[CREATE] consensus constitency persistence

Thu Aug 19 10:17:12 PDT 2010

Hi Ricardo, Yuval and all !

All this is completely interesting and inspiring !

I have to say that depending on the point of view I am encline to agree
alternatively with both of you !

Coming from the graphic world and owning myself a company that specialized
in graphic design and print, I am fully aware of what a brand is.

Talking about LGM, here are a few thoughts to add to this discussion. Some
will refer to what Yuval brought up about past LGMs and some will be echoing
the essay from Ricardo !

As an organiser, what I need is communication means that have to be ready in
time in order to promote the event and talk with sponsors. This has to start
right away after an LGM is finished. The organisation of the next must
already be on the go. For that reason, I much prefer that we keep the logo
we have, for instance, so we can concentrate on the communictations we have
to make and not on how we will look to the outside world.

So, if for instance we would like to modify the logo each year as we did
over the last years, then it would be advisable as we already have discussed
that the design of the logo and website and everything related to our
external communications fall into the same 2-year process we have
established for the venue. This means that we would be ready with the new
design, each year, ahead of time. So the communications for the next LGM
could in fact start immediately after LGM is over.

Of course, my concerns are pretty practical. It’s not that I don’t want to
enter the discussion about the benefits of keeping the same brand for years
or on the other hand change it every year. No. But I want to stress what is
needed, when it is needed and why it is needed.

For LGM 2011, I would keep the same logo as in Brussels. Unless... (more
below)... What motivates this decision is because otherwise we would enter a
long process for creating and then proposing and discussing the next logo...
I think we need to concentrate on the sponsors and on the organisation of
the event itself. Of course, I will be glad to read any further thoughts on
that ! Maybe in 2012 we will have a different logo? We would then start
working on it very shortly...

Same applies for the website. What we really need as an organisation is more
functionnalities in the website than a redesign each year. Once we will have
all the mechanics working, including a way of reserving and paying for
t-shirts, food, etc. then we could of course make the website change in look
every year, within a 2-year process...

Then, about the branding itself... By professionnal bias, I would start by
recommending that we keep the brand solid for a few years as Yuval suggests.
But at the same time I completely understand that Libre Graphics could also
be well served by a change every year. The website itself could list the
various logos so we could click on them to access the previous LGM
websites... It would show the dynamism of the LG community. Not a bad idea.
We could thus interest — and even make it a contest? — artists to
participate to this change. The name would not change, so it’s already a
solid tree. The branches and leaves and ground and background would be
different each year...

Really, my main objection is to work into a time frame that can obviously
only lead to improvisation or a misuse of time. Doing things the right way
at the right time would allow such changes that could be completely
inspiring...

Another way to look at this is, if we want a change for 2011, think of how
we would make a transition. Use the Brussels logo and change the name of the
city and dates and use this for early communications with sponsors... And
then sometimes in Autumn, unveil the new brand... This might work, what do
you think?

Louis

2010/8/19 ricardo lafuente <bollecs at sollec.org>

> Hi Yuval,
>
> Thanks for raising this issue. Now that some projects are gaining traction,
> it's the right time to discuss how the Libre Graphics community presents
> itself to the public.
>
> I do have some reserves as to the proposed way to tackle this challenge. If
> i understand correctly, your idea is to set a fixed 'brand' for the Libre
> Graphics community, and a set of design guidelines to apply to most/all of
> the materials that are created for and from it.
>
> In art school, i went through 2 years of corporate identity design. Even
> though LG is not a corporation but a community, what's being talked here is
> the creation (or rather, consolidation) of an identity. Identity guidelines
> and style manuals are commonplace in the corporate world, defining what you
> can and cannot do in order to style something as belonging to your 'brand'.
> This is because corporate image needs very clear boundaries so that new
> designers don't end up unwittingly tweaking the identity and creating
> confusion in brand recognition.
>
> However, my impression is that this kind of 'top-down' identity definition
> might not be appropriate once we get out of a corporate context. Namely, i
> find it downplays the role that new designers might have in creating new
> directions for an identity by setting in stone some directives that they
> can't stray from.
>
> Of course, one consequence of not having fixed and thorough style
> guidelines is that identity gets diluted according to the creative
> perspectives of different people. This in an issue for a company, but less
> so for a free-culture oriented community. I'm reminded of the discussion
> around OSP's logo proposal for LGM2010, which strayed from the de facto LGM
> identity so far (the ink splatter). That discussion was tremendously
> relevant to me, since it showed that the identity of an event or community
> is much more defined by what's done there, rather than its outward
> presentation. And that having multiple, coexisting perspectives on the
> graphic identity of the community might actually be a Good Thing(tm), even
> though it challenges principles that we're accostumed to when dealing with
> brands and identities.
>
> It's very interesting to confront coding principles and graphic guidelines
> like you did (never thought of it that way), but i think those metaphors can
> only go so far. For instance, Linus's law -- "given enough eyes, all bugs
> are shallow" -- doesn't really apply to graphic work: not only do many cooks
> run the risk of spoiling the broth, but the 'success' of a graphic piece is
> not measurable by efficiency guidelines, as lines of code can be. The same
> regarding your comparison to a 'coding style guide' -- their purpose is
> efficiency, since mixed writing styles make reading code harder; however,
> should we really constrain the decisions of designers who might join the
> boat later, and who might have something new and unexpected to introduce?
> Given your proposed 5-year timeframe, i think this is an issue.
>
> You mentioned the danger of 'reinventing the wheel'. Again, i think this
> does not apply to creative and aesthetic perspectives, which are closer to
> an evolving and ever-changing set of loose (and often unwritten) guidelines
> like a cake recipe, than a functional tool such as a wheel or a hammer. No
> sense in reinventing the wheel, sure, but it's a good goal to aim for a
> tastier cake at each go. And since everyone's taste is their own, it's safe
> to say that no one cake will be ideal for each and every one of us -- which
> doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep on working on fancier recipes.
>
> Finally, i think that one of the most rewarding parts in design work is
> having the freedom to experiment and express our own aesthetic perspectives
> -- which can seldom be described verbally or textually --, something that's
> simply not allowed in a context in which all decisions were made a priori,
> where the designer is not a decision-maker or creator but a simple executor.
>
> I think you made very good points, and please don't understand this as a
> dismissal of your proposal -- it's very possible to find common ground
> between our multiple views. How can we have a good, solid Libre Graphics
> presence and still be open to ever-changing internal views, be them
> aesthetic or pragmatic? I'd risk an answer now, but i'd love to know your
> thoughts before.
>
> Pardon my large essays, but i hate to feel that i missed some points i
> wanted to make.
>
> :r
>
>
> On 08/19/2010 02:09 PM, Yuval Levy wrote:
>
>> On August 19, 2010 03:51:18 am Camille Bissuel wrote:
>>
>>> I'll be glad to provide visuals for the Create community, and from a
>>> designer point of view, it's always a good idea to have some charter to
>>> base on.
>>>
>>
>> exactly.  It's like a coding style guide for developers.  I don't remember
>> any
>> such charter presented here in the past five years.  It would be a major
>> step
>> forward, like a coding style guide is a major step forward for a software
>> project:  it solves a significant chunk of potential bike-sheds.
>>
>>
>>  But I don't what to bridle anyone creativity (on the magazine for
>>> example)
>>> just because I'm the first one to provide something... furthermore LG
>>> Magazine #0 was here first, and I didn't base my designs on it.
>>>
>>
>> Your intentions are noble.  Fact is that if we are to evolve to the next
>> level, we must stop fiddling at this level. There is a trade-off to be
>> played.
>> Creativity has to be directed to areas that have not been exploited yet.
>>
>>
>>  So, it really have to be a consensus, especially from the concerned
>>> designers.
>>>
>>
>> Actually more a consensus of the "customers", i.e. the projects
>> represented in
>> LG or the LG Board.  Without the weight of some governance, the consensus
>> will
>> not last beyond a single edition, while ideally it should last for a few.
>>
>> Without governance every new designer that joins the fray could see this
>> as a
>> free game and reinvent the wheel from scratch.
>>
>> The weight of governance makes the difference between a mature project
>> (that
>> IMHO LG should strive to be) and a greenfield startup (the impression I
>> have
>> when looking at it from an external perspective).
>>
>>
>> On August 19, 2010 07:06:28 am ginger coons wrote:
>>
>>> I would suggest that the magazine, being a slightly different beast from
>>> the site, the logo, the conference, might in fact have a different
>>> aesthetic. Because we're not talking here about a mouthpiece for the
>>> Libre
>>> Graphics movement, a brochure, we're talking about a magazine with the
>>> space to grow and change and in fact, build up a community that doesn't
>>> really exist yet: a strong Libre Graphics user community. I think that
>>> could be quite a different thing from the official face.
>>>
>>
>> Mostly agree.  Growth and change are not necessarily synonymous and you
>> want
>> to mix them wisely.  Sometimes growth is change, but sometimes it is the
>> maturity of consistency.  You print professionals know it better than the
>> rest
>> of us:  make a good template, use it for a few editions (e.g. a cycle of
>> say
>> four regular editions and one or two special editions) and revisit when
>> the
>> content starts breaking the barrier of the media, not the other way
>> around.
>>
>> Yuv
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CREATE mailing list
>> CREATE at lists.freedesktop.org
>> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CREATE mailing list
> CREATE at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/create/attachments/20100819/76b50bbf/attachment.html>