Fedora 10 countdown banner

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi Paolo!

Paolo Leoni wrote:
> Nicu Buculei ha scritto:
> 
>> I would go for the second, as it is closer to what we used for the Beta.
>>
> 
> About the second banner, I propose a little variant:
> 
> http://pleoni.altervista.org/fedora10-countdown-banner_2b.svg
> http://pleoni.altervista.org/fedora10-countdown-banner_2b.png

I like this variant the best because it uses our new font
consistently. I don't think the other two designs do.

May I suggest a few changes?

- I think 'CAMBRIDGE' is a little hard to read because of a
combination of the thin font and the low contrast with the
background. I also think the text doesn't have enough
breathing space from the right and bottom edges of the
banner. What I would suggest is trying a solid white color
for the "Cambridge" and nudging the font maybe 5 pixels from
the right edge and maybe 5 -7 pixels from the bottom edge to
give it some breathing room. You may need to scale the font
down to give it that much space, but I think that's okay.

- I think I would use the normal version of MgOpen Modata
(maybe with a 1 - 2 px white stroke to give it a little bit
of a boost) just because I think the bold variant of Modata
is a little overly wide. We usually use the regular variant
of Modata with a 1-2 stroke boost in other banners/etc where
we use numbers.

- I would tighten the leading between "released" and "in".
In the text tool I think by default Inkscape sets the
leading to be 125%, I'd dial it down to 100% or 90%. It just
makes the words easier to read. Right now the "release" and
"in" are separated by enough space that it doesn't quite
look like they are part of the same phrase.

- I don't know if this would work, but I would try for
mockup purposes a horizontal split layout as well as this
vertical split layout. What I mean by this is try putting
the "Fedora 10 Cambridge" text to the top left of the
graphic, and run the "released in 20 days" text across the
bottom. We do have a bit of a pattern of running this kind
of text along the bottom of the banners as in this one:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:Artwork_PromoBanners_fedora9alpha-banner_mo.png
(the full library is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/PromoBanners#Promo_Banners)
so it may be worth a shot just to see what it looks like. I
know we've gone with the vertical split design for the
countdown banners for a while, but it might be nice to try
some consistency with the other banners we do.

Anyhow, I hope this feedback is helpful. I am really glad
that you took this work item on because we really need this
banner design. Thanks!

~m