FC7 Theme Round 1 is over, let's start round 2! (was Re: Round 1 Submission Deadline Extension)

[Máirín Duffy]

Okay, so round 1 is officially over. The list that Nicu so helpfully 
compiled (thanks!!) is the official list of theme candidates for FC7. I 
linked to all of them from the FC7 Theme page as well:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/FC7Themes

I've also took a lot of the round 1 specific information out of the page 
and added round 2 specific information. Basically, here's how I'm hoping 
we can run round 2 as is written on the wiki page:

"There is no formal voting process for themes right now (in round 2). 
You vote with your time and effort! So if you really like a theme idea, 
chip in and help refine it! For our next round (round 3), we'll take 
stock of how the themes have evolved and try to figure out which ones we 
need to choose between if there is no clear standout candidate."

While the main point of round 1 was to figure out concepts we felt would 
relate to Fedora, for round 2 we should be focusing on rendering those 
concepts and making them visually appealing. As part of this, we'll 
probably want to start thinking about how some key theme pieces will 
look - GDM (login), RHGB (start-up progress screen), and of course the 
desktop wallpaper. But there's no need to flesh every theming piece out 
for round 2 (that's what round 3 will be all about!) The name of the 
game now though is definitely 'polish'.

Anyway, to further develop the theme(s) of your selection, try thinking 
about some of these kinds of questions and sketch out your answers:

- Does the color palette of this theme reflect the idea I'm trying to 
portray?
- Does the style this theme is rendered in reflect its concept? What 
other styles might be appropriate?
- What other pieces of art or design that I've seen also reflect this 
concept and could serve as inspiration to this theme?
- How grating or pleasant would this theme be for a desktop user to see 
every single day? Is there anything about it that stands out and calls 
too much attention to itself? How can I 'mute' this design so it stands 
in the background without compromising its ability to relate its concept?
- Are there alternative ways of arranging the visual elements in this 
theme that might be more effective? Try looking through some of the 
Gestalt principles [1] for inspiration on alternative ways to represent 
your concept and to play around with your theme visually.

You may want to try to recruit other artists to help out with your 
theme. Deviant art [2] is one good place to do that; I'm sure there are 
others.

Anyway, here's the list Nicu put together with a summary of what each 
theme is about. I took off the two themes that weren't formally proposed 
since they don't actually have a concept statement or wiki pages:

> - Borealis, by Máirín Duffy: 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fc7ThemeProposalFedoraBorealis

'One of the core values of Fedora is only including free and open source 
software, without including non-free software, codecs, drivers, patents, 
etc. We try to be a *pure* operating system. So the main word I'd use to 
describe this theme is pure.'

> - Flying High, by John Baer: 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fc7ThemeProposalFlyingHigh

'Flying high reflects the level of achievement obtained by the core 7 
release of fedora.'

> - Dreams, by John Baer: 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fc7ThemeProposalFedoraDreams

'The idea here is you are only limited by what you can imagine.'
> 
> - Planet, by Mola Pahnadayan: 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fc7ThemeProposalplanet

(none stated)

> - Energy Interferences, by Jiri Jakub Masek: 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fc7ThemeProposalEnergyInterferences

'All of this universe is built on the energy interferences. The theme is 
based on a visualization how could these interferences look if we could 
see them in a *sub-subatomic* level.'

~m

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
[2] http://www.deviantart.com/