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chaosgeisterchen
September 5th, 2006, 11:27 PM
Hi there,

After looking at Kubuntu Edgy's Knot2-Artwork, well, I was more than just disappointed. Those guys who deceide which artwork to use really thrive users to run away from Kubuntu mostly scared of the grotesque colors used there. The 'purple default scheme' is beyond any discussion.. it neither shows professional approach nor does it thrive users to use Kubuntu. The first impression is _so_ important for the user's opinion upon the product he's using. And the first impression of Kubuntu is awful if they really are going to use this theme in Edgy.

So I would be thankful to be let known where and how to contact those people responsible. It's free software, so it's free speech and free choice of opinion.

Thanks in advance,

cg

Jucato
September 6th, 2006, 07:17 AM
Firstly, I think it's not fair to the developers to say that they are working hard (and they are working hard) to drive users away from Kubuntu. It just isn't logical to spend your whole day working for something that you intend not to be used.

Secondly, purple might not be your thing, but it may be other people's favorite color. To call it grotesque, just because you don't like it, isn't also fair for other people who like it. I personally prefer blue, myself. I do not see how purple has anything to do with a "professional approach". The thing is, at one point or another, they have to decide on default settings, default programs, etc. And we all know that there's no pleasing everyone. There's someone bound to be irritated by the default choices. In the end, a decision still must be made. It just so happened that the decision this time is something that some people, you and I included, do not usually prefer. But whether we like it or not, I don't think it justifies presuming that the developers are intentionally trying to drive away users.

Lastly, there are ways to contact developers. IRC (#kubuntu or #kubuntu-offtopic) and Mailing Lists (kubuntu-users) are the most preferred ways, it seems. You can probably reach them through e-mails. But at this point in time of the development, unless there would be one massive demonstration, they're unlikely to change it now. Edgy Eft is barely 2 months away. They'd have to redo all artworks if the color scheme were to be changed.

Btw, the Chief Artist for this release is Kenneth Wimer. If you doubt his artistic professionalism and capabilities, it might please you to know that he's also in one of the people behind the new Oxygen icon set, which will be used in KDE 4. Feel free to Google about him and his work.

EDIT: I forgot to add, if you upgrade from Dapper to Edgy, your settings and themes will be carried over to Edgy so you most probably won't see the purple theme, unless you are still using the Kubuntu defaults in Dapper. But getting rid of the purple color and wallpaper is very easy. changing the splash screen and login screen might be a bit more difficult, but not entirely difficult.

SoundMachine
September 6th, 2006, 07:43 AM
Hi there,

After looking at Kubuntu Edgy's Knot2-Artwork, well, I was more than just disappointed. Those guys who deceide which artwork to use really thrive users to run away from Kubuntu mostly scared of the grotesque colors used there. The 'purple default scheme' is beyond any discussion.. it neither shows professional approach nor does it thrive users to use Kubuntu. The first impression is _so_ important for the user's opinion upon the product he's using. And the first impression of Kubuntu is awful if they really are going to use this theme in Edgy.

So I would be thankful to be let known where and how to contact those people responsible. It's free software, so it's free speech and free choice of opinion.

Thanks in advance,

cg

Well, you could go to the devs mailing list but they would just ask you to show them your superior artwork.

ericesque
September 6th, 2006, 08:05 AM
I don't ever enjoy knocking anyone's work. But I do have to say that I've been finding myself asking "what was the Kubuntu art team thinking?" more and more since breezy. Mind you, this is not from a personal preference, but from a design perspective. I think it's fine to use whatever color scheme you like for a theme. However, there are right and wrong ways to use those colors in successful design. There have been some serious errors in this regard. For instance, in Dapper, the default theme has a variety of close, but definitley different shades/tints of blue. These appear on the side of the kicker menu, the window decorations, menu selections, etc. I understand if someone selects a blue theme that causes mismatches for these elements. But the default theme HAS to be unified. I would have to chalk it up to sloppyness or laziness. You pick 2.

Before I get reamed with a comment like "if you have an issue, join the team"... well, I looked into it. I couldn't figure out how to participate. Maybe I just suck at the internet, but there didn't seem to be any obvious way to take an active role.

I know themes don't come together overnight. It took the human theme quite a while to show the unity and thoughtfulness as well as the completedness that it has matured to today. I hope for Kubuntu's sake that the art team latches on to one theme and really pounds it out to near perfection. I'm not talking about pleasing everyone. I'm just talking about nitpicking one theme until it's right.

Jucato
September 6th, 2006, 08:32 AM
Not being a professional artist, I probably didn't notice those little things. The current wallpaper does look a bit... unique... I'm not exactly familiar with how the default artworks get chosen, but there certainly wasn't a lack of candidates. The http://wiki.ubuntu.com/ pages would be place where you could start searching for information about development and projects, including proposed artworks.

ericesque: these pages might interest you, as well as those who want to help.

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HelpingKubuntu
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ContributeToUbuntu

awakatanka
September 6th, 2006, 09:27 AM
anyone has somescreen shots of it? I'm moved to mepis atm but still following kubuntu. Purple can look pro if its used the right way.

I moved because mepis was acting a bit better on my laptop, but if kubuntu gets better i move to kubuntu. Both distro's i like and the best one will stay for some months on the lintop.

SoundMachine
September 6th, 2006, 09:31 AM
I don't ever enjoy knocking anyone's work. But I do have to say that I've been finding myself asking "what was the Kubuntu art team thinking?" more and more since breezy. Mind you, this is not from a personal preference, but from a design perspective. I think it's fine to use whatever color scheme you like for a theme. However, there are right and wrong ways to use those colors in successful design. There have been some serious errors in this regard. For instance, in Dapper, the default theme has a variety of close, but definitley different shades/tints of blue. These appear on the side of the kicker menu, the window decorations, menu selections, etc. I understand if someone selects a blue theme that causes mismatches for these elements. But the default theme HAS to be unified. I would have to chalk it up to sloppyness or laziness. You pick 2.

Before I get reamed with a comment like "if you have an issue, join the team"... well, I looked into it. I couldn't figure out how to participate. Maybe I just suck at the internet, but there didn't seem to be any obvious way to take an active role.

I know themes don't come together overnight. It took the human theme quite a while to show the unity and thoughtfulness as well as the completedness that it has matured to today. I hope for Kubuntu's sake that the art team latches on to one theme and really pounds it out to near perfection. I'm not talking about pleasing everyone. I'm just talking about nitpicking one theme until it's right.

Go to www.kubuntu.net, you'll find links to go from there. :)

I much prefer the current Kubuntu theme to Ubuntu's human theme and apparently I'm not alone. (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=249555)

awakatanka
September 6th, 2006, 09:38 AM
I have seen some screenshots now and i think it looks good. Maybe i'm going to make a extra partition to test edgy on my deskptop.

siacs
September 6th, 2006, 11:00 AM
anyone has somescreen shots of it?

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=731&slide=17http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/731/17.gif


First impressions do count for many new users, personally I hope this is only an experiment.

Jucato
September 6th, 2006, 02:26 PM
siacs: the images don't show.

Some Knot 2 screenshots here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdgyEft/Knot2/Kubuntu
Important Note: this is still Knot 2, so some artwork are still missing. The Konqueror Introduction page (the one that you see in the screenshot) is already purple, but the change didn't make it to Knot 2.

siacs, you're right, first impressions do count. I'd say that they would probably comprise around 25% of your overall experience with a distro. But not going beyond that 25% is also not good. However, this purple theme is not an experiment, sad to say. It's really the color scheme for Edgy, no doubt about it.

While on the topic of first impressions, do you guys know how many people actually "ditch" KDE because their first impression of it being too Windows-like, simply because the default colors were blue? Well, now at least they have one less thing to complain about. Or maybe one more thing to complain about, if they hated both blue and purple...

*sigh* There really is no pleasing everybody, is there? :D

chaosgeisterchen
September 6th, 2006, 05:02 PM
*scraching his head*

Oh my, I see, I found way _too_ rude words for the hard-working Kubuntu team. Man, I love this Distribution (otherwise I wouldn't use it ;)), but I do only want it to be more and more widespread. But the new artwork seems not to be that promising from _my_ point of view.

I do not want to show how superior my opinion is. Not really.

Well, it'd be a fine idea to expand KPersonalizer for the first KDE upstart - you would be able to choose some 3 or so different artworks (details shown via sample screenshot) - where you could differentiate, some glass-look, black look, candy look and all of these in different varieties ;)

I think this could be a good improvement to avoid people to get a standard-desktop they do not want to use. Yeah. They define for themselves how their standard desktop will look like in the end. Indeed this means that Kubuntu-Devs will have to use some disk space for this :S

But I am of the opinion that first impression is somthing more than just important. If first impression fails, it'll be hard to thrive people to use this distribution afterwards.

regards, ~cg

awakatanka
September 6th, 2006, 07:48 PM
Sadly a first impression is different for all users. I said the same thing about the dapper theme ;). I didn't liked the dapper art. But do like this even it's not ready atm. They need to change default icons to to match. And fit everything in the default purple art.

Maybe better to make a few options by install so the user can choose the default color/look.

Zerlinna
September 6th, 2006, 08:13 PM
Before I get reamed with a comment like "if you have an issue, join the team"... well, I looked into it. I couldn't figure out how to participate. Maybe I just suck at the internet, but there didn't seem to be any obvious way to take an active role.


If you have ideas for edgy, you can add them with your name to https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Artwork/Incoming/Kubuntu-Edgy-Ideas

For feedback use
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Artwork/Incoming/Kubuntu-Edgy-Ideas-Feedback

Z.

siacs
September 6th, 2006, 09:55 PM
siacs: the images don't show.

Odd, I can see the image.

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/3708/kdeknot2cv9.th.png (http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kdeknot2cv9.png)

Jucato
September 7th, 2006, 01:46 AM
Odd, I can see the image.

Initially there wasn't any image. Now there is one. But didn't you upload two?

Anyway, about the KPersonalizer option, that would probably be up to the KDE devs to add that.

Probably a better idea would be to include some alternative Kubuntu artworks (wallpapers, mostly) in the standard installation. However, they would probably still be in line with the default Edgy purple theme. Or maybe not. Let's see what happens in the next weeks. :D

bobbybobington
September 7th, 2006, 04:18 AM
i'd like to see kubuntu find another color, i can see that they're looking for a color that isn't overused --like blue, gray etc--but purple? Purple and yellow dont go together easily, but they managed to pull it of to an extent. The trick is to use a nuetral color that doesn't stick out too much visually but these colors are often the overused ones, they probably went to closest color to blue (the default kde color)which would be purple. Personally i think green (not used by suse with kde too much) would be better, or a shade of red could be done with some work. But we'll see what happens with the purple, who knows it might just work.

Jucato
September 7th, 2006, 05:59 AM
I agree about the purple/yellow wallpaper. And that's the part that could easily be changed. But it's the only place where purple is blended with yellow. All the rest are pure purple or blended with white.

I would personally prefer if all the *buntus shared the same color scheme, for a more consistent and unified appearance, even if the panels are obviously different. A distinct *buntu icon set would also be nice, but now that Ubuntu has its own Human icons, and Kubuntu is anticipating KDE 4's Oxygen icons, I doubt that it would happen.

Btw, I think green would be a good common color, too. It's neither brown nor blue :D