Artwork
From FedoraProject
The artTeam is the design group of the Fedora project. Our interests are not only in creating graphics for use by the Fedora community, but also in advocating the use of the creative tools that are a part of Fedora.
artTeam Lead
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The primary communication channel for the fedora-art team is the mailing list.
For faster feedback, many active members of the artTeam also hang out in IRC at #fedora-art on irc.freenode.net.
What We Do
- Serve as a design firm for the Fedora community, creating artwork and designs to for the Fedora community on request
- How can we measurably achieve this goal? If we advertise this service properly to the Fedora commnunity, successfully get a stream of requests (let's say at least 5 requests per month for a start), and if we can fulfill at least 5 requests per month to the satisfaction of the person requesting them, we can say we have successfully met this goal.
- Provide resources (tutorials, art assets, advice) and encouragement for the use of the FOSS creative tools available in Fedora, under open licenses to demonstrate the importance of the application of FOSS ideas to creative content; using FOSS tools in the creation of our artwork so it serves as a showcase for those tools;
- How can we measurably achieve this goal? If we can provide the community with at least 1 major resource (tutorial, article, art asset, scheduled lesson event, scheduled outreach event (such as a contest to promote FOSS art tools) under an open license, then we can say we have successfully met this goal.
- Make it easy for 'creative contributors' to contribute to the Fedora project.
- How can we measurably achieve this goal? If we can attract at least one contributor every 3 months (for example, at least every three months someone new to the artTeam completes a request in the service request pages below), then we could probably say we have successfully met this goal.
Services Provided to the Fedora Community
The artTeam provides the following services to the Fedora Community:
- Hackergotchi Design - Finally got added to Planet Fedora ([1] ) but don't have a cool hackergotchi to identify your posts? Drop a request here!
- Web Graphic Design or Interaction Design - Are you the administrator of a Fedora web app but need some icons or a nice template to spruce it up? Think you need to improve the usability of your application but you're not sure how? Do you want to run a marketing campaign on the Fedora wiki but need some graphical banners? Drop a request here!
- Marketing Collateral Design - Are you a Fedora Ambassadors or member of the marketing team, and need a quick poster or banner for an event you're helping organize? Do you need other collateral such as CD/DVD labels, sticker designs, t-shirt designs, or some illustrations to help make your event or campaign a success? Drop a request here!
- Documentation Illustration - Working on a how-to or reference guide for Fedora, and think an illustration, diagram, or icon would help make your point clearer? Drop a request here!
If you would like to help out or join the artTeam, taking a look at the open requests in the pages listed above and giving them a try is a great way to get started.
Resources
Here are some of the art-related resources for the general Fedora Community:
- Fedora Logo - Information about the Fedora logo, including usage guidelines and how to get the source artwork.
- MarketingCollateral - This page features banners, posters, etc. - artwork for practical physical application.
- PromoBanners - Promo Banners and their sources, used for the fedoraproject.org banner system. Please feel free to use these in order to promote Fedora on your own site or blog.
- Widgets - All websites and user interfaces are full of widgets, such as buttons, banners and captions. Submit your Fedora-specific widgets here.
- Theming Overview - Documentation on how to theme the way Fedora looks.
- Bluecurve Icon Theme - the Bluecurve icon theme has historically been Fedora's icon theme, and the artwork is GPL and the SVG source artwork is available for it, making it a great graphics resource.
- Echo Icon Theme - A new icon theme aiming to replace Bluecurve for Fedora.
- MediaArt - Fedora CD/DVD Media Artwork
- SoC Posters - Google summer of code posters
- T-Shirt Design - T-Shirt graphics created for general use, various events and do-yourself printing.
- Media Gallery - Raw materials created by the art team for use in Fedora collateral. Photos, illustrations, and more.
Long-Term Projects
The artTeam also has a number of long-term projects it is working on:
- Alternative Themes - If you are interesting in getting alternative themes to change the look of your Fedora installation, creating new alternative themes to change the look of Fedora, or working on the technical aspects of theming, you may be interested in following or even joining this project. The goals of this project are:
- the crafting of individual themes for changing the look of Fedora
- working to make it possible to make these alternatives drop-in replacements
- working on an RSS-based wallpaper changing system
- Customization made easy - A project focused on:
- producing documentation on how to customize the artwork in Fedora for Fedora redistributors and other themers.
- Free and Open Source Creative Tools - Promotion & Marketing - Fedora is a free and open source project, and there are a number of creative tools that are part of it. Because we believe in Fedora, we use the tools provided in Fedora. These project involves:
- providing help/tutorials/advice in the use of the FOSS creative tools in Fedora
- working to promote the usage of FOSS creative tools and advocating the usage of Fedora (and/or any FOSS software) to creative people outside the FOSS world
- Upstream Icon SVG+CSS integration with GNOME Art / Tango teams - see [2] for more details.
- Communication/Marketing - this project involves making it easier for artists to share their Fedora-related wallpapers and artworks. Some goals of this team:
- The deployment / maintenance of a system like art.gnome.org for Fedora;
- Setting up an art-team planet for artists to post their feeds of artwork and discuss their current projects and plans
- Expanding the Fedora Art Mugshot group
- A designalogue-like (www.designalogue.com) system where we can comment on and track the family tree of the stuff we work on.
- Fedora Games SIG Artwork - interested in developing artwork for some of the games in Fedora? This is a good project to start out with.
- EchoCursors - This project aims to create new cursor theme for future releases of Fedora, replacing the aging Blucurve cursors.
- CSS Guidelines - This project maintains the guidelines for creating web pages utilizing the look and feel of the Fedora style sheets .
For Contributors
Fedora Artwork Guidelines
There are basic rules and guidelines that all artwork in Fedora must follow. We have outlined many of them below. Other rules may also apply:
- Submissions should be made in formats that can be read by software available in Fedora Package Collection. Preferred image formats include SVG and PNG. Preferred sound formats include WAV, FLAC and OGG Vorbis. Master files, which may be further edited, should be maintained in non-lossy formats. Preserving vector graphics, raster layers and channels is important for such materials.
- No Fedora artwork should contain hats, particularly fedoras. This is a matter of respect for our biggest sponsor, Red Hat, Inc., and is not negotiable. Of course, passive appearance of hats, such as those upon heads in a crowd, may be tolerable.
- All contributions must be covered by the Contributor License Agreement . We cannot accept contributions from individuals who have not signed the CLA in the Fedora Account System . The CLA allows us to properly license artwork submissions for distribution with Fedora and other Fedora projects.
- Submissions must respect artwork licensing. If your submissions consist of artwork created by other people, please make sure the license of the original work you incorporate is compatible with Fedora and that you are not violating any of the provisions of its license. Just because a work is licensed with a Creative Commons license does not mean it is free to use (make sure you provide attribution to artists that license their work with a CC Attribution clause.)
- No version numbers. End users might prefer to continue to use an older theme, or use the latest theme in their older version of Fedora. To enable that choice, do not use any version numbers within the Fedora artwork.
- No text in wallpapers No words should be used in the wallpapers. They are not easily translatable and we want Fedora to be used globally and the themes to be used by derivative distributions too without extensive changes.
How to Join
While filing bug reports and providing feedback is extremely valuable, we also need help with our active projects. If you would like to contribute, please complete the following steps:
First Steps
- Join the mailing list .
- Send an introduction to the mailing list, talking about your art/design experience and interests so we'll know what kinds of design tasks you might be interested in helping out with.
- Complete a small design task such as one at the design service queue or email the fedora-art-list mailing list to be assigned a task.
- Once you've completed an initial draft of your design task, submit it to the fedora-art-list for feedback. Once the task has been completed and approved, proceed to the steps below.
Final Steps
Once you've completed the steps above, follow this next set of steps to gain wiki edit access and to join the Fedora Art group in the account system:
- Sign up in the Fedora Account System .
- Complete the CLA through the Account System .
- Join the 'art' group in the Account System .
- Ask another contributor to ask you to the EditGroup. You can also visit #fedora-art or #fedora-websites on freenode to ask for help.
- Add yourself to the Contributors list .
After you have completed these steps, you can begin contributing to a project as a full member of the art team. Most submissions are posted to the wiki or through CVS. Questions may be asked and suggestions offered by submitting them to the IRC or list server.
References:
