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openSUSE Artwork, Branding, UI and UX

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openSUSE Artwork, Branding, UI and UX
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What's wrong and what could be better
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40
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CC Attribution 3.0 Unported:
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Abstract
openSUSE's brand image and software have been evolving for a long time, and in that time a lot of stuff was defined. There is YaST, there is geeko, both are industry standard, both function as a way to differentiate the distribution. However not everything that is openSUSE is great, in many cases, there are some serious omissions in terms of how openSUSE is sold through the eyes of potential users. This talk would function as a way to highlight some of the issues that will require further development in upcoming years, to support future devices, use cases for the distribution, ease of use, as well what we should improve in terms of presentation of the brand itself.
Fluid staticsLinear complementarity problemComputer animation
Matrix (mathematics)Lattice (order)Task (computing)Computer iconWeb pageWebsiteCumulative distribution functionSquare numberCircleSoftwareGreen's functionContrast (vision)Default (computer science)Level (video gaming)ECosFeedbackACIDMultiplication signComputer iconDistribution (mathematics)View (database)Graph coloringDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Identity managementPoint (geometry)RankingLipschitz-StetigkeitSlide ruleGreatest elementForestLimit (category theory)WordEndliche Modelltheorie1 (number)BitAssociative propertyException handlingElectronic mailing listCumulative distribution functionDefault (computer science)Extension (kinesiology)TwitterFilm editing9K33 OsaPresentation of a groupLine (geometry)Open setMathematicsComputer animation
FeedbackSoftware repositoryArchitectureObject (grammar)UsabilitySoftwareDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Presentation of a groupTouchscreenPoint (geometry)BitContext awarenessMereologyComplete metric spaceSoftwareGraph coloringOcean currentSoftware repository9K33 OsaFeedbackGreatest elementWebsiteView (database)Thread (computing)Coefficient of determinationElectronic mailing listWallpaper groupComputer animation
GUI widgetWeb pageView (database)Matrix (mathematics)Web pageWritingLevel (video gaming)MereologyLanding pageInstallation artModule (mathematics)Point (geometry)Distribution (mathematics)Hidden Markov modelContent (media)SoftwareOpen sourceWhiteboardLatent heatComputer animation
Cumulative distribution functionView (database)Different (Kate Ryan album)Data structureWikiSoftwareInformationWeb pageCumulative distribution functionWeb pageData structureWebsiteOpen sourceComputer animation
WikiElectronic mailing listTouchscreenCategory of beingSpacetimeXMLProgram flowchart
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MereologyFlow separationIdentity managementComputer animation
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UsabilitySoftwareKeyboard shortcutModule (mathematics)Process (computing)Computer animation
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
All right, hello, I'm LCP or Tashik, as you can see. And I will be talking about artwork and branding and UI and UX of OpenSUSE over the last two years,
basically, and I think I should start from inviting you to join the team because we are missing a lot of people. It would be great if the team was larger
and I would be glad to see some people joining the team because we are doing great things. And to the extent of us doing great things, it's important to remember that we don't really take feedback through Twitter,
but it still helps us to get some, well, some feedback through Twitter is nice, but there are better channels to request some features.
And I mean, we also do memes when we have some, free time, so I mean, I welcome you to join us.
From the stuff that we have done, this is very short list, but I mean, we did Yasa icons, which you might have seen in Leap, in Tumbleweed, we have done branding for the distributions over the last two years.
And there is so much more that we have done, but I feel like contributions that really matter are the ones that are not really visible to everybody
because you get to appreciate them despite the fact that you don't really know who made them. It was the team that was us. And well, from my maybe a little bit more personal point of view,
we have some things to discuss and those things are logos, are colors, are things that people associate with OpenSUSE
and things that maybe aren't exactly the thing that they should be. Maybe we should try to make them a little bit more accessible,
a little bit more interesting, a little bit different from, for example, SUSE logo, which is exactly the same as OpenSUSE logo with exception of cut of feet. So currently we share the same logo
and it's probably not the best idea that we do. Because, well, our branding is very much similar
to what SUSE folks are doing. And it doesn't help us to have our own identity. It doesn't help us to have our own marketing maybe. It's very much disassociates us
from being separate. And we should maybe from the point of view of actually being different entities and well, we name ourselves different entities despite the fact that we are basically the same but we are trying to be separate from SUSE.
And obviously there is the point of Wikipedia having wrong logo, which has filled out I with white, which looks terrible on any other background in white.
And I can't change that because I don't have access and nobody has access because the guy that changed it stops contributing to Wikipedia and then just, I can't change it. Nobody can change it, it seems. So maybe we can change logo for that reason.
All right, there is also topic of distribution logos. And here probably Tumbleweed is the biggest issue because it's so wide that next to leap it's really hard to make it work. As in, it doesn't look like the logos belong together,
which is an issue when you are trying to present them next to each other. They appear to be in different styles and well, that might be something that needs to be iterated upon,
maybe changed in the future, something that needs to change. And there are colors, and colors are, you know our colors, they're visible on the slide. There is dark blue, green,
and a hint of that cyan on the bottom. Distribution logos use green for, at least one distribution logo uses green for its color, which makes it look next to open SUSE logo
as default distribution, which is an issue when you are trying to present Tumbleweed and leap as things that are equal to one another. Maybe that also requires some thoughts from us, and there is a very limited palette.
So there is basically, I added red and yellow, last year I think, and it's still barely enough to actually create artwork that would be in line with what we want out of open SUSE as in brand,
and from what we actually can do because there is a limit to the colors and stuff. This far there were few ideas that appeared in different places. They are very simplistic and would probably help
to show the, would allow to easier show the brand compared to current ways. It's an interesting idea. I don't know if anybody likes it.
So that will maybe require some discussion. Obviously, you can also see that leap here is yellow instead of green, which I think is a great color. Yellow is great, and certainly is in green,
which makes it look less default than it currently appears to be. And that logo was a happy accident. That second one was a happy accident of going through various stages of previous logo and then creating stuff that just kind of worked.
There are obviously on the left there, there is depressed and very happy gecko. And there is also a pokeball gecko. There are a lot of weird ideas that came through from that.
And there were some ideas for variants because current logo has very strict guidelines as to what colors can be used with it. And I feel like maybe we could create some more interesting stuff out of this.
There is obviously Fedora logo gecko and Red Hat logo gecko, just because I could. There are different variants there. I don't know if they are great, they are a thing.
And I think it's a better idea than having gecko always be green because communities want to express themselves in a way which would show better who they are. So there are, for example, community logos,
proposals for different countries on the bottom there, for Poland, Ukraine, and Italy for some reason, I don't know. So feedback about that, there is an open issue on branding repo. And I would really love more feedback about all those things.
Because, I mean, if that goes through, it will represent the whole community. And I would love to hear what you think. I can't do this alone, I just can't. So there are more issues related
to presenting the brand from desktop side of things. Because we have wallpapers, we have some splash screens for different software and it appears, well, it appeared before the presentation
as XFC was loading. There are those simple things that maybe are ignored but are very important from my point of view, from where I'm standing. And maybe currently we are thinking too modern. We are a little bit too far in advance
to what OpenSUSE truly is. We have green and we have very specifically chameleon as the logo. Maybe we could do something more natural,
maybe something more, I don't know, something that isn't as modern as what we currently do with architecture and with light bulbs and stuff like that. Maybe there is a place where more natural things
would work better with the things we currently have, which is green, blue and stuff like that. There is also an issue of merchandise and it's a topic certainly.
We tend to focus heavily on logos, which is fine when you are trying to maybe spread awareness of the logo, but I think that maybe we should try to be a little more creative, try to be a little more interesting
with how we present the brand outside of, well, outside of conferences, outside of websites, et cetera. We want people to go up to other people and ask, wow, what a nice t-shirt, where did you get it?
And you can explain all the things you use OpenSUSE et cetera if you so desire. If you don't, then you go and don't tell them anything and just say that it's a great t-shirt and I like it. There is, all right, maybe UX part of things,
there is, obviously, that's a list. It's not a complete list, but it's certainly about Yast. And, well, I mean, if you ask Yast guys about this,
it's very clear that they would like to change that, but it's not like they would like to change that.
So maybe start off here, but maybe not start from here, maybe start from actually creating mock-ups of things that should happen in Yast and then when we are ready to have some,
when we have some idea of what we exactly need, we should start writing all that stuff in libYUI and libYUI, I can't, and then write all that stuff in Yast Core and et cetera
and all this stuff needs to go through stages to actually be developed into something that can happen, can be a thing in the future. So if you are interested, currently we don't have
any place to really put that stuff, but I was thinking about Trello board and creating some issues about specific parts of Yast and then we have some mock-ups for installer, but we certainly don't have mock-ups for the rest 70 other modules that exist in Yast
and I doubt we will be finished with that till the, I don't know, next year because it's a lot of stuff to do actually. So from this point of view, if you are interested,
let us know, we are on Discord, Matrix, IRC, Open Source Artwork, everywhere, just let us know. And then there is landing page and oh boy, what a joy.
I mean, I like the design, it's great, but I don't think that content is necessarily what we should have there because we are looking at,
at very, very, very distribution focused design, which Open Source and more than being a distribution is a community of people. So if we are community, it would be nice
to actually mention that we are a community somewhere on the page. So maybe instead of having all this, maybe we should use software opensource.org to actually show that we have distributions.
And maybe on the main page, just mention that, hey, you can go download them here, redirect to this page. Maybe it's a better idea. There is a lot of deduplication of the things that we are trying to sell between two sites and navigation structure is terrible on the main page
because it redirects to only the stuff that is on the page itself. And I don't think that I can scroll. I don't really need to have those things show up. I would like to see things that actually redirect me to something that isn't on the page, that is related to how Open Source operates
and how it works, but not necessarily what is directly within the page. Then we have list of tools, which is, well, it's not a long list, that's for sure.
I'm certain that we are actually doing more stuff than four things. And maybe Wiki isn't the best place to put them all. There is certainly not enough space on the screen to, but I think that having few categories
about the things that we do is great, but maybe mention everything that we actually do because that stuff is useful and we are proud of it as a community. Maybe we could have those mentioned on the main page. Then, oh yeah, I mentioned all that.
And news are great. I would say that the news certainly deserve to be on the main page. I am glad they are already there. So from this,
we do have stuff that we know will be on the page, but what is missing is certainly focus on the community, focus on the ways to contribute, focus on developed projects. All of that is really, really missing from the main page.
And then there is software, lutoposuse.org, which, well, it's missing a lot of stuff about distributions as well, even though it is focused about distributions, around distributions. All that stuff is basically on Wikis and it's hard to find and it's kind of maybe
not that well executed in many cases. Maybe we should try to strive for better explanation of our own distributions. Maybe we should sell them better. Maybe we have something that differentiates us
from different distributions. I don't know. It's not written there. So yeah, that's basically it. I don't have anything else prepared. I have a nice screen and that's it. Thank you.
So now is the part where you ask me questions. I don't know if I will have answers, but I will try to answer you if you have any questions.
So if you want to change your logo to have more of a clear, separate identity from SUSE, what about the name?
So historically speaking, the logo itself is based on an old SUSE logo. They changed the SUSE logo and they didn't update the open SUSE logo, which created disparity between the two and it only makes things worse, in my opinion. It's not really, I mean, the change of the logo was basically only cutting off legs and that's it.
Yeah, mainly, you're right. Mainly, but not exactly. That's not exactly the truth, but it's close. It's close enough from a normal user's perspective, that's what they say. But the fact of the matter is, is that when that happened, that just weakened both brands, in my opinion. Yes, of course.
The idea of creating a different logo, in fact, I really liked that work that you did. I saw it, it's been around for a while and it's been nice, it's really good. I agree with this young man saying that if you want separation, then go separation. So as long as we try to keep them close, similar, but different, there's going to be a lot of constraints on that
and it's gonna be really hard to push through. And then SUSE has a vested interest in it as well then. If you change it, that goes away. I hope so. I mean, I'm bound to the last part of the, if Paratus is, I'm bound to that. I'm not talking about that because I know that's way more controversial than the logo itself.
So I will ignore it. I want it to be controversial. So let's go back to Yast. Because you mentioned the partitioner, for instance. And that's one thing. So here's the interesting part of Yast is that it's the one place where SUSE and OpenSUSE
are directly connected. Because SUSE certainly has a very long list of features of required functionality, la la la la la, from product management that is really historically grown and probably not that transparent. So not everybody knows exactly why every feature is in Yast that's there.
The partitioner is something that we haven't touched because of the complexity and because of that, those kinds of issues so far. I was told that the reason why partitioner looks like it does is because nobody cares to change it. It's too complex to change. It was based on some stuff many, many years ago.
Yes, and building on top of this old thing is just making it worse. The fact of the matter is that you have Yast and the partitioner is a separate thing. So the partitioner itself in code is a separate thing. And it uses a different QT, it's all. No, no, no, no, that's this packager which does it.
Partitioner itself is a module that is directly bound to core Yast. And packager is a separate module that is built on top of QT. Package selection stuff too. Yes, so I mean partitioner shouldn't be as hard
to change, package management I won't talk about because I know it's for Yast folks a controversial topic. It's a big country. Already discussed. Realistically speaking though, the package manager would be an easier thing to change from understanding user's needs than the partitioner would be.
Yes, yes, of course. I mean, the first thing that partitioner certainly needs is a maneuver because it's a lot of Yast modules need that. It's a feature that needs to be somewhere in the code. It is in the code, but only for QT
and only for wizard dialogues, which is installer and one cookie install, which wouldn't make sense for partitioner. So I'm not trying, I'm sorry. The last point on the Yast thing was,
go back to the screen. I forgot now what I was gonna say. Ah, the idea of creating mock-ups. So Yast in and of itself, the way it works, being built on an old QT with rah, rah, rah, rah, you can't just do whatever you want, right? Yes, I know. That's why I said that all the stuff would need
to first go through libyui and then go to the Yast bindings and then go to other things. And it's a complicated process, but creating stuff that is reusable and that we'll be able to reuse in multiple places
will make it much better, which is why mock-ups make sense because we can then just look what we can simplify in multiple modules and have it all make sense, maybe. Again, assuming that you have a full and clear picture of all of this and any of this,
is a full and clear picture of requirements. Yes, and that will be hard. So I just wanna ask. So would you say this is a big dream of yours? It's good that you've done a lot of explorations with the logo.
Is it more like something you're doing on the side or is it something you really wanna action and push within the company? I mean, it was in discussions with the board, certainly. It's not like I'm hiding that. It publicly shows up in multiple places.
And I doubt anybody haven't seen that. Obviously, somebody here won't have seen that, but I hope that this spreads and gets maybe popular so I can get it easier into the distribution.
And what would you say your number one blocker is? What is stopping you from getting to the next level? That's a good question. I have no idea to be honest because I think the BS blocker is myself because I keep changing stuff and I keep adding stuff.
And at some point when I stop doing that, I will have clear picture that I want this and that. And I doubt it will happen soon. Okay. Do you have a chief of marketing officer? Huh? Do you have a chief of marketing officer that you could collaborate with?
I mean, not so much on the visuals, but more on the idea, like... I mean, I don't really have a direct contact with anybody like that, but that would be an interesting collaboration. Sure. Okay. But I get from your presentation,
it sounds like you're the guy to drive this. I hope so. Absolutely. You've convinced me. I haven't seen anybody else that would be crazy enough to change that. Yeah.
Thank you. So about the landing page, I asked with Christy and Braun, they said that the landing page is now kind of not controlled by OpenSUSE communities, controlled by SUSE, so we cannot kind of change it. That's actually...
First off, I'm the head of the UI UX team at SUSE, just for transparency. It is not controlled by us. I promise you, we don't want to control it. The fact of the matter is, is that whenever things are needed, we end up having to do it because no one else will. And logistically speaking,
it's sitting in a data center in a server room where SUSE and OpenSUSE don't really have that much access. So, you know, control is hard. To understand... So it might be interesting to understand the history of that page.
Historically, it became what it became back a long time ago. We came along and there was a request to change things. We took, with let's say limited information, which is always the case at SUSE or OpenSUSE, with limited information, we tried to create a more marketing-like-ish page
to sell OpenSUSE in the internets, right? That was the concept of that. When requirements change, if there are many ideas of what could be on that page, there are many ideas of how to present it, originally our assumption is software is software and the marketing page is the marketing page.
So software is where you go find your packages, the marketing page is the marketing page. You can change that, you can do it differently. There's no law that says that. We don't define it as such. But again, understanding requirements is the first step and understanding that, really, ask the whole community, get a good idea,
have someone with a marketing concept, create all this information first before you start changing things. That's my suggestion. And don't ever write code that you don't wanna maintain yourself. That's what I've learned. Let's create mockups first. And one more thing is about the fonts. Now we have open signs on almost every pages.
I think it's a good font, but people are just getting bored by this font. Every page uses the same font. If we want to be kind of, yeah, let users remember us. Yeah. I mean, if anybody wants to create a font, I'm not the guy, certainly.
I can't. I mean, not create a font, maybe choose a more special font. I'm not bored yet, maybe. But if anybody has better ideas, I'm very happy to oblige. Yeah, thanks. Once you have a good idea
of what you want your logo to look like, it is then much easier to come up with a special font that sits alongside and matches that logo well that can be used in special places. And then after you Andrew, right? So when after, yeah, sorry. The one thing that you have to take into consideration
with fonts is glyph coverage, language coverage. It's really, really, really, now look me in the eye, really hard to make a font. It's literally something that you can do your whole life and then just get good at. And you can spend many, many years with many, many people making fonts. So creating your own font is probably maybe a bit beyond scope, I would assume.
People have tried and failed. Picking the best font for the most people is I think what the decisions were based on until now. I mean, that's the reason why we don't use fift like anymore. Because coverage was very poor and even in Polish, there wasn't really a way to display anything
outside of very limited set of stuff. So I'm in agreement that the logo needs to change and I actually like your mock-ups. I like them a lot. The question I have is SUSE and OpenSUSE
have a strong symbiotic relationship, right? And we need to ensure that that relationship continues and we also need to advertise in one shape or another that relationship.
I mean, example of Red Hat and Fedora comes to mind. It's not like that's disassociated entirely, but I think that, and it's completely different colors, completely different stuff, except for obviously Hat and Fedora. So I like the fact that it's still a chameleon.
For me, as long as it's a chameleon, there's an obvious association. And chameleons are wonderful creatures that can be many weird different colors. So I think as long as it's recognizable of some form of the same kind of animal, we have that cross-representation still.
And for me, that's kind of enough. Let's make it pink then.
OpenSUSE being close branding wise, but yet separate was a big mistake if you ask me. So historically speaking, that was a mistake. Tacking an open onto everything because we're trying to sell our open source-ness was historically a bad decision
and should be changed, but you need, again, a strategy and understanding. Hashtag blame novel. I didn't say that. I said that. Me neither. Yeah, just to kind of follow up with Ken thinking, I know you skipped over the name thing, but like with the logo idea,
with also something the board is gonna be talking about at one o'clock in the main hall for the big board meeting today. Yeah, I do think maybe that needs to come up with it. And what I like with your ideas is yeah, if we keep it to the chameleon, like with Fedora Red Hat, there's room for visual similarities, but colors, naming,
I'd like us to have everything on the table as we talk about this stuff. All right, that's your call. I am not saying anything because I did suggest some, whoops, whoops. I did suggest some names, but they weren't great, to be honest.
Yeah, and I know this will end up being a massive discussion at last, but at least it's my fault now. Thank you.