how about a Haiku banner that can be used placed on our personal websites?
Many of us have a website and wo could place such a banner with a link to http://haiku-os.org/.
So we need banners in different sizes.
If you like I could help you by creating such a banner with Photoshop.
But first we need to define a CI guideline for Haiku.
Also I would like to recommend to make a section on http://haiku-os.org where there are dozens of screenshots of Haiku. Many people, especially the young ones who are new to Haiku, are curious and like testing a new OS but first they look at screenshots.
The actual section with screenshots seems not to work or to be empty… I get the following error message when clicking on http://haiku-os.org/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=19:
"Database Error
An error has occurred while interacting with the database.
I think that banners for websites and images for signatures that all link back to the Haiku website (probably the about page so people know what Haiku is) is a fantastic idea!
Do we have any graphic designers around that are willing to build some of these images? I would be more than willing to make some webspace so that we have a single location that Haiku lovers could go to get a hold of the images and the HTML to put behind them.
The banner used on our ticket tracker has a white background and since it’s a .png file it could be resized. If that doesn’t look good we have the original vector files and more .pngs in our svn repository. I think you’ll need WonderBrush to open them. Anyway, it’s better to ask such questions on the mailing list because our developers don’t use the forums (sometimes this makes me wonder if we should have forums on our website, at all…).
Regarding the error on the screenshots page, did you try to reload (F5 or even CTRL+F5)? I tested it and everything works fine here.
The banner looks nice but the problem is, that many people do not know that Haiku is an OS.
I think that we should have some additional text in the banner… some information that
a) Haiku is an OS
b) It is free!
Also we could increase the motivation to place the banner on websites by using a counter.
Everybody should be able to register and get a personal ID.
This ID can be added to the link of the banner and the Haiku Webseite counts every visitor that used the link with the unique ID.
This way we can build a ranking and give titles to the webmasters.
It’s just for fun… but for some people it is an additional motivation to place banners.
Just look at the SETI@home project: the ranking system is one of the reason why it got so many members.
Yes, webspace with templates and images would be great.
That’s a good idea!
Templates (HTML) are really useful for people who are not so skilled in HTML or have no time to build one.
Let’s make detailed plans after we have some banners.
Although I have some knowledge about Photoshop, I am not a graphic designer, so I am not the best person to make some.
My skills are:
HTML, CSS, ASP, MS .NET (VB.Net), J2EE and JavaScript.
I had been working as a web developer for 2 years.
So I could help you with HTML/CSS templates, but we will also need a graphic designer for the banners.
Well, I don’t think you can change our banners without explicit permission. What you could do is ask on the mailing list to work on an official banner for Haiku fans.
About the ranking system: it might be nice, but I think that this should rather be part of a special community site, similar to spreadfirefox.com. Our front page would become too overloaded with those extra features and the only alternative would be to move it into the community section which would be too hidden for my taste.
I think you are mixing things up. What is being proposed here is the creation of additional artwork (banners, buttons, etc.) that people can use on their website/blogs/etc. to link back to the Haiku website, not the modification of the Haiku logo (not banner).
Banners/buttons are great tools to empower the community to exercise advocacy, which is a good thing so it should be encouraged. So, can you be more specific of what sort of permission is needed for this?
Well, I thought that the banners would look similar to our logo (since these would be basically “official” banners). Modifications of the logo would have to be agreed upon by the Haiku team, but regarding banners we haven’t thought about which rules we should have. I think that currently the best solution is to create a banner and ask for input on the mailing list. Sorry, I’m too busy to put more thought into this.
I guess I’ll have to post on the mailing list then as well. Since there has never been any (easily-found) official statements about the use of the Haiku logo and/or name that I can recall, we went ahead and used it for the Team Haiku site (http://www.teamhaiku.com) without specifically obtaining prior approval.
If something was publicized in the meantime, I probably missed it.
The “Team Haiku banner” (based on the Haiku logo) has been replicated on many distributed computing sites along with links to both teamhaiku.com as well as haiku-os.org usually in the same location.
I suppose it is time that Team Haiku officially asked for permission, and I will draft up an email to the list this evening if I can find the time.
The banners will obviously use the Haiku logo, but they are not modifications of the logo per se.
It would be a lot easier for those who would like to contribute with graphics if Haiku gave a bit more specific guidance as to what would be acceptable and what not, perhaps along the lines of some simple guidelines. This would be much more helpful than the overly general “it has to be agreed by the team” criteria that is highly subjective.
We can discuss this here. Later, I’ll send the proposal to the admins and we can have a vote on it (if necessary). Do you have any suggestions for banner rules?
I think it’s OK to use the unmodified logo and put it on some colored background (as long as that doesn’t resemble some other product) and also have a short text that is associated with a Haiku-related community (“TeamHaiku”, “Haiku Testers”, “Haiku Users”) and the logo should link to either the community or http://haiku-os.org
I’m not sure how we can prevent potentially bad use without disallowing almost all customizations.
It appears you’re talking about the previously-created “UserBars” which are often used for forum-posts.
I suspect the original poster was referring to web-banners/buttons to place on websites that demonstrate their support for Haiku. This would be similar to the “Get Firefox” style buttons/banners you see everywhere, and the images would normally be hosted on the Haiku website in those cases.
The difference is that these banners/images would be officially created Haiku images with linkage rules for email signatures, forum signatures, and website usage.
OK, well, that is much easier. All Haiku logos should link to http://haiku-os.org. If your only modification is the background color (gradients are OK, too) then you definitely won’t do anything illegal. It’s also fine to add “operating system” or “free operating system” below the Haiku logo. Feel free to create one, so we can create an official page with logos of different size. User/community banners would be nice, too, but for now we should only have official ones (“Haiku User”, “Haiku Tester”) until we create a set of rules for other communities’ banners. Please use the vector format files instead of scaling the .png files.
Thanks!
Did you use the vector version as a base or did you scale the .png files?
I think the last one looks best and nicely resembles our website logo, so I’d vote for using that. Of course, we could also need a little bit bigger logos like the ones in our SVN repo:
Black on white:
Black on transparent:
White on blue:
It could just be nice to have “operating system” or “free operating system” (if that still looks good) at the bottom.
[quote=wkornewald]
Did you use the vector version as a base or did you scale the .png files?[/quote]
Neither, they were designed from scratch (with the original as example, of course). I just wanted to see if the Haiku logo would fit into the standard chicklet (outer)size of 80x15 px and still look good enough. Esthete webmasters might find that only these kind of banners are acceptable to them, so this group should be catered for as well.
Maybe the logos can be found in the right size(s) on Haiku related pages elsewhere, ready to use.
Found this one on IlTuoSistema:
I’m not good at vectorized designs, hopefully others will help. If it’s a matter of resizing the original vector files in WonderBrush, that should be easy…especially to those who know how to extract them out of Berlios
Those 3 you posted are great - but I find it strange that the green leaf on the “Black on transparent” appears to have the shading different than the other two…
Those 3 you posted are great - but I find it strange that the green leaf on the “Black on transparent” appears to have the shading different than the other two…
Is it just my eyes playing tricks on me?[/quote]
I should mention that those logos were designed by Stephan Aßmus, not me. I simply linked to them, so others can see that we have something to start with. I agree that they look great, though.
Regarding the transparency…hmm, you’re right. I don’t know what’s different about that logo. Maybe we should stick with the blue one.
