Fedora design video chat hangouts

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#1

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[The Fedora Design team operates using Hyperkitty but I am reposting this here for reach! You can see the original post here on Hyperkitty.]

Hi everybody

Before the holidays I did a few very impromptu live design sessions/chats using streaming / video chats (the first was on twitch but I didn’t like how one-way it was, so subsequent ones were on Jitsi.) We did some live digital painting, a design critique session, and also a Discourse theming session, with a lot of fun and random chatter and banter

I’d like to continue this on a more regular / planned basis, maybe every two weeks, and I am inviting my current set of interns and mentees to join in too (hoping it can be a teaching tool for them!) The idea is anyone participating can bring some design work they are working on for some critique / advice / etc. and if nobody has anything to show off I will always have some Fedora design ticket or thing I’m working on that we can look at as a back up. I want it to be very laid-back / chill but also a super-respectful, calm, encouraging, and safe environment. All of the Fedora code of conduct [1] rules apply.

If this is something you’d be interested in participating in or if you have any ideas or concerns around it, let me know. I am hoping to schedule the first session sometime next week.

Cheers,
~m

[1] Code of Conduct :: Fedora Docs

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#2

We have a whenisgood set up to figure out our schedule, if you are interested in joining please let us know your availability:

http://whenisgood.net/design-team-sessions

#3

Thanks to everyone who participated in our time survey! We have a time: Wednesdays at 1900 UTC, starting next week (January 20.)

Wednesday, January 20, 2021 7:00 PM Coordinated Universal Time

The Fedocal event is here:
https://apps.fedoraproject.org/calendar/design/2021/1/20/#m9895

These links will change after the Fedora element.io server becomes available imminently (hopefully before our first meeting?? )

Tons more details in our Hyperkitty post:
Fedora Design Sessions Live / Video Hangouts Details

Hope to see you there :slight_smile:

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#4

Here’s the summary of our first session from our mailing list:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/SZXEH2LDYIHIBQTPEYAV3HREGASQ63FM/

Thanks for everyone who joined! I think I lost count at how many folks
we had participate, we had at least 9 and we had a very productive F35
wallpaper brainstorming session!

Here’s a quick recap:

  1. fedora.element.io background image thumbnail sketches review

Ticket: Issue #705: Custom brand graphics for Fedora Element/Matrix Server - design - Pagure.io

We took a look at Madeline’s thumbnail sketches for the upcoming Fedora
element.io deployment.

  • We looked at Mozilla’s login screen to see what they did:
    mozilla.element.io.
    -I gave a little background on the project and the concept of the
    initial thumbnail sketch i did with lights: the gist is users joining
    the chat server are in the dark foreground approaching this glowing city
    full of communication / vitality, and the shape/glow of the buildings
    skyline is meant to evoke the shape of a sound wave of a voice.
  • Madeline talked us through her 4 thumbnail sketches and their concepts
  • she made some refinements to the glowing city concept, and also riffed
    off of the idea with the neat buildings hanging together with the water
    reflection and clouds (the chat is in the cloud!), and the natural/calm
    vibe of looking up through the trees
    -We all pretty much enjoyed all of them and there was no clear favorite.
  • One point that was brought up is that the login dialog will be in the
    center of the image so Madeline noted that her final design will need to
    work well with a dialog of unknown size floating over top it.
  • The thumbnail idea with the trees relates to the F34 wallpaper which
    we discussed next.
  1. F34 Wallpaper WIP

Ticket: Issue #688: Fedora 34 Artwork - design - Pagure.io

  • The basic background here is that we’re going for a calm, tranquil
    image as a counter to the craziness that has been the past year or so
    with the pandemic and other stuff going on. The inspiration here was Ub
    Iwerks who invented the multiplane camera so the key element of this
    image/composition is the built in layered effect. The technique is meant
    to be watercolor-style, and watercolor as a medium heavily relies on
    layering itself
  • Marie noticed a halo behind the tree on the left, it stands out too
    much so I’ll adjust it
  • Neal noted we should package up something for the night version for
    beta if we intend to have time of day wallpaper even if it’s rough, it’s
    better than nothing.
  1. F35 Brainstorm

Ticket: Issue #707: Fedora 35 Artwork - design - Pagure.io

I wrote up a summary in the ticket, but essentially we did a
collaborative mindmap, dropping links to images and coming up with
related ideas, basically creating a big map of brain food to keep
building ideas. Next steps are to do some sketches based on the 4 sort
of themes that shook out of the mind map exercise.

OK now some tech notes:

  • The link I put on the community blog and here to join dumped folks
    straight to Jitsi without the Matrix chat. Next time we should just use
    the Matrix chat as the main link to join, because the Jitsi window
    doesn’t have a separate chat for link dumping so we need to use the
    Matrix chat for that.

  • Jitsi does not have built-in recording so the session wasn’t recorded.
    It’s my understanding it’s possible to record using OBS, so I will try
    that next session.

I can’t think of anything else. Feel free to reply here if there’s
something I forgot or if you had some technical or format issues / ideas
/ feedback to make our next session better. Thanks everyone!

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