[CREATE] LGM 2010 Website

[Alexandre Leray]

Dear Create members,

OSP and myself are happy to finally present you our proposal for a logo 
and new website for LGM 2010.

The logo is here: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/documents/LGM2010/logo/

The site is visible at this temporary address: 
http://lgm.alexandreleray.com/

Our main design concern was about how to represent digital tools in 
their diversity, from Desktop Publishing to 3D modeling, from typography 
to batch processing etc., showing by this means the multiplicity of the 
projects gathered at the Libre Graphics Meeting. This is the role 
assigned to the background, a static SVG composition of some of the most 
significant digital tools from the libre projects. This background, 
present on all the pages, zooms and pans randomly on each page loading, 
thanks to a small javascript. This gives to the readers unexpected 
exploration of the territories of that "map of creative tools".

A javascript free version of this SVG file is visible for demo purpose 
at: http://lgm.alexandreleray.com/static/css/background-fixe.svg
We for sure forgot a lot of tools (we are familiar with only a small 
part of them) so all suggestions are welcome!

The logo is a play with the M of Meeting, shifting between 2D and 3D 
perception; between static and movement. 3 squares for a flag. A flag 
for a meeting. A flag for a place, and for a space. A typographic flag 
for an italic M. 3 squares for pixels. 15 degrees rotated squares for 
vectors. 3 squares of progressive sizes to evoque movement. 3 sizes 
overlapping for 3D optical effect. 3 windows floating. The typeface 
used, is OSP-DIN.

As the background is very present, we decided to base mainly the website 
on text. It is set with Dave Crossland's open typeface Cantarell, 
available for download at Open Font Library. This humanist sans-serif 
font was designed for on screen reading therefore it is very legible 
even on small sizes. This choice was made to promote the Open Font 
Library, the GPL and Fontforge with which was made the font, but also 
the new @font-face CSS rules newly (re-)introduced in Firefox 3.5 (among 
other web browsers). Not to mention that Dave is a very active Create 
member and a professional type designer.

We picked up the yellow color as a way to keep the foreground legible. 
The latter is made of two colors, a navy blue and a brown, to 
differentiate two levels of information. We also decided to "mute" the 
partners logos by converting them to a single color in order to keep the 
whole homogeneous.

The 'donate' square would be live-updated as funds are added; there 
should be a subscription form, and probably other pages added etc. for 
this we will use the code a.l.e. developed for already for earlier LGM 
sites.

We hope you'll like our proposal; even if it is quite a bit different 
than before ;-) We're looking forward to hear your 
response/suggestions/improvements (for example on the SVG coding, done 
by hand for weight purpose)!

All the best,


Alexandre + OSP