Pidgin

Sean Egan wrote:
> I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most
> recently, I've been talking with Stephen Horlander who did the Firefox
> default theme. He made this mockup:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/status_icon_ideas.jpg
> 
> He's been a bit flakey to work with, so I'm considering going back to
> Andreas Nilsson, who does most of the Tango icons. He made this
> mock-up:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/gaim-status-test.png
> 
> I'm not committed to working with either of these people, so I'd like
> a vote to see whom we should go with. I'm preferring Andreas. While I
> wasn't a huge fan of his mock-ups, at first, they're growing on me,
> and I think it would be easier to work with him, rapidly iterating on
> different designs than with Stephen, to make sure we get the look we
> like the best. Also, Andreas will probably be much cheaper.
> 
> Before I go and tell Stephen I don't want him anymore, and dig Andreas
> out of the dust, what do you guys think?
> 

Neither mock-ups seem impressive to me, but flaky is especially bad.  So 
my feeling is to go with Andreas.

Warren

On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 05:00:27PM -0400, Warren Togami wrote:
> Sean Egan wrote:
> > I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most
> > recently, I've been talking with Stephen Horlander who did the Firefox
> > default theme. He made this mockup:
> > http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/status_icon_ideas.jpg

I still really dislike colored dots to display status.  and flaky is
very bad.

luke

Again, I'll say flakey is bad.   I feel that the ones Stephen did might be 
purple overload.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sean Egan" <seanegan@...>
To: <gaim-cabal@...>
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 4:56 PM
Subject: [Gaim-cabal] Artists


> I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most
> recently, I've been talking with Stephen Horlander who did the Firefox
> default theme. He made this mockup:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/status_icon_ideas.jpg
>
> He's been a bit flakey to work with, so I'm considering going back to
> Andreas Nilsson, who does most of the Tango icons. He made this
> mock-up:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/gaim-status-test.png
>
> I'm not committed to working with either of these people, so I'd like
> a vote to see whom we should go with. I'm preferring Andreas. While I
> wasn't a huge fan of his mock-ups, at first, they're growing on me,
> and I think it would be easier to work with him, rapidly iterating on
> different designs than with Stephen, to make sure we get the look we
> like the best. Also, Andreas will probably be much cheaper.
>
> Before I go and tell Stephen I don't want him anymore, and dig Andreas
> out of the dust, what do you guys think?
>
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On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:56:05 -0700, Sean Egan wrote
> I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. 
> Most recently, I've been talking with Stephen Horlander who did the Firefox
> default theme. He made this mockup:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/status_icon_ideas.jpg
> 
> He's been a bit flakey to work with, so I'm considering going back to
> Andreas Nilsson, who does most of the Tango icons. He made this
> mock-up:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/gaim-status-test.png

Doesn't matter to me.  I like the purpleness of the first one, and the wavy
arm man.  The second one looks WAY to corporate to me.  I know we've been
moving toward making Gaim feel more professional, but I think IM clients are
pretty personal, and Gaim will stand out more if it's a bit more bold (like
the purple wavy arm man) and a bit less boring ...no offense to either artist.

I'm sure the Tango guy could whip up something that is bold, pretty and
friendly, but also has some character.

-Mark

On 8/24/06, Mark Doliner <mark@...> wrote:
> I know we've been
> moving toward making Gaim feel more professional

Professional? Who said that? I hate "professionalism"

-s.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:22:57 -0700, Sean Egan wrote
> On 8/24/06, Mark Doliner <mark@...> wrote:
> > I know we've been
> > moving toward making Gaim feel more professional
> 
> Professional? Who said that? I hate "professionalism"
> 
> -s.

I don't know, but we DID take out the word "pimpin'" from some of the docs :-)

-Mark

Of those two, I like Andreas more.
Um..I also know several professional artists (ie Brian Stelfreeze of
http://www.gaijinstudios.com/, among others). Brian's done logo design
before and has a ton of experience; he's busy but good to deal with,
and he's fast. On tentative (read: stated unofficial) questioning, he
is interested.

Cae/Megan

On 8/24/06, Mark Doliner <mark@...> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:22:57 -0700, Sean Egan wrote
> > On 8/24/06, Mark Doliner <mark@...> wrote:
> > > I know we've been
> > > moving toward making Gaim feel more professional
> >
> > Professional? Who said that? I hate "professionalism"
> >
> > -s.
>
> I don't know, but we DID take out the word "pimpin'" from some of the docs :-)
>
> -Mark
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security?
> Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier
> Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo
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> _______________________________________________
> Gaim-cabal mailing list
> Gaim-cabal@...
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>

More reference. This is actually the reason I passed on Andreas to
begin with: ;)
Andreas:
http://gaim.sf.net/sean/gaimlogo1.png
http://gaim.sf.net/sean/gaimlogo2.png

Stephen
http://gaim.sf.net/sean/purple_about.jpg

Megan: A comic book artist could be interesting. And certainly not
"corporate" as Mark was worried. I'm a bit uncertain he has the right
_kind_ of experience. Toolbar icons and
http://www.gaijinstudios.com/resources/gal/fs/2005418011802435.jpg are
quite different things. But I'd be interested to see what he came up
with. Feel free to ask him to come up with mocks like these two (a
buddy list and a purple pigeon logo), and CC me on it. Let him know
about the whole purple thing.

-s.

LOL..trust me, he's done a lot more than that. *chuckle* Laci is amusing though.

Cae/Megan

On 8/24/06, Sean Egan <seanegan@...> wrote:
> More reference. This is actually the reason I passed on Andreas to
> begin with: ;)
> Andreas:
> http://gaim.sf.net/sean/gaimlogo1.png
> http://gaim.sf.net/sean/gaimlogo2.png
>
> Stephen
> http://gaim.sf.net/sean/purple_about.jpg
>
> Megan: A comic book artist could be interesting. And certainly not
> "corporate" as Mark was worried. I'm a bit uncertain he has the right
> _kind_ of experience. Toolbar icons and
> http://www.gaijinstudios.com/resources/gal/fs/2005418011802435.jpg are
> quite different things. But I'd be interested to see what he came up
> with. Feel free to ask him to come up with mocks like these two (a
> buddy list and a purple pigeon logo), and CC me on it. Let him know
> about the whole purple thing.
>
> -s.
>

Sean Egan wrote:
> On 8/24/06, Mark Doliner <mark@...> wrote:
>   
>> I know we've been
>> moving toward making Gaim feel more professional
>>     
>
> Professional? Who said that? I hate "professionalism"
>   

Well, I like professional, considering I mostly use Gaim in a 
professional setting.

Maybe it is time we actually implemented the icon themes we planned from 
the beginning?

-Nathan

Flakey is definitely bad, and while I think the wavy purple man is 
really good, I still don't like colored icons for status.

The other mock up doesn't do anything for me at all (as it is), though I 
do like the general idea so it might have promise.

 	-Etan

P.S. Whether we end up using it or not could we get a good svg image of 
the wavy purple dude to keep around? I just think it's a neat image.

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, Nathan Walp wrote:
> Sean Egan wrote:
>> On 8/24/06, Mark Doliner <mark@...> wrote:
>>
>>> I know we've been
>>> moving toward making Gaim feel more professional
>>>
>>
>> Professional? Who said that? I hate "professionalism"
>>
>
> Well, I like professional, considering I mostly use Gaim in a
> professional setting.
>
> Maybe it is time we actually implemented the icon themes we planned from
> the beginning?
>
> -Nathan

We should currently be able to theme many of the gaim icons, seeing as 
how we use stock items for them. If we worked on stockifying the rest of 
the icons (assuming that is possible and/or useful) we could get the 
rest of them themable the same way. Note: I have no idea how simple/easy 
it is to do this, in my short attempts this evening I was unable to come 
up with anything, gtk always yelled about not being able to find my 
icons in the pixmap search path, which I couldn't discover the identity 
of or find ways to add to, but I'm sure that can be worked around if 
someone knows how.

 	-Etan

Etan Reisner wrote:
> We should currently be able to theme many of the gaim icons, seeing as 
> how we use stock items for them. If we worked on stockifying the rest of 
> the icons (assuming that is possible and/or useful) we could get the 
> rest of them themable the same way. Note: I have no idea how simple/easy 
> it is to do this, in my short attempts this evening I was unable to come 
> up with anything, gtk always yelled about not being able to find my 
> icons in the pixmap search path, which I couldn't discover the identity 
> of or find ways to add to, but I'm sure that can be worked around if 
> someone knows how.

While I'm not as familiar with the stock system as I could be, I have 
the general feeling that implementing our own system would be 
better/more-appropriate for this.

--Tim

Sean Egan wrote:
> I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most

Remind me again why we're getting new artwork. How much of this is legal 
and how much is just we want new art work?

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I always liked the way the prpl icons 
actually looked like the prpls they represented. It's interesting the 
way purple comes in all shapes and colors ;)

What do the different shapes and colors represent in Stephen's thing?
Also, what did you tell each of these people? I noticed there's no prpl 
in Stephen's, is that because he ignored you or because you didn't 
mention that?

Stephen's also has the idle times in place of buddy icons like the small 
list. I like the big list better. I fear that seeing the list type I 
prefer might bias me in some way, where I might like the other one 
better if it was in my preferred list type.

As for as flakey goes, it's too vague a description for me to have 
strong feelings about..


What exactly are we going for here? Will there still be different prpl 
icons, or just Pidgin Dude icons? (In either case, Should the Pidgin 
Dude be a bird [actual, or Bugs Bunny style]?)
Both artist seem to depart from how we currently do things, but in 
different ways. Are emblems gone, or staying, or representing new 
things? Stephen's seems like it replaced emblems with different icons.

It seems more like you're letting the artist decide things that seems 
more like design decisions on our part (and require code changes).


Anyway, the main point of this email is to spur discussion about what we 
actually want, and to figure out how that effects the artist choice.


--Tim

On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 07:53:22AM -0500, Tim Ringenbach wrote:
> Sean Egan wrote:
> > I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most
> 
> Remind me again why we're getting new artwork. How much of this is legal 
> and how much is just we want new art work?

A number of our graphics have questionable copyright status.  That
is, some of them we can say (were we to look through the commit
history, and track people down and such) this person drew this
picture, so even though it looks like a real one, it is ours.  For
others, we can be pretty sure though that the submitter just grabbed
them from a webpage out there.  This is particularly true of our
smileys.  We'd like to avoid any future trouble over artwork.

We also need at least some new artwork.  With a new name comes the
need for a new logo for example.

> 
> Maybe I'm alone in this, but I always liked the way the prpl icons 
> actually looked like the prpls they represented. It's interesting the 
> way purple comes in all shapes and colors ;)

I agree.  There should be some visual relationship between the prpl
icon and the prpl.

> 
> What do the different shapes and colors represent in Stephen's thing?
> Also, what did you tell each of these people? I noticed there's no prpl 
> in Stephen's, is that because he ignored you or because you didn't 
> mention that?
> 
> Stephen's also has the idle times in place of buddy icons like the small 
> list. I like the big list better. I fear that seeing the list type I 
> prefer might bias me in some way, where I might like the other one 
> better if it was in my preferred list type.
> 

I do not think we want to replace the prpl icon + overlays with a
status icon.  My instinct in looking at Stephen's is that this is
what he has done.

luke

Do we have a list of everything we hate/love/need/want, anyway? ie, we
need logo, status icons/prpl+overlay, etc, etc. Love seeing status &
relationship between prpl icon and prpl, hate little round buttons to
show status on the icon, and so on? Need purple and whatnot..
In other words, do we know what the heck *we* want?

Megan

On 8/25/06, Luke Schierer <lschiere@...> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 07:53:22AM -0500, Tim Ringenbach wrote:
> > Sean Egan wrote:
> > > I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most
> >
> > Remind me again why we're getting new artwork. How much of this is legal
> > and how much is just we want new art work?
>
> A number of our graphics have questionable copyright status.  That
> is, some of them we can say (were we to look through the commit
> history, and track people down and such) this person drew this
> picture, so even though it looks like a real one, it is ours.  For
> others, we can be pretty sure though that the submitter just grabbed
> them from a webpage out there.  This is particularly true of our
> smileys.  We'd like to avoid any future trouble over artwork.
>
> We also need at least some new artwork.  With a new name comes the
> need for a new logo for example.
>
> >
> > Maybe I'm alone in this, but I always liked the way the prpl icons
> > actually looked like the prpls they represented. It's interesting the
> > way purple comes in all shapes and colors ;)
>
> I agree.  There should be some visual relationship between the prpl
> icon and the prpl.
>
> >
> > What do the different shapes and colors represent in Stephen's thing?
> > Also, what did you tell each of these people? I noticed there's no prpl
> > in Stephen's, is that because he ignored you or because you didn't
> > mention that?
> >
> > Stephen's also has the idle times in place of buddy icons like the small
> > list. I like the big list better. I fear that seeing the list type I
> > prefer might bias me in some way, where I might like the other one
> > better if it was in my preferred list type.
> >
>
> I do not think we want to replace the prpl icon + overlays with a
> status icon.  My instinct in looking at Stephen's is that this is
> what he has done.
>
> luke
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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On Fri, 25 Aug 2006, Tim Ringenbach wrote:
> Etan Reisner wrote:
>> We should currently be able to theme many of the gaim icons, seeing as how 
>> we use stock items for them. If we worked on stockifying the rest of the 
>> icons (assuming that is possible and/or useful) we could get the rest of 
>> them themable the same way. Note: I have no idea how simple/easy it is to 
>> do this, in my short attempts this evening I was unable to come up with 
>> anything, gtk always yelled about not being able to find my icons in the 
>> pixmap search path, which I couldn't discover the identity of or find ways 
>> to add to, but I'm sure that can be worked around if someone knows how.
>
> While I'm not as familiar with the stock system as I could be, I have the 
> general feeling that implementing our own system would be 
> better/more-appropriate for this.
>
> --Tim

What makes you say that? A not insignificant amount of work has been 
done recently towards letting gaim not need custom options for settings 
when we can let gtk+ do it for us (namely in all the keybinding stuff 
for menus/toolbars/imhtml formatting), so I'm not sure why we wouldn't 
want to do that here.

I realize that gtk theming is complicated, but if we were able to 
determine how this should work, we could easily ship a couple 
(well documented) examples which should be more than enough for most 
people to follow.


But again, I don't know very much about the stock system so this could 
easily be an abuse of it.

 	-Etan

On 8/25/06, Tim Ringenbach <omarvo@...> wrote:
> Remind me again why we're getting new artwork. How much of this is legal
> and how much is just we want new art work?

80 want / 20 legal?

> Maybe I'm alone in this, but I always liked the way the prpl icons
> actually looked like the prpls they represented. It's interesting the
> way purple comes in all shapes and colors ;)

This isn't something we're likely to change. They should still all
look like the appropriate logo, but they'll be a more consistent look
to all of them.

> What do the different shapes and colors represent in Stephen's thing?
> Also, what did you tell each of these people? I noticed there's no prpl
> in Stephen's, is that because he ignored you or because you didn't
> mention that?

I didn't tell them anything other than "mockup a screenshot." While
I'm open to any UI suggestions they make (hence the oh-so-loved rules
hint in the blist), they're just being hired to draw pretty pictures.

> What exactly are we going for here? Will there still be different prpl
> icons, or just Pidgin Dude icons? (In either case, Should the Pidgin
> Dude be a bird [actual, or Bugs Bunny style]?)
> Both artist seem to depart from how we currently do things, but in
> different ways. Are emblems gone, or staying, or representing new
> things? Stephen's seems like it replaced emblems with different icons.

I kinda dig the emblems-to-the-right thing, actually, but that's
another discussion. This is just about pretty pictures.

> It seems more like you're letting the artist decide things that seems
> more like design decisions on our part (and require code changes).

I'm not. I just asked them to make mockups to get a feel for their
style. The only decisions they're making is what the icons should look
like, and that has to meet our approval anyway.

-s.

On 8/25/06, Megan Schneider <caelum@...> wrote:
> Do we have a list of everything we hate/love/need/want, anyway? ie, we
> need logo, status icons/prpl+overlay, etc, etc. Love seeing status &
> relationship between prpl icon and prpl, hate little round buttons to
> show status on the icon, and so on? Need purple and whatnot..
> In other words, do we know what the heck *we* want?

I pretty much want to redo everything in pixmaps/ to have a single
consistent style, rather than being fairly obvious it was pieced
together by a dozen different people over 8 years. The actual icons
for most of these wouldn't change much---smileys for instance still
need to represent what the official clients represent them as, but I'm
open to more significant changes.

I've expressed at least some of this before, but... I see this effort as
having a couple benefits, aside from being free of copyright/trademark
problems.

First, I'd love to see a smiley theme where a :) looks the same across
all protocols, a ;) is the same, an icon of "money" is the same, etc. We
should have one icon for each idea. I'm a big believer in the value of
abstracting protocol differences.

Second, we can come up with something that is uniquely "Pidgin", as
opposed to near-direct (or direct) rip-offs of the official clients.
This should help our general image... Pidgin will look nice & polished.

Richard

On Fri, Aug 25, 2006 at 11:38:08PM -0500, Richard Laager wrote:
> I've expressed at least some of this before, but... I see this effort as
> having a couple benefits, aside from being free of copyright/trademark
> problems.
> 
> First, I'd love to see a smiley theme where a :) looks the same across
> all protocols, a ;) is the same, an icon of "money" is the same, etc. We
> should have one icon for each idea. I'm a big believer in the value of
> abstracting protocol differences.
> 
> Second, we can come up with something that is uniquely "Pidgin", as
> opposed to near-direct (or direct) rip-offs of the official clients.
> This should help our general image... Pidgin will look nice & polished.
> 
> Richard
> 

I find this argument persuasive, even for the smileys, where I would
normally suggest we stay closer to each protocol.  This could help
people understand that pidgin is not AIM, or MSN, and that their
defaults and behaviors do not create a requirement that we do the
same.  It could also help pidgin _feel_ more like a multi-protocol
multi-connection client, much the same way that our state changes
have helped in that respect.

luke

Sorry this is coming so late, I was at Gaim Developers' Conference
2006 and didn't have access to email.  Sean didn't tell me we were
supposed to discuss this at the conference.

Sean Egan spake unto us the following wisdom:
> I've been talking with primarily two artists for the new artwork. Most
> recently, I've been talking with Stephen Horlander who did the Firefox
> default theme. He made this mockup:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/status_icon_ideas.jpg
>=20
> He's been a bit flakey to work with, so I'm considering going back to
> Andreas Nilsson, who does most of the Tango icons. He made this
> mock-up:
> http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/gaim-status-test.png

Honestly, I don't like either of these _at all_.  The purple wavy dude
is OK, but everything else about both of these does nothing for me.
None of the little colored dots tell me anything in the first logo
(What is a red dot?  Is red offline?  Blocked? Away?  I assume green
is available?), and the phone icon isn't perceptible superior to the
one we have now.  In the second set of icons, what are triangle,
square, and circle?  Are circles good?

Abstraction in interfaces can be a beautiful thing, but we're looking
pretty far afield for these particular abstractions.

I suggest we ask some artists to come up with some designs with an
emphasis on conveying meaning, as well as on being pretty to look at.

Ethan

--=20
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764

I get the feeling most of us like how our UI behaves, we just want some new
artwork/logo/icons.  That's pretty much how I feel, anyway.  I mean, I am of
course open to suggestions on how to improve stuff, but our UI is the way it
is because of a few years of evolution, and it may not be easy to improve on
that (aside from more unified icons).
-Mark