It's (sometimes) all about Design!

Just to spread the news - there is now a dedicated mailing list for design topics. More precisely, it'll become the home of the LibreOffice Design Team that cares about User Experience Design (make it just work ...) and Visual Identity Design (... and look great).

How did we get there? We got more and more traffic on the Marketing mailing list. A huge part of those discussions covered Branding aspects and Visual Design. Furthermore, you may have noticed some ideas how to improve the user interface. And, the number of questions by developers increased - they asked for some User Experience (utility, usability, ...) support.

After some discussion, I asked the TDF Steering Committee for a dedicated mailing list. Here it is:

• design@libreoffice.org
• Subscription: design+subscribe@libreoffice.org
• Digest subscription: design+subscribe-digest@libreoffice.org
• Archives: http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/design/
• Mail-Archive.com: http://www.mail-archive.com/design@libreoffice.org/
• GMANE: pending

At the moment, we discuss the relationship between the already existing teams and how to support each other with regard to cross-sectional topics (on a different list). We also talk about how to set up a dedicated "work space" in the wiki. But the most important thing might be, to simply say hello to each other.

Consequently, please expect some changes ... We will report about our progress.

Looking forward to make LibreOffice just rock!

Cheers,
Christoph

LibreOffice 3.3 Artwork Improvements ... going on :-)

Hi all,

since I will leave soon to visit my family, just a short life sign. Okay, maybe not that interesting for you ... but here is one of the most recent artwork elements that got updated. It is the "Side Pane Graphics" for the welcome page of the LibreOffice installer for Windows.

And, I felt free to propose something to the BrOffice guys ... let's see if they like it :-)

Cheers,
Christoph

LibreOffice Logo Resources

Hi all,

just to mention that "anywhere". We now have an improved LibreOffice logo download location which incorporates the latest changes and also provides a revised SVG source file.

EPS upload is not yet supported / allows by the wiki, so this is work in progress. And, graphics which have been created for the special use on websites will be uploaded soon (those graphics are optimized, pixel perfect, for the use in a given size).

Cheers,
Christoph

LibreOffice 3.3 Artwork Improvements

Hi all,

I do have some files with unfinished work "lurking" on my hard drive since quite a few days. I've spend the last evenings discussing interesting stuff like branding and artwork with some interested people ... not yet on the lists. But I hope this will change.

However, before the graphics data gets too old, I'd like to present the current progress ... and pick the "Splash Screen" (please click on it to see the original size).

So far, the following feedback / ideas have been incorporated:

• Marketing Team/Community: General update of the logo that moves the text closer to the document symbol. That required to move the progress bar a bit - I hope that this can still be considered by the development.
• Graham/Ivan/Others: Use of the new "Color Logo Contemporary" using gray instead of black for e.g. the text and the document symbol.
• Ivan/Christoph: Added a slight gradient for the logo elements.
• Marketing Team/Christoph: Minor update to now use the recently updated colors.
• Ivan: Using a very slight embossed effect (inner shadow) to make the logo a bit more 3Dish. Derived from here.
• Ivan/Christoph: Different kind of gradient for the background. This will only work here, due to the different technical implementation in the "Start Center".
• Christoph: Some "pixel-perfect" re-alignment of the items. Not ideal yet, but it should now appear much sharper than the old Splash Screen.

Okay, although some small refinements, I consider the perceived quality much better than the original one (LibreOffice 3.3 Beta 1). It seems that we are on a good way to finalize what we currently call "Initial Branding" ...

What do you think?

Cheers,
Christoph

Non-Modal Messages

One guy from the Sun UX team sent me a note  that some new ideas (or better: serious thoughts) are documented within the OOo wiki covering "non-modal messages". That is great news, since avoiding "Modal Dialogs" should be one of our top priorities when designing new or changing existing functionality.

We discussed that since quite some time - the more I am happy that my contributions have been referenced on that page. So what is available when talking about "in context" and "non-modal" information:

• Contextual Undo (User Experience Idea)
• Direct Manipulation Snippets
• Contextual Information within Dialogs (here: Print Dialog) 
• Blog posting covering these topics (a bit) when I met some guys in Hamburg

Cheers,
Christoph

Website Progress ... And Looking Back!

To me, it is quite fascinating how things progress at the moment within the LibreOffice website team. Here, I just want to pick a message by Michael who talks about the "Drupal LibreOffice CMS Development Site". Many people already contribute to make up the framework, plan the workflows, document requirements.

Parts of the site development are also artwork and branding related. And since I was involved in the very first design, I thought it would be nice to share what design was planned. We had to make some compromises with regard to the fidelity - caused by technical constraints (compatibility for rather old browsers) and time. So here is the original visual design "one-pager" ...

Maybe you find it interesting and (even more) maybe you want to look for the tiny differences :-) Maybe your last chance, since I hope the visual design for the whole project including the website will continue to progress.

So, thanks to the whole website team for your great engagement! Go on :-)

Cheers,
Christoph