Re: Minutes of the Board meeting of October 29th, 2013

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi Allan,

On 11/21/2013 11:04 AM, Allan Day wrote:
> That page is pretty new. The intention was to consolidate the
> pre-existing guidelines, but there's a chance that some of the issues
> you mention are simply bugs that need to be ironed out.

This raises a very important point.

Mairin worked on logo & brand guidelines back in 2006. That was the work
(I believe that you based this page off. And all of the links to her
work are now broken and point at this page. The archive is gone. The
history is gone.

We are losing collected collective wisdom at al alarming rate in the
GNOME project as people (like myself) become less active and old wiki
pages get deleted wholesale as we move to new infrastructure and the
content gets "refreshed".

I don't think this is a good thing, but if it's a conscious decision
that's one thing. If it's collateral damage and is happening unawares,
then it's more serious (and consider this to be calling attention to it).

> I think it depends on the context of use, but black and white are most
> familiar and work in the majority of cases. It's pretty hard to have
> guidelines for more creative uses of the logo, so this was just meant
> to cover the common cases. Maybe we could have a statement that says
> "please check with us if you want to use the logo in a way that
> doesn't follow the guidelines"?

...

> Embedding the logo is something that can easily lead to trouble and it
> can also suggest endorsement. The reason this is to help avoid
> situations where someone has combined the GNOME logo with another in a
> way that we feel is misleading, as well as to help people who are not
> very skilled at graphic design achieve a good result.
>
> There is a question here about whether we need to follow our own
> guidelines to the letter though - it'd be good to check on that.

The reason I was looking for the old logo guidelines was because there
was a palette of acceptable colours and sublogos. Those guidelines were
board approved and reviewed by foundation counsel, and I don't recall
seeing minutes of a board decision or discussion to adopt more
restrictive guidelines.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary, Lyon, France
Email: dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com