Let's see...
I'll try my best to bite my tongue and offer some more concrete analysis in the following details:
- Complete and utter lack of artistic merit and or skill. The above could probably be recreated in less than thirty minutes without any care and attention to detail. What impression does such a reaction leave in an audience regarding the rest of the product?
- Complete and utter disregard for the fundamentals of classical composition. The trademarked and hideous earmark of amateur centre-punching once again prevails.
- Tepid and watered down palette. Is it trying to not be monochromatic? Evaluate your colour palette based on goals and deliver the palette. Hiding the tones in a wash of translucency obviously loses the tonal range and creates the elegance of mud.
- Complete avoidance of any emotional connection to anything. Is there a single voice imaginable that might be able to utter the words "I love it!" to this piece? What kind of response does one expect after Ashton's inspiring heron?
- Tibor Kalman once said "Good designers make trouble." If this piece's goal was to make a completely laughable irony out of Shuttleworth's striving toward an experience on par with OSX, it is certainly achieving it. That might be considered trouble...
- Own the awful choices. I'm a little tired of hearing 'This is just an experiment' or 'This is just a test.' This is just awfully myopic decision making coupled with completely inept execution.
- Lazy. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.
- Infuriating. How much money has been spent to arrive at this product? I say this because I can only think of some of the people I know who toiled for countless hours on a strictly volunteer basis to get to the stature they have today. What toil is reflected in this product? Is this money well spent?
15 comments:
nice, on par with kubuntu 8.04
http://i37.tinypic.com/2upxwy8.jpg
I find that wallpaper as well as that one from Kubuntu 8.04 very average and not really that easy for the eye, creating weird & annoying focuses.
Even windoze and mac offer better default wallpapers than that.
Go for something like the kde4 wallpaper package has to offer, really.
I agree wholeheartedly.. this thing is immensely disappointing. I do hope Shuttleworth et al heed the dissent and take some action, because frankly this effort is laughable.
And this when there are incredible thrown-together efforts on the Wiki, like the ones based on http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/114190/2009%20Dust/bare.png
Ok, i managed to properly read your whole post this time and i thought i was bragging/flaming.
To put it more better: What the fuck is that piece of shit? It's a fucking test for the color-blinded?
Bragging is really good in order to make good decisions and really push open source project quality forward ;-)
wow. I've really liked the default Ubuntu wallpapers almost every time.
This, though, is beyond painful. More like really really annoying.
@k:
Agree 100%.
@dread knight:
I didn't quite understand your last comment.
I would never be so bold as to censor people who are kind enough to comment on this blog, but I would hope that we could keep the language down in the midst of discussion. Sound fair?
On 'bragging', I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you mean practicing in open, I'll leave you with a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci:
I say and insist that drawing in company is much better than alone, for many reasons. The first is that you would be ashamed to be seen behind and among the students, and such shame will lead you to careful study. Secondly, a wholesome emulation will stimulate you to be among those who are more praised than yourself, and this praise of others will spur you on. Another is that you can learn from the drawings of others who do better than yourself; and if you are better than they, you can profit by your contempt for their defects, while the praise of others will incite you to farther merits.
@laurence:
Remember that Shuttleworth is the one who is directly responsible for every person around him.
On the other note, you aren't going to find a complaint out of me regarding Rico's work. He is one helluva talented artist. We need more of them.
Thanks once again to all of my loyal readers. You make all of it worthwhile, even when it is more or less a simple rant.
8 verbal lashes, shazzam!
Really nice write up Troy. What probably surprised me the most was that this wallpaper was never circulated on the artwork list.
Or perhaps I am really just more disappointed than surprised.
This is really unbelievable. Getting to this while there is indeed some good designs around like Rico's. Why isn't Canonical backing this guy up? From the recent communications, you would expect Canonical to at least understand the importance of looks, but with this thing, they are really going nowhere.
Is there a technical reason why the Dust theme is not being used? 'Cause Rico really deservers all the help he can get.
greens and purples overlayed on brown & orange - nice!!!! Reminds me of a shit I took this morning. Not even worth going into any further or serious critique.
Yes, this wallpaper sucks. There is no question about that. But it's not the only one that comes with Intrepid Ibex. There's actually a really awesome earthen Ibex wallpaper in there, you just have to change it. It's one of the built-in choices, and I personally love it. So yes, this one sucks, but there's an awesome one in there too.
I urge you to try the "Change Wallpaper" feature provided by most every desktop environment.
Ok, i managed to properly read your whole post this time and i thought i was bragging/flaming.
To put it more better: What the fuck is that piece of shit? It's a fucking test for the color-blinded?
Bragging is really good in order to make good decisions and really push open source project quality forward ;-)
Yes, this wallpaper sucks. There is no question about that. But it's not the only one that comes with Intrepid Ibex. There's actually a really awesome earthen Ibex wallpaper in there, you just have to change it. It's one of the built-in choices, and I personally love it. So yes, this one sucks, but there's an awesome one in there too.
@k:
Agree 100%.
@dread knight:
I didn't quite understand your last comment.
I would never be so bold as to censor people who are kind enough to comment on this blog, but I would hope that we could keep the language down in the midst of discussion. Sound fair?
On 'bragging', I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you mean practicing in open, I'll leave you with a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci:
I say and insist that drawing in company is much better than alone, for many reasons. The first is that you would be ashamed to be seen behind and among the students, and such shame will lead you to careful study. Secondly, a wholesome emulation will stimulate you to be among those who are more praised than yourself, and this praise of others will spur you on. Another is that you can learn from the drawings of others who do better than yourself; and if you are better than they, you can profit by your contempt for their defects, while the praise of others will incite you to farther merits.
@laurence:
Remember that Shuttleworth is the one who is directly responsible for every person around him.
On the other note, you aren't going to find a complaint out of me regarding Rico's work. He is one helluva talented artist. We need more of them.
Thanks once again to all of my loyal readers. You make all of it worthwhile, even when it is more or less a simple rant.
wow. I've really liked the default Ubuntu wallpapers almost every time.
This, though, is beyond painful. More like really really annoying.
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