[Clipart] OCAL identified by IBM as resource for Linux migrations

[Bryce Harrington]

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004, Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:
> Bryce Harrington <bryce at bryceharrington.com> writes:
> > I happened to be reviewing IBM's recently published book on
> > migrating to Linux desktops and got to section 4.3.3 Standardization
> > issues.  They mention that the company logo and other brand graphics
> > need to be part the standardized desktop, and that simple bitmap
> > graphics are not really state of the art.  They then go on to
> > describe SVG, and they list www.openclipart.org, along with a
> > screenshot of our clipart!
> 
> Very cool.
> 
> I do believe that a library of open SVG clipart is a compelling thing.
> I wouldn't have put the time into this project that I have if it
> weren't useful to me, and I suspect that if it's useful to me, it'll
> be useful to others too.

*Nod*

Along those lines, I have a proposal.

One of the reasons I myself put time into the project was because I
wanted to be able to use Inkscape to produce Christmas cards, yet had no
artistic talent.  This was also the motivation for doing the theme-based
releases.  Sadly, due to the freedesktop.org compromise and my inability
to get it back up and running quickly, the outage meant we could not
collect Christmas clipart, so once again I had to resort to commercial
bought Christmas cards this year.

Now, you'll probably think me a nut but I get really angry buying
Christmas cards.  My family takes giving Christmas cards very
seriously.  My mom finds the sentiments expressed to be very important,
my dad loves the imagery, and my sister the humor.  Yet shopping for a
card is a royal pain, because these days there are so few options!  Only
the best stocked Hallmark stores have more than a couple choices per
relative.  Heck, I had to go to _three_ stores to find *any* cards for a
grandmother (and she doesn't even remember who I am so I could probably
give her *any* card).  Finding a card for an adult, unmarried sister
from a brother is *quite* a challenge; fortunately, she appreciates the
humor of having an imaginary (and occassionally god-fearing) husband.

I can definitely see why stores stock so little choice - they know that
if you're buying a card for a given relation, by and large you'll choose
whatever they give you; they can maximize their profits by maximizing
the number of holidays and number of relations in a given amount of
space, and thus want to minimize the space per relation/holiday.

Of course, this is not to mention the _prices_.  Five dollars for a
card??  I could understand that for those fancy cards with cellophane,
high quality paper, and professionally done art and poetry, but these
days they're just cheap cardstock with generic recycled platitudes and
forgettable artwork. 

This year when we were passing the cards around, my family all shared in
my feelings, and we determined that next year we want better choices.

For Christmas 2005, I want to be able to create all my own Christmas
cards, with personalized phrasings of my own choosing, printed with Free
art, and printed on good paper.  I have no idea how to do this, and in
fact I don't even have a color printer, but I figure I've got a year to
do it.

I think this would be an excellent thing for the community, and would
love to share this effort through OCAL.  I'm sure my cards would be too
specific to my family, but perhaps others could reuse the process, share
art, adapt the wording, etc.  Maybe working together at it, cards for
other holidays could be created, too.

Would anyone else be interested in collaborating on figuring out how to
do this?  I figure it would involve experimenting with good ways of
printing the cards, creation of a good template, and accumulation of
some high quality holiday artwork.  Perhaps we could figure out how to
emboss cards or add cellophane and such to make them look a bit more
professional.  

Bryce