Hi Niels, Niels Reedijk wrote:
Coincidentally that was one of the conclusions of my BeGeistert speech. The phrase 'strong brand identity' reminds me of the recurring problem in this project, the fact that there apparently is the sense that things should run like a business. The origin is in fact in the start of the project, as Michael Phipps once explained, the project was being organized in teams to resemble a business. You can see this morale running through the project up to today, where there seems to be a certain fear from developers, especially the more active ones, that Haiku is not ready to be released. This is, of course, according to business criteria. (Let us at this point ignore the large amounts of crap every IT business seems to release every now and then). Well, this project is not a business. In fact, Haiku is not at all a critical piece of software for anyone (except the core developers, but they can take care of themselves). Now the critique of the release schedule, and the standards for the release, are for a later discussion. But if we acknowledge that we are not a business, and we do not have to adhere to those standards, I think we can accept a certain element of playfulness. After all, that is what makes things fun and invites people to join in and experiment with us.
We all know that Haiku is a volunteer project and not a business. There is, however, no basis for assuming that the pursue of a strong brand will make the project any more or less business-like than, say, sticking to strict compliance of the coding guidelines. Let me explain.
Many times I have felt that Haiku's strict stance in coding guidelines compliance is somewhat obsessive and even counterproductive (please, Haiku devs, take no offense; I am just trying to make a point). But this view of mine is probably flawed and formed in a cloud of utter ignorance, simply because I am not a software engineer and I don't fully understand the ramifications.
I believe the topic of branding poses an analogous situation. This is a topic that many here don't really understand, so they see it more like an unnecessary nuisance, and they don't care about it because they don't understand its value.
The point that I am trying to get is this: complying to or enforcing something for a greater good -- be it a brand identity or coding guidelines -- has nothing to do with being or becoming more or less business like, and it is more a matter of whether the people involved understand such things and consider them necessary or not.
Since the project is composed mostly of developers and tech-oriented geeks, this situation is totally understandable. I just wish that, when it came to topics other than software development, people here would have a more open mind to listen to those of us non-techies who have experience and know a bit about these things. Again, this is an expression of wish, not an attempted imposition.
So in that sense, the 'brand identity' is not the most important factor. And who is to say we cannot have a playful brand? After all, everybody has been so busy waiting for the code to finally become the stable holy grail we call R1, that we forgot the myriad of things that can be played with around that code. After all, that is also one of the things you have been doing, and with success.
Yes, I have been playful in the past, but always without breaking the existing visual identity of the moment.
I considered R1A1 the turning point for establishing a long term visual identity for Haiku R1, and all the work that I have been doing since then with the feedback of the community (website theme, CD, flier, stickers, HUG theme, etc.) has been to that end.
For me at least, the time for experimentation is over and all my work from now on will focus on reinforcing the visual identity that I have built so far, so that by the time R1 hits the streets we have a full array of consistent promo material that the community can use for advocacy purposes.
I don't expect everyone to like or understand what I am doing, but that's what I have to offer. As I said, if somebody comes along and does better or something more attune with what most people here would want, that's fine with me. But until that happens, I will just keep chugging along. :)
Cheers, -- Jorge/aka Koki Website: http://haikuzone.net RSS: http://haikuzone.net/rss.xml
