Andy Fitzsimon

While reviewing the submissions for the Open Font Library logo competition we came across many concepts that nicely tied into the OpenClipart aesthetic. That was great.

We also noticed a tenancy to use glyphs from other scripts which was great but this really limits the brand for those coming from other nationalities who’s alphabet didn’t make it into the 3 used in the logo.

The best way to deal with this? Make a derivative logo for all locales!

As an exercise I took one submission by Marty, cleaned up the aesthetic a little and had it translated in 23 languages :-).

Considering I know only English and dumb English (translated here), It’s a privilege to have brilliant translators as colleagues.

Tools:

Inkscape (design)

XML2PO (conversion from SVG into pofiles )

RSVG locale specific style tweaks+rendering),

UPDATE:

I’ve published the major part of the technique for creating these translatable graphics here.

Forgot to mention.
A while back I got called up for an aussie round-table on FOSS Graphic design for a podcast.

you can directly download: MP3 OGG

Costume party on the weekend and the host actually put a video of me on youtube. scandal.

For those still confused.
To everyone’s time I wasted I’m sorry. I’m sure thats all of you.

Do you publish PDF’s of marketing collateral showcasing free software?

I’ve noticed that not everyone eats their own dogfood!..
and There are some unlikely offenders.

There are plenty of ways to generate quality materials from free software. Below are some properties screens that let you know the creator cares about FOSS.

People dont just pay for propietary software with the price tag. You pay for it by looking like a dweeb who uses another platform to the one they promote:

The final irony here being that I took those screenshots in the linux version of acroread.

I test with acroread because printers render with the same output.
For everything else there’s poppler with evince

• NOFX - Don’t like my city
• Bodyjar - Know how to please a crowd
• The Mars Volta - Are truly artists. I am speechless. Karla is blown away.

I’m a big fan of forks/branches in free software: Beryl, Inkscape, Xorg.. Well, It seems Mars Volta is a ‘fork’ of At the drive in which went on to become Sparta. Two great bands evolving into two contrasting great sounds.  Congrats to them both.

For the potential/past creators of gimp mockups in gimp..
Inkscape brings you : inkscape mockups with inkscape!

Well actually bryce put on the development roadmap for this release that we need to deliver some small mockups demonstrating animation functionality.
( just so we’re thinking about it )

I’ve decided to illustrate inkscape’s UI within inkscape so that others can have a play with creating their ultimate (yet simple) animators UI.

Here is the complete svg version for everything. Add a comment, jump on irc or the mailing list.  just send in your ideas.  Have fun!

download svg

Everyone knows mockups are a compelling attachment to feature requests.. so I decided to put a tiny request in for the fill and stroke dialogs no formatting state.

Download SVG

I also took the opportunity to draw up a feature request for gtk theme / window decorator designers *hint hint* . I mean the draw functions are specified in the SVG so if someone with a little too much cairo-fu and time on their hands wants to write an theme engine… go right ahead

The dark grey version requires semitransparent background but fully opaque widgets ( this actually cant be done easily to my knowledge )

Just a quick mention that James of linux australia podcast fame just held a graphic design round-table

Things I wish I mentioned: gimp, scribus, fontforge & libregraphics efforts