[Clipart] [Bug 3974] Interface improvements

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https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3974          
     




------- Additional Comments From jonadab at bright.net  2005-08-16 07:18 -------
> Here is my attempt at some buttons. I took inspiration from Jonathan and 
> from the ocal logo. I also used clipart from the library by AJ Ashton. Not
> sure about the font colors though, any ideas? 

I think the words need to have good contrast against the background, to be
easy to read at a quick glance, and the ones colored with the yellow-orange
gradient, against a background of yellow-orange gradient, are definitely
lacking in that regard.

I'm less sure about the white.  I think it is okay against the orange but
falls a little short against the yellow.  I tried each of the two colors
of blue from the site, with either white or black outlines, and I was not
satisfied with that either.  Then I tried black text outlined in white,
and I think that may provide the best contrast against the yellow-orange
gradient background.  At the bottom, against the yellow, the black shows
up really well, and at the top, against the orange, the white outline
helps it to show up better than it might otherwise.  What do you think?

Oh, and if these buttons end up against a white background, they will want
a black outline, rather than a white outline.  That's an easy change, and
no big deal, and the black looks fine around the yellow-orange.

I'm not 100% sure whether I prefer Jonathan's blue-gradient button, or
these yellow-orange ones.  I tend to like blue better as a color, but
that is a personal thing.  The yellow-orange is probably more eye-catching.
Then again, the blue probably integrate's better into the look of the site.
OTOH, the yellow and orange are from the logo, and we'd talked about using
those colors more on the site.  (Perhaps to go along with those buttons we
should be using more red for boundary lines and things, yellow for the
sidebar background instead of baby blue, and so on?  I guess we can leave
most of those questions for the stylesheet to answer later.)  On the
gripping hnd, the orange arrow on the download button stands out really
well against the blue gradient background and really brings out the idea
of download; whereas, with the yellow-orange gradient background, the focus
tends to be on the button background or the whole button, rather than the
arrow element.  Hmmm...  I think I want another opinion or two.

The other question I have is about the books; they don't communicate the
concept of browse to me.  Maybe I'm just thick?  Granted, "Browse" can be
an abstract and somewhat difficult concept to portray...

Oh, another point from back the other day...

> We don't need buttons for affiliates -- it's important to keep their 
> own branding. At most they will need resizing or something.

It is certainly important to keep each affiliate's own branding, so the
button design for those is both simpler and much more constrained because
of that, but I think we do need buttons for the affiliates, for several
reasons, most of which revolve around fitting them into our site.  First
off, the obvious:  they don't just have to be the same size; they also
really should be the same shape, in terms of aspect ratio.  (They can
have blank areas around the edges, so they don't have to be the same
shape in terms of being a rectangle, but it would be fairly problematic
if for instance of of them were taller than it is wide.)  This is more
than mere resizing, as it may require something like placing text next
to the logo element, or under it, or whatever, to get it to fit.  To be
clear, we'd be using the affiliate's logo element to represent them, and
their chosen text, preferably in their chosen branding font if possible,
so we would be retaining, to the greatest extent possible, their branding.

I will use Inkscape as an example.  Their branding consists, as near as I
can determine, of four elements:  the inkscape logo (which you see on the
site and also as a desktop icon), the word "Inkscape", and the colors black
and white, and the motto "Draw Freely".  (There is also the description, 
"Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics Editor", but that is probably too 
long to put in a button, though it could be used in the alternate text 
and possibly also in a tooltip.)  We would need to combine two or more of 
those elements into a button the same overall shape (and size) as our browse 
and download buttons.

> forms confuse people (that's Normal People who don't use Linux and write C++).

Hey, I don't write C++, does that make me normal? ;-)

> Anyway, I got in contact with Neil Stuber, who told me the font he used
> was Arial Black 41.5pt.

Aha!  I hadn't recognized it before, I think because it had been resized
to a different scale horizontally than vertically, making it look less
fat, but apart from that this does appear to be the right font.          
     
     
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