions of the LGM,
as this would need a broader consensus outside the organisation of the
current LGM alone.

So basically we've discovered a bug here "LGM style gets reinvented
every year". Do we mark this bug as valid? If yes, what is the
priority of this bug? The people who gives this bug high priority and
want to donate time to it, should maybe organize a session in the LGM
about 'consistency'. Maybe do a presentation and some workshops as a
start. I am afraid that designing a logo and website for such a
heterogeneous organisation as LGM will be nearly impossible and might
even take more than a year to reach consensus. For me personally this
bug has relatively low priority in comparison to other 'bugs'.

To be honest I think anyway for the LGM Brussels it is too late to fix
this bug. Let's not slow down the development of this organisation and
give them the same freedom as the previous editions took in the end. I
am sure most people don't resign working for a non profit organisation
or a company because they don't like the logo. If I as a visual artist
should feel 100% about every title of an exhibition I participate in,
I could better stop.

It doesn't really matter but in case you want my opinion on the
design... Although it would not be my personal preference, as a visual
artist I feel the design has objectively a strong quality. It is well
done and will for sure appeal to a large group of graphic designers
and artists, maybe less to developers and end users. The design has an
explicit style and for example mixing the splash into this design
would be failure. Logo design is all about communication, so about
knowing your target audience. So my only critic on this logo could be
that it seems not to target the full potential audience of free
graphic software, as shown by reactions on this list. However I still
think the design is good and I don't want to interfere with it.
Fiddling with this design to reach a consensus risks to make it worse.
So I agree completely with the 'package deal' statement of Louis.
Organizing a LGM is a huge package and a lot of work. I am sure Louis
and previous organizers know this more than anyone else.

Concerning the LGM organisation I worry more about other issues:
- such as attracting more sponsors so we can let more people participate
- next to presentations of developers, presentations of experienced
end users which describe their workflow struggle between free graphics
applications. Maybe a call for proposals could be launched on all the
website of free graphics software simultaneously?
- or maybe organize a survey amongst end users about their workflow
and present the result of that
- ask end users to submit video screencasts of their workflow ...
- ...

Concerning LGM as the glue between graphics projects my concerns would be:
- interoperability of file formats
- if every application could have an (optional) keymap which is
unified for common tasks
- use the same words (and if possible menu structure) for common tasks
- ...

Right now free software projects start spending more attention to
usability. It would be great if LGM could be a driver behind usability
between applications. Maybe not all applications want to participate,
but for sure some do.

And hey Yuval, I hope you participate again at LGM Brussels! LGM needs
people like you. Although I agree with you that Peters reply was
offensive, it is no reason not to participate.