[Solved] Banner image?

[acknak]

Nice!

[RGB]

There is no answer on the deb mailing list and it seems Hagar's luck is not better with marketing list, so it is up to us.

For my part, I vote for acknak version. On the file with my proposal it is possible to find the text for all localizations (of course, someone need to check its accuracy...).

[floris v]

I still like RGB's second graphic best - it's sharp, but like in his later suggestions the texts should be right aligned (also like in acknak's graphic). And is the TM necessary?

[RGB]

I asked on ES and IT forums and most people preferred ackak version (the word "balanced" were used almost every time )

About the TM, I think you are right: it is better to include it.

[acknak]

I really liked some aspects of the designs RGB posted; I couldn't resist some more tweaking.

I ended up with several combinations--here's the one I like. I can show you the others, too, if you want.

[kingfisher]

FWIW, I would put the feather towards the bottom right. The left half (more or less) of the image is somewhat crowded.

[Hagar Delest]

Is the feather really needed?
I don't find it really nice and I've never found any combination pleasant enough (not limited to AOO).

[RoryOF]

If we must have the feather, I'd place it upright, like a quill pen. But I agree with Hagar about it not being really nice; its colours clash with the tranquility of the blues and whites of the traditional OO logos.

[floris v]

IMO we should be consistent with the use of logos. We can't have one logo on the portal page and have something totally different on the other pages, just because we like it that way. So - either adopt that, only translating the "community forums" text for each nl forum, or go for one of the new designs and put that on the portal page as well. If so, we'll have to use black-white-black for the Apace OpenOffice text, because that's used on the openoffice.org page already, even if I don't quite like that.

... I agree with Hagar about it not being really nice; its colours clash with the tranquility of the blues and whites of the traditional OO logos.

+1

[RoryOF]

A possible compomise answer is not to integrate the feather with the OO logo, but to place the Apache logo on the page(s) in a less obtrusive position (bottom right or left, perhaps). If the Apache name is incorporated into the blue/white OO logo, that answers the need for Apache branding.

[Hagar Delest]

The feather is already at bottom left of each page of the forum.

Since the portal is almost white, I don't mind keeping the current one on the portal and a blue logo on the forums pages.

[RGB]

Is the feather really needed?
I don't find it really nice and I've never found any combination pleasant enough (not limited to AOO).

+1 Being visible on the bottom of each page, the feather is not really needed on the logo.

Since the portal is almost white, I don't mind keeping the current one on the portal and a blue logo on the forums pages.

Neither do I.

[acknak]

Ok, ok, we'll lose the feather

I don't think it's needed, I just liked the way it looked.

[RGB]

Nice! +1 from me.

[Hagar Delest]

Great!
+1.

[RoryOF]

Very nice!

[acknak]

I'll upload the images and the Draw doc if these are all ok.

[acknak]

No point in beating around, I guess.

The images (all 450x77 PNGs) are here: AOO-forum-logos [DIR]

The zip is in there, too.

[floris v]

Good enough. Note: I can't upload them, I don't have sufficient privileges.

Edit: I didn't notice that you had two suggestions for the Dutch language graphic. A small correction: It's Nederlandstalig forum (no e) or Nederlandstalige gemeenschap because forum is neuter and gemeenschap is feminine in Dutch.

[RGB]

Note: I can't upload them, I don't have sufficient privileges.

AFAIK, only imacat can do that. And yes, they are good

[acknak]

... A small correction: ...

Oops. Never noticed that. Good catch!

Fixed now (link above).

[Jan_J]

Smart work. I was afraid of the “feathered” versions; they seemed too noisy to me.

However, I still have two suggestions:
* kerning improvements in top and bottom descriptions
* optical alignment of “Apache” and “Office” to their left borders

[acknak]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand those suggestions--or how to do it.

[floris v]

If you circumscribe a rectangle around OpenOffice and Apache, so that the rectangle touches the left O, you will see that the word "Apache" is indented relative to the rectangle.

[Jan_J]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand those suggestions--or how to do it.

Well, I shall try to be more informative.

@1:Inhomogenous light between letters may be caused either by (a) disabled kerning in text fields, (b) bad kerning in the font description, (c) by the software that does not observe font kerning, or (d) poor hinting during export to low resolution bitmaps.
(a, b, c) should be visible it the original vector drawing. I suspect (a) holds. (c) is not the case, since Draw can apply kerning described it the TrueType -- unless you use OpenType variant that uses another format of kerning.
Other software, including InkScape, Adobe, Corel, admit also manual corrections of kerning in the text; I can not do it using Draw. But there is not so much work to operate on the SVG, let us say, by InkScape, if necessary.

The same weakness is present in the current banner, not only in the bottom text, byt in the main as well.

@2: In the current version “A” is located slightly left to “O”, but in no obvious relation to it. In geometric alignment the bounding boxes of both letters would be perfectly aligned to their left borders. In optical alignment they may not fit, in order to give the reader impression of harmony. In the case of “A” and “O” it may result in indentation of “A” deeper a bit. It requires some feeling and careful trials in high resolutions.

[RGB]

Sorry, but I cannot resist include this xkcd comic...



(original link)

Back to the point, I don't think that the A aligned to the left will look OK, it needs to be a bit to the right because the curvature of the "O". How much to the right? No idea...

[acknak]

Ok, so "Apache" and "OpenOffice" are not left-aligned.

I actually did that on purpose--not that that means anything. When they are geometrically aligned, it seems to make "Apache" stand out somehow and I wanted to avoid distracting from "OpenOffice". It looks right to me, but maybe the misalignment is distracting for others.

The "Pair kerning" option is on for all the text elements, and it looks like the "ff" in Office is kerned, but not "ffi". I'm not eager to hunt through the fonts I have for one with better kerning.

Also, I've expanded the letter spacing for all three text elements, with the idea that wider spacing would make them more legible at this small size. Legibility seems more important to me than ideal letter spacing, but maybe better spacing would be more legible; I don't know.

Maybe the expanded spacing interferes with kerning?

I've never been all that motivated to perfect letter spacing. I've read about how important it is, but it usually doesn't feel that different to me and I'm not very good with finding the right spacing. It has to be way off before I can see a problem.

Anyway, I've uploaded the Draw file along with the others (link above) and I'll attach it here as well, Please feel free to improve it!

[RGB]

It is always possible to make things better and better... but of course the consequence of this is that we will never end anything.

The acknak proposal is good enough (at least for me) so I want to propose the following:

1- Use what we have (the acknak proposal) NOW
2- Start the slow process to obtain the "perfect logo"(TM) in time for AOO 4.0

In fact, there are other things that need attention too (the "Get it" logo, for example), but that is for another thread...

[Hagar Delest]

It is always possible to make things better and better... but of course the consequence of this is that we will never end anything.

The acknak proposal is good enough (at least for me) so I want to propose the following:

1- Use what we have (the acknak proposal) NOW
2- Start the slow process to obtain the "perfect logo"(TM) in time for AOO 4.0

+1000

[floris v]

I toyed with it and found that the settings left 5.28" for the Apache and 5.19" for OpenOffice.org looks better - it's true that if you push Apache still more to the left it looks awkward. Re the spacing: I see more space between the A and p than I like - while p and a are very close together.
These comments by Jan are, by the way, what I wanted to write all along when I went on about the Marketing department, but it came out all wrong. And while we as content providers may not care much about pixel perfection of logos, other people do, and they may also care about what font you use when you already use the birds - IMO you have to go all the way and use the same font as well, because if you don't, you dilute the branding.
We can use these files as a starter and get the details right later - but don't forget that once you upload them, the old version will soon pollute the Internet. Do we want that?