[Marketing] first mockup of a rollup banner for booths

[Eben Eliason]

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking better & better, thanks Gary!
>
> * size of "sugar" in title: I understood Eben to say that the font
> size should be adjusted so the absolute width of "sugar" matched
> "learning" and "platform" (this differs from Walter's suggestion to
> use the same point size). Of course, the VAG Rounded Light will be a
> little wider. For my part, I like the big "sugar" on the top.. banner
> visible over people's heads as they crowd around the booth looking at
> XOs and netbooks :D

Right. I basically think there are two options:

1) adjust the relative sizes and/or tracking  so that the lines are justified
2) reduce "sugar" to the size of "learning platform", and left align
all three words

> * If you can swap VAG Rounded Light in, please by all means do so (I
> can buy & transmit it in a few hours if need be but will be traveling
> tomorrow), one way or another I feel we will be using that for
> "official" marketing materials. (Christian will remember that an early
> draft of the first press release I did had all the text in MgOpen
> Modata and ultimately we stayed with Helvetica instead)

This would be good to see. I'm sure there is a non-default
(specifically, wider) letter-spacing, too. Christian would know.

> * I prefer the ring centered like this; the other way felt top-heavy
> to me. I like that there are only two Activity icons above the ring.
> N.B. A vertical rollup booth banner is ideally placed beside/ in front
> of a booth, not in it or behind it and not behind a table...
>
> * Colors - much better bravo
>
> * Speak - yes better he needs to be looking at *something* in the banner :-)
>
> * The lower logo / URL. The recall of the title using color is I think
> visually strong in terms of branding. I think this is important.
>
> To my mind, a completely grey logo +.org is not the way to go, it
> won't be visible and as such, won't communicate the URL. It's also

I don't think you should think of it as a "gray logo". It's not the
logo at all...it's just the url, in a single font (without the weight
variations and such). I think the all-gray treatment is actually the
most effective way to communicate the URL itself.

But again, I don't really care which way it's treated, myself!

> counter to the logo whose strength is in the fatness+color. If we
> can't do the "sugar" fattened & colored like it is in the logo, it
> would be much better to leave off the URL entirely and just leave the
> logo.
>
> But I think that would be a mistake, the goal of a booth banner (or
> other OOH, or TVC, none of which we have done yet so this is a new
> problem) is to make an impression when people are *not* in front of a
> computer and the "real" logo + ".org" will succeed on three counts:
>
> * branding
> * communicating we are community, not a company
> * retention of the URL
>
> If Sugar Labs owned all the TLD variants (.com / .net / .info) it
> would be less of an issue; but the dot com and the "lab" singular
> variants belong to squattters. We *are* well-referenced now, but only
> for "sugar labs" (20 out of top 20 Google), much less so for "sugar"
> by itself (4 out of top 20). "sugar olpc" references OLPC.
>
> I could see the point if we had prefaced the logo'd URL with "www.",
> but I propose an exception without "www." precisely because a shorter
> URL will be easier to remember and is closer to the URL-free logo.
>
> Why don't we just put ".org" in a lighter grey? We keep an URL and the
> logo's core is preserved

I'd rather see the decision to embrace the (colored) logo/.org combo
rather than introducing another shade of gray. However, I don't think
a lot is lost by rendering it all in gray, since it is then "just a
url" in context.

Eben

> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Looking much better!
>>
>> I think the higher placement of the ring works, especially since it
>> does effectively remedy the "second ring" of activity icons nicely.
>>
>> I still find the type treatment at the top a bit odd. Christian, do
>> you think we could letter-space "learning platform" so that it's
>> justified with "sugar"?
>>
>> Let's stick with "sugarlabs.org" in gray
>>
>> Some of these colors look a little bit washed out (Speak, specifically).
>>
>> Otherwise, it looks fantastic!
>>
>> Eben
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> OK, heaps of changes (try to snip each out below), some of you win, some of
>>> you loose (this round) ;-)
>>>
>>> On 3 Jun 2009, at 11:55, Sean DALY wrote:
>>>
>>>> * Walter had mentioned it might be better for the "sugar" in the title
>>>> to be the same font size as "learning platform", I'm inclined to agree
>>>> but would need to look at that to be sure...
>>>
>>> Fonts are the same MgOpen Modata for now, will swap out with VAG when
>>> someone says.
>>>
>>>> This would allow us to raise the ring a bit, ideally to
>>>> the center of the banner; the title won't look top-heavy if the ring
>>>> is centered vertically
>>>
>>> Ring is raised close to centre in this one, maybe too high now? Depends I
>>> guess if this drops to the floor and you have a booth or table/chairs in the
>>> way. Bounce with Eben about how high it should be ;-)
>>>
>>>> * Sugar Labs + URL logo: taking into account Eben and Christian's
>>>> comments, I do think the "sugar" in that line should be the same color
>>>> as on top...
>>>
>>> This version has SL logo with .org, I'm staying out of this fight, but at
>>> least you can see both treatments now.
>>>
>>>> * I agree with Fred, we have a bit too much blue in our avatars, Speak
>>>> icon, Browse icon in the center... is it difficult to change those
>>>> colors?
>>>
>>> Sean, I've massively altered the colours as per the original PDF, this was
>>> part in line with Walters comment on the XO colour not being Sugar interface
>>> compliant, and choosing stronger variants from the various documents/files
>>> and Frederick's examples. I think they now all come from points in the much
>>> more finite UI set  of XO colours (except for the Browse Activity icon which
>>> I've kept matching the Suagr logo blues as per Eben's call).
>>>
>>>> * The TurtleArt icon could have a peppier fill color maybe?
>>>
>>> Changed.
>>>
>>>> * Speak: could he be off to the left, looking longingly at the banner
>>>> title? Will direct passersby's gazes to the title ;-)
>>>
>>> Lots of movement (due to trying to centre the ring). Gaze is more to the
>>> right so hard to look up at banner title, I've tried to place to Speak is
>>> looking to the ring of XOs.
>>>
>>> On 3 Jun 2009, at 14:51, Eben Eliason wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think that it might work better to size "Sugar" relative to
>>>> "learning platform" so that the lines are justified. Right now, the
>>>> slight difference in line width makes it feel slightly off, and not
>>>> quite intentional.
>>>
>>> My centre alignment was off in the previous version, any better for you with
>>> this one?
>>>
>>>> Incidentally, I much prefer the ring to be below
>>>> center, vertically, and would argue that this actually helps with the
>>>> visual balance since the Sugar logo and the ring are the areas of bold
>>>> color and weight.
>>>
>>> It is close to centre in v2 so you may not like. Likely compromise between
>>> the two?
>>>
>>>> I'd recommend keeping the colors of the Browse icon in the center. It
>>>> was a conscious decision to make this match the Sugar logo on my part,
>>>> because I think it helps guide one's eye down through the focal points
>>>> of the banner.
>>>
>>> Yep, I like that choice... even though it's a bit of a colour cheat, and the
>>> XO that shared it must have left the collaboration after the others joined
>>> ;-) I've matched the Browse icon with the logo again.
>>>
>>>> Removing this color from the Speak icon is probably the way to go.
>>>
>>> Colour changed.
>>>
>>>> I think the space is starting too look a bit cluttered with all the
>>>> activity icons. Could we drop one or two of them?
>>>
>>> Possibly. Someone needs to make a final call.
>>>
>>>> I think the biggest
>>>> issue for me is that, due to the limited space, these icons
>>>> approximate a ring, creating a concentric effect, which is the
>>>> opposite of what we want. It should convey a portion of a plane strewn
>>>> with activities, and ironically I found fewer activities to convey
>>>> that more effectively. Perhaps some rearrangement could also mitigate
>>>> the double-ring effect.
>>>
>>> Lot's of movement, for better or worse, likely the ring centre shift is
>>> going to be the first call someone needs to make.
>>>
>>>> Also, there seems to have been some corruption of the memorize icon.
>>>> It looks like a solid block instead of individual tiles.
>>>
>>> Funny, I thought exactly the same when I saw the old mock-ups :-) The
>>> Memorise Activity and it's SVG icon are definitely as now being shown – so
>>> it the corruption in the current official release, or our mock-ups ;-b
>>>
>>> On 3 Jun 2009, at 14:54, Christian Marc Schmidt wrote:
>>>
>>>> Let me chime in here--I really don't think we should start using the
>>>> logo with the ".org" suffix, it begins to undermine the logo and it
>>>> wasn't intended to be used that way. Isn't there another possibility?
>>>
>>> Understood, personally I'm not offended either way. From a technical point,
>>> the only problem with the latest mock-up is that I had to do the .org in
>>> MgOpen Modata so it's not quite a match (not a problem with v1 as the whole
>>> grey sugarlabs.org was all MgOpen Modata).
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> --Gary
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>