Designing with Free tools in an Open Community: experiences from the Fedora Design Team
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Multiplication signLoginOpen sourceFile formatMaterialization (paranormal)Data managementElectronic mailing listLine (geometry)Cartesian coordinate systemWallpaper groupService (economics)BitWater vaporOcean currentAbsolute valueDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Group actionWeb pageTheoryGoodness of fitCompilation albumEndliche ModelltheorieWebsiteContent (media)MereologyComputer iconInterface (computing)User interfaceError messageOpen setUsabilityNumbering schemeLikelihood functionDistribution (mathematics)Process (computing)ResultantSoftwareSuite (music)Normal (geometry)Real numberControl flowPhysical systemMedical imagingBlock (periodic table)Hand fanLetterpress printingInstallation artComputer animation
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MappingTriangleComputer fileFile formatMultiplication signState of matterVector graphicsSpeech synthesisProjective planeAreaContent (media)Staff (military)Source codeEndliche ModelltheorieStability theoryLine (geometry)Level (video gaming)Latent heatExterior algebraComputer iconFreewareCurveAuthorizationComputer animation
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SineEndliche ModelltheorieBlock (periodic table)Physical systemTelecommunicationExistential quantificationSource codeCausalityRegular graphLattice (order)Electronic mailing listTime zoneCollaborative softwareMedical imagingWikiData storage deviceAreaTrailBlogComputer animation
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Projective planeWeb applicationSoftware developerState of matterTelecommunication
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DistanceSoftware developerAreaVideoconferencingMultiplication signFeedbackSource codeKey (cryptography)Task (computing)Auditory maskingDigital photographyWallpaper groupPhysical systemRoundness (object)Right angleSatelliteProcess (computing)Form (programming)Exterior algebraWater vaporVector spaceGreatest elementElectronic mailing listLevel (video gaming)Medical imagingVotingComputer fileAttribute grammarBitMereologyFreewareTheoryProof theoryRevision controlAlpha (investment)Moment (mathematics)AuthorizationMaterialization (paranormal)Beta functionComputer animation
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Identity managementInferenceSoftware developerProjective planeWhiteboardQuicksortPoint (geometry)GenderProcess (computing)Set (mathematics)Default (computer science)DiagramInstance (computer science)Perturbation theoryComputer iconMeeting/InterviewLecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
So we are Martin and Nico from the Fedora team and we want to share from our experience with and working with the tools we are all about here. Yeah so let's start it up. Who are we? We were founded in the April and the year 6 of the new century.
00:26
Then what matters is that it was around the sixth release of our operating system. We started as a art team but we rebranded later as a design team as our portfolio get wider and wider.
00:42
Our current team leader is Morin Dufay. She's a really great artist and leads us very well and we all appreciate the work she's doing for us even though she is employed in Red Hat for different things. We strongly believe in the federal foreign foundations which are freedom,
01:03
friends, features and first you can see we are friends and you can you maybe will you see that we also promote freedom in our design team and the starters were not exactly easy and you can see that we were established around Fedora 8 and Nico will talk something about why
01:26
not in Fedora 7. First I want to say a bit about the rebranding. We started as a art team but the idea is we don't want only artists but designers in general for user interface or
01:44
usability and don't want to scare them away from our team. That was the purpose of the rebranding. First lesson we learned was about Fedora 7 when we had a professional designer
02:05
working at Red Hat who was in charge of the look of the distribution. She had this team named Flying High and she was treating all the process like voodoo
02:23
like normal people can't understand what the designer do. We as a team as a new team were somehow offended by this because we believe design is accessible to people and we believe a community should do this in the open not like voodoo. The result was a
02:49
pretty picture but the community in general agreed with the idea we like the result but not
03:03
opening the fedora not only the software but the community in general. Yes so here's the portfolio we do. We started at the beginning with just a distro artwork which is wallpapers, some banners to our installations and splashes to login managers and
03:27
something like that but we also as the time went expanded to doing website graphics from design of the layout of the web pages to banners and icons for various websites.
03:42
We also produce marketing and release materials like cd and dvd sleeves some posters t-shirts you can see one on niku. We provide also some design service people can ask us for a certain design they like to have like icons or logos or hekigochi for their
04:06
blocks and so on. We also provide usability and interface design and some of us do also some side breaks like eho icon team or comics photography and more. With this last release
04:25
Fedora we also started making a Fedora design suite which is a spin of Fedora. It is a compilation of tools that we think that are very good for
04:40
artists to work with and we plan to expand it even more so that we can work nicely just with the contents of the design suite which is on the live dvd and of course we want to have fun and do cool stuff and be friends. Now a bit about the tools we use we are crazy about Inkscape
05:06
are one of the biggest fan of this application. Yeah we also use GIMP a lot. I believe everyone in the team know how to use GIMP.
05:27
We also use Scribus mostly for printing for preparing printing materials. I believe also this design for the t-shirt was finished in Scribus not by me so I'm not sure I believe
05:40
this. With Blender we have a few people crowding some not enough but we have hopes we will develop the skills. There is here in the room our colleague Pierros who wants to learn more Blender and do more Blender stuff. We also use and like small tools
06:09
like Agave is something small but we also love it. We use image magic and many others.
06:20
There are also apps like my paint or alchemy which we haven't used for something real but we like them experiment with them and one day we'll have something made with them.
06:41
Believing in openness we still don't require people to use certain applications so if someone in the team want to use photoshop we don't say no don't use photoshop we just try to encourage them to use free tools. Still we do require the file formats to be
07:04
open so we can collaborate on those documents. As a consequence they don't can't work with the proprietary tools. We are also proud because from
07:25
8 to 13 now the graphics for the distributions are made totally using free tools. We are proud about this and we think this is a way to showcase. We believe the free tools are
07:43
worthy, are capable, are good for the use. Another lesson we learned speaking about file formats is the story of the icon set blue curve. I believe everybody heard about this.
08:05
It was one of the first icon teams in Linux made with vector graphics years ago. At the time Inkscape wasn't there it wasn't I believe it was at Sody Pody yeah in early stages so it wasn't possible to do vector graphics under Linux. It was
08:28
made with illustrator. We had the source files in illustrator format. We have the icons with the free license as gpl but we couldn't use it because nothing in Linux world was able to open
08:50
the files. Also the blue curve was a one-man project without specification
09:00
after the author left the project nobody knowing about the style and so. So we had to abandon the team and trying alternatives. One of them being an icon set named Echo. Martin is working on it with is still unofficial.
09:30
It's a like a pet project so the lesson is you must have how to open the files.
09:43
And you must have good good lines for the icons. Okay so now let's move on to collaboration tools we use. Since the whole team is spread all over the world we have contributors from India, from Japan, from South America, North America, Europe,
10:02
I'm from Czech Republic, Niku is from Romania. So we need some communication tools that enable us to communicate without worrying about the time zones. One of these is mailing list which is our main communication channel. The discussions happen there.
10:25
Important things happen there. It's a most important one. Then we have wiki where we document some things like how we do things.
10:45
There are our sources usually are there of the images we make and that's like that. Also we are trying to to employ IRC. We're not very well
11:01
established on that area but we are trying to get better especially the news are that next week we're starting regular IRC sessions so we'll see how it will work out. We also use the ticketing system concretely a track that's used mostly for the design
11:23
design quests we have. We use shared storage that's also relatively new. It's more convenient than wiki for storing our sources. So we are transferring of everything we've created there
11:40
and the new things are already there as well. Plus all of us have our blocks and we of course blog about what we do and the blocks are aggregated on federal planet and some of them are also in federal design planet and not forget face-to-face meetings.
12:04
But with this aid I should acknowledge that tools suck. They are far from perfect. So we have dreams our colleague Maureen has developed a mock-up for
12:20
something which might be a solution. This is a web application which could improve the communication. You can find more on this address. This is a project under heavy work under the development. Let's hope one day you're very
12:48
faithful. So one of the things that we've polished for over the several releases we've been doing is the release artwork we are doing for Fedora. The starters were tough,
13:03
the process wasn't very good enough and we always been late with our at work and so we needed to change it and the latest what we have is a some kind of three rounds process. The first round is gathering concepts some kind of brainstorming. We talk about what the art would could look like
13:26
present some design concepts and such thing. Then when first alpha version of theorize approaching then we are selecting one of the concepts to go with improving it a little bit and more and more and more and as we go to
13:46
the final release the design must be final and we base all everything on the final concept. One of our good things we try to do is release early release of them even if the art isn't
14:02
perfect it needs to be included in the distribution so that we can get much more feedback than just discussing it among ourselves on the list or in IRC or something. The ideal time for the artwork to be done is by beta and some other tasks because some other tasks are
14:24
waiting for it like creating the release posters and DVD sleeves and such which are based on the wallpaper and these things. The key is the cooperation and from that another
14:42
lesson we learned the hard way for uh I don't know fedora 11 or 10 fedora 10 we had four concepts for the release artwork yeah it was neon gears invincible solar and people behind them didn't want to let guilt away insisted uh until the last moment and was
15:08
impossible for us to reach one single team as the final team and had to do what I hated to do and never want to do again we had a vote to decide what's the best it was ugly with
15:27
flamewars and so with people applying to the art team as it was cut by the time only to be part of the vote and such so no never do that play
15:42
learn to step back for the greater good yeah and another lesson at the same time was to learn to check the sources you are using for the graphics when running the vote process someone discovered the katana images using stock materials from a
16:08
kill bill poster it was too late to do anything though what was undergoing the author was uh swearing now is a photo made by me refusing to acknowledge anything
16:24
anything until I showed proof luckily this team wasn't a winner but was the other one made also by him solar when we were suspicious check the files and found a photo of a
16:44
moon used as a mask for he wasn't able to produce a source so we had to redo the graphics at the last minute and there is only free and reliable resources finally
17:05
one thing is hot now in our communities our discussion about using photography with photos of people is a clash about us believing in freedom and the rights of the
17:29
forms which impose some restrictions and this aren't compatible with a free license like creative commons attributions or attribution like and we didn't find a solution still
17:44
thinking about it how to have at the same time free distance and the people with the image untamaged thank you very much we do again one question because I think you
18:21
you deserve one which is the same wait a second is there someone else that wants to ask a question in the back there ricardo can you come to the front hi first of all really great stuff that you had there thank you for showing us I was actually curious about the how do you manage
18:45
the design process once you want to design for instance in icon sets and you need to keep somewhat an identity does that actually come up spontaneously or does that have to be decided in a kind of top-down process I'm curious about that for the icons right now
19:04
we don't have a customized icon set we use missed an upstream icon set for the set we are developing in house echo martin is in charge of it and he had developed a set of guidelines maybe yeah yeah the echo icon team was originally based on
19:28
work that was done by a former red hot employee diana funk if I recall correctly the person with voodoo yeah the person with the voodoo so we sort of already had some some some style so
19:42
we just needed to write the guidelines summarize already the style that was already used and follow with that and but eco projects as I said is not used by the default for now is just an upstream project which at some point may get into fedoraya thank you very much