New logo guidelines and web design elements posted

[chasd at silveroaks.com]

> I may be a total inexperienced user and complete amateur when it comes
> to graphics design and color theory, but unless I'm terribly wrong,
> that's why the Pantone® color numbers are used, isn't it?,

Without going into a long discussion on color reproduction, there are 
some bad things about specifying a color via the PMS system. Simply 
put, PMS was designed to use the Pantone inks only, so if you use any 
other color space ( let's say some obscure ones like RGB or CMYK ), you 
won't get what you specified. ( I'm surprised several people jumped up 
and down about the free font issue, but no one mentions using a 
proprietary, single vendor color system ;) Anyway, the big difficulty 
is getting various output devices to reliably match a PMS color. Most 
companies that print stuff work very hard to get that right behind the 
scenes, it doesn't always come easy.

That said, PMS is considered a standard in the graphics/print industry, 
so using PMS to specify the colors is not really a wrong move. But it 
isn't a silver bullet that solves all color reproduction issues.

> I am using
> Inkscape, as I'm doing all in Linux with free software... One thing 
> odd,
> though... As you say, CMYK values are rather odd, however the
> hexadecimal values and the RGBA values DO correspond to those in the
> PDF.

The values reported by my version of Inkscape ( 0.43-3.fc5, PPC )

for PMS 2935
Hex :  0A57A4
RGB : R10, G87, B164
CMYK : C94, M47, Y0, K36

for PMS 541
Hex : 072B61
RGB : R6, G43, B97
CMYK : C93, M56, Y6, K62

I'd be interested if yours were different from these.
Those hex values above are what is in the SVG, but they don't match the 
usage guide hex values.

> I would assume there is a problem with CMYK support in Inkscape,
> which might be worth to report to the mailing list.

I mentioned this previously, the SVG spec doesn't support CMYK[1] or 
PMS, so Inkscape makes some guesses to convert to those color spaces. 
There is a way to save an SVG as an Inkscape-only SVG that maintains 
those values, but those values won't get used by another program that 
opens the file. Similar to the issue where Illustrator is able to get 
the colors right if it opens the SVG, but Inkscape can't.

> I have had some
> trouble manipulating the files in Inkscape (only tried with the 
> infinity
> symbol, though), but I had to resort to the XML editor to be able to
> select the different four elements of the drawing, when trying to 
> select
> with the mouse, only a grouped selection is possible..

There are two selection tools in Inkscape, you might have been using 
the one that doesn't let you select objects within a group. I didn't 
have a problem.

> I suppose this
> is what the original designer intended, and (compared to a "pure" SVG
> made with Inkscape),

Yes, mere mortals should really not be poking around within these 
files, as per the guidelines they shouldn't be modified. I opened them 
because I wanted to verify how the files would open and work in several 
different graphics programs.

> the file has two additional images (one in jpeg
> format

I believe that is a thumbnail used to preview files in the Adobe "Open 
File" dialog box. It's not useful for much else.

> and one in PGF [for whatever that is]) which I have been unable
> to export

Those are binary structures ( CDATA ) that are used instead of ( or in 
addition to ) the SVG when the file is re-opened in Illustrator.
If you use a text editor to cut out those entries, InkScape is still 
happy.

[1]
<http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/color.html>
" All SVG colors are specified in the sRGB color space "
ICC color profiles can be used to specify other color spaces.

Charles Dostale