51–60 of 251 posts
I often use icons with GNU or CC licenses, for example. If only I could find a site with website designs like I can for icons (iconfinder.com, findicons.com) that would be great! I'd get a professional designer to use the open source design as a base and just tweak it.
IMHO, designers don't usually feel any importance of open-source projects because most of them/us are used to things that are aesthetically pleasing, and they would not want to burst their/our bubble. If they we're given a choice between free Linux (assuming Adobe Suite works on it) or OSX, they would be getting OSX because it suits to their world, they would be even paying extra if it was to cost more. Also, they want something that just works and don't really care whether they can see or edit the source, since their coding experience usually ends with HTML and CSS, hence the apathy.
I've worked with quite a broad range of websites and the less control I had over my work, the less I enjoyed it. Solution? If you're able to find a designer for your project, make him feel special by taking him as an equal member of the team and give him full control of the design side (aesthetics). More so, let him start from the scratch. Although, arguing about functionality (UI and UX), which has logic in it, should be encouraged, you don't want to offend him by saying his designs look bad, because a criticism coming from a programmer is as bad as it gets. Coder's blogs are usually coloured dark blue or green, that tells a lot. That's also the reasons why most designers hate working for Google. One hour meetings whether a line should be 1 or 2px thick? If you don't really like what he is doing, ditch him.
VLC is a product, that is widely used, usable (not the mac version, though), but it is extremely ugly.
It is quite hard to get designers to help us (redesigning all the buttons for example) for quite many reasons. The biggest reason is that we don't speak the same language.
Many designers don't understand the criticism that usually comes around with each modification in open source project. Many developers don't understand how to speak to designers in a polite way (they think they speak normally, but it isn't perceived as such).
Also, many (not all of them) designers don't understand the difficulties of usability, and sometimes mistakes it with "shiny". Usability of a desktop application is way more complex than a website, and the current trend of "removing functionalities" is not always welcomed by developers...
However, I don't loose hope :D
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, version control definitely seems like one of the biggest gaps. The communication between developers and designers have to improve, and the developers will have to realize they can't ask every designer for commits, but they can probably ask them for .zip files.
On the other hand, maybe we should make designers want to use Git. This might be not as crazy as it sounds, as I recently learned: A few weeks ago, there was a short presentation about Git, targeted at non-programmers such as graphics and web designers. After the presentation, one of the designers (who apparently already knew about Git) stood up and criticized the presenter for not going deeper into branches and auto…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, version control definitely seems like one of the biggest gaps. The communication between developers and designers have to improve, and the developers will have to realize they can't ask every designer for commits, but they can probably ask them for .zip files.
On the other hand, maybe we should make designers want to use Git. This might be not as crazy as it sounds, as I recently learned: A few weeks ago, there was a short presentation about Git, targeted at non-programmers such as graphics and web designers. After the presentation, one of the designers (who apparently already knew about Git) stood up and criticized the presenter for not going deeper into branches and auto…
I use Git, and its a wonderful piece of software craft indeed, but it does not have Windows/Mac clients, that designers often use, as their base OS.
A decent usable frontend for Git, on platforms other than Linux too, needs to be developed, for it to be usable by designers.
Edit - I meant to say officially supported frontend and support for other oses by git.
My girlfriend tried to design an icon for an open-source app she uses, but the experience hasn't been really great. I think the way developers in open-source projects communicate doesn't really work with designers. She sent the photoshop source file and a png to the mailing list, but was told to send in a patch instead, which meant she had to learn how to use git to check out the repository, add the icon to the repo,…
> Finally, one of the developers imported the file into the GIMP, changed some stuff on the icon without discussion, botched the output and then added that to the project. Isn't that part of the "contract" of FOSS? You relinquish copyright of your contributions to the project as a whole. (I can see how this can bite designers who don't know much about the FOSS movement.) I suppose in this situation it's a good thing…
That's called 'Copyright assignment' assignment and is not the norm in FOSS. You usually have to release your work under a suitable open source copyright licence, but you still retain ownership of the code.
Most of the large corporate sponsors of open source require copyright assignment. Most small one-man-on-guthub projects don't.
1. Ask for help - I'm a designer that reads HN everyday and I wouldn't know where to look if I wanted to participate in an open source project. Is there a list? The problem is most OS software aside from GIMP/Inkscape doesn't make its way in front of designers often. 2. Make it discrete - What needs to be designed? The entire UI and workflows? The application icon? The internal navigation glyphs? Redesigning an entir…
Funny you mention GIMP, that's one OSS program that needs a UI refresh badly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, maybe we should make designers want to use Git. This might be not as crazy as it sounds, as I recently learned: A few weeks ago, there was a short presentation about Git, targeted at non-programmers such as graphics and web designers. After the presentation, one of the designers (who apparently already knew about Git) stood up and criticized the presenter for not going deeper into branches and auto…
> On the other hand, maybe we should make designers want to use Git. I use Git, and its a wonderful piece of software craft indeed, but it does not have Windows/Mac clients, that designers often use, as their base OS. A decent usable frontend for Git, on platforms other than Linux too, needs to be developed, for it to be usable by designers. Edit - I meant to say officially supported frontend and support for other os…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, maybe we should make designers want to use Git. This might be not as crazy as it sounds, as I recently learned: A few weeks ago, there was a short presentation about Git, targeted at non-programmers such as graphics and web designers. After the presentation, one of the designers (who apparently already knew about Git) stood up and criticized the presenter for not going deeper into branches and auto…
> On the other hand, maybe we should make designers want to use Git. I use Git, and its a wonderful piece of software craft indeed, but it does not have Windows/Mac clients, that designers often use, as their base OS. A decent usable frontend for Git, on platforms other than Linux too, needs to be developed, for it to be usable by designers. Edit - I meant to say officially supported frontend and support for other os…
Since the target group were designers, the presenter used a Mac, and tried to do everything using a GUI client for Git. I don't remember which one he used, but it ran natively on the Mac and it looked quite nice.
(Still, the presenter sometimes struggled with that GUI. He was obviously more used to the command line.)