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Date:      Thu, 23 Dec 2004 21:17:26 -0800
From:      "Michael C. Shultz" <reso3w83@verizon.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD's Visual Identity: Outdated?
Message-ID:  <200412232117.30199.reso3w83@verizon.net>
In-Reply-To: <41CB9F16.1010405@nbritton.org>
References:  <20041223112731.GA32750@ninja.terrabionic.com> <20041223133440.GC786@myrddin.originative.co.uk> <41CB9F16.1010405@nbritton.org>

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On Thursday 23 December 2004 08:46 pm, Nikolas Britton wrote:
> >>From a business perspective we look amateurish.
>
> I REALLY REALLY agree with this point, from the prospective of an
> outsider the website and "Image" conveys a real lack of
> professionalism, which is not true.
>
> I'm looking at the start page for FreeBSD right now and here are the
> things I do not like about it (please don't be offended if I step on
> toe's and ego's, I am only trying to better FreeBSD):
>
> 1. The "FreeBSD" logo is crap, not beastie (he's a keeper!!!, I'll
> hunt you down and do bad things to you if you take him away!), Just
> the black wannabe (and badly done) 3D effect "FreeBSD" part, really,
> I hate it. Redo the whole logo in photoshop with a bold, antialiased
> modern web font: (Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Century Gothic, etc.)
> and forget the whole 3D effect as that is so 90s. Generally all of
> your logo designs are unprofessional (the logos at the bottom of the
> page: FreeBSD MALL, UseNix, Daemon News, and Powered by FreeBSD for
> example)
>
> 2. I cringe when I see Times New Roman, again redo the whole site
> with a modern web font: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Etc. (ever here of
> Cascading Style Sheets?)
>
> 3. The color scheme is not "complementary" anyone who has been to art
> school or taken design classes will know what I talking about, read
> up about basic color theory here:
> http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html (again, ever
> here of Cascading Style Sheets??)
>
> 4. I like the Beastie logo on the boot loader screen but ASCII art is
> unprofessional... It would be better if you made the color ASCII
> beastie the default.
>
> I have no real issues with the layout of the site and it would be
> nice if the installer was more user friendly but I am content with
> the way it is, maybe you should change the color scheme of the
> installer to match the website?
>
> Here are some example sites:
> http://m0n0.ch/wall/screens/system.png
> http://www.mozilla.org/
> http://www.horde.org/logos/
> http://www.xfce.org/
> http://www.gnome.org/
> http://www.gimp.org/
> http://www.php.net/
> http://freebsd.kde.org/
> http://www.google.com/
> http://www.apache.org/
> http://www.adobe.com/
> http://www.openoffice.org/
> http://www.sun.com/
> http://www.suse.com/
> http://www.novell.com/
> http://www.ibm.com/
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/
> http://www.mysql.com/
> http://cocoon.apache.org/
> http://www.w3.org/
> http://www.penguincomputing.com/
>
> FreeBSD is badly in need of a PR/Design/Marketing department.

I hate to see FreeBSD to something like my once favorite news site
(www.antiwar.com) did.  Early on they had a website that wasn't at all 
artistic, but they always had links to great news stories and updated 
those several time a day.

A while back they re-did the site into a politically correct artsie 
fashion  as you are suggestion FreeBSD do. Ever since that so called 
upgrade many of there links remain for days at a time and none are 
updated more than once a day, my guess is the site with all of its 
wonderful graphics is a real pain in the butt to update now.  I seldom
visit the site because it is no longer usefull.

So for me it seems it is not the artwork that brings me to a site, 
rather it is the quality of content and FreeBSD's content quality is 
good right now, I hope no one messes it up.

-Mike




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