Freedom Fundamentalism

More on Audience

Language takes extremely specific meaning within the confines of a given culture. I recently had a chat with a German friend about the subtleties of ideal versus idealist. It came down to a discussion with the idea that in North America, idealist brings a slightly negative connotation along with it, where ideal has a slight twinge of strength associated.

It is subtle, and yet speaks loudly to the notion of audience in design. In this case, it is the design of communication language.

Is it Fundamentalist?

The great debate goes something like this:

Person A believes that the Free in Free Software means pure freedom. The freedom to do anything - including running and supporting proprietary software.

Person B believes that the Free in Free Software should come with some constraints and that the protection / enshrinement of the Free should take precedence over the freedom to do everything.

Person A is often viewed as pragmatic and Person B is quietly dismissed as fundamentalist. Simple. Positive and negative. Yin and yang. Right?

A Note on Free Cultures

In most Free cultures, we live by a strict set of laws and government. We give up certain rights and freedoms in the name of a line in the sand that is loosely the 'greater good'. If you break those rules, you give up even more rights and freedoms.

How can freedom be destructive? Can freedom erode freedom somehow?

In such a culture, one isn't free, for example, to engage in activities that are seen as being destructive to the greater whole or others. Of course this is a floating benchmark. The bar moves, and the culture shifts. Smoking, drinking, and drug use are obvious examples here. Hate speech and such is another constantly evolving and shifting discourse.

At the core though, is the idea that certain freedoms are suspended in the free culture.

Closing with Language

So, with the above scenario of Person A and Person B, and the positive bias of pragmatic versus fundamentalist, we see an interesting discussion evolve.

Those that support absolute freedom are seen as logical and pragmatic while those that are supporting a restricted view of freedom are seen as fundamentalist. That is the language that is peddled by many in Libre culture, so it seems fitting to apply it, no?

I ask you, however, is that a clear view on how our culture runs?

Is someone that pushes forth the idea that an absolutist freedom is a destructive one a fundamentalist?

Who is the absolutist fundamentalist and who is actually pragmatic?

Something Strange...

Whilst digging through some of my now deceased grandfather's photography, I stumbled across this specimen.

I will be the first to tell you it bears a striking resemblance to myself. It is still a tad worrying...

Against Imitation

Context is Everything

It seems there is no shortage of opinion on window decorations. Every high-school self-labeled artist-cum-designer seems to have crawled out of the woodwork and started citing laws and theorems attempting to justify or invalidate the design decision.

I'd like to avoid that pursuit and talk about design as language.

What is it Saying?

To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master. -- Milton Glaser

If you study art and design for any length of time, you realize very quickly that Mr. Glaser was ridiculously accurate with his estimation. Art and design is language. Art and design storms its way into the future by embracing or usurping the established grammar of the past. It has a cultural nomenclature and code buried beneath the simplicity of image. The roots run deeply into culture and history.

To the outside mainstream world, Libre culture appears mired in a two dimensional world where X is defined by Microsoft and Y is defined by Apple. Why shouldn't it? To a sizable majority, only those two Axis exist...

Borrow or Steal?

I'll be so bold as to say that the visceral connotation with imitation is a negative one. Whether it is dressing up like a pop culture starlet or imitating sylistic techniques stroke for stroke, the outcome seems to reflect back upon the individual. In most circumstances, the result looks nothing more than confused insecurity.

Often wrongfully accredited to Picasso, I'd like you to read the full quotation so that you can read very clearly what was implied when T. S. Eliot said the often misquoted and warped principle:

One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. - T. S. Eliot Essays on Poetry and Criticism

Should We?

In light of the above T. S. Eliot quote, I ask you if you still think it is quite acceptable to imitate?

In terms of Libre culture's context, we cannot help but acknowledge the two other "artists" in the room. They are living right alongside of us.

So when we design things, we should be well aware that the language we choose to use is being used by others around us. It isn't a design question, it is a communication question.

Imitation is profoundly negative in its own right. Imitation of a company that is in direct opposition to the goals of Free Software is mockery. And while it may sound utterly ridiculous and radical to suggest that we knowingly steer away from accepted patterns of design, I would suggest that more than a few movements in the past had a language of design that accompanied the context.[1]

Art and design is language. What are we saying? Where is our voice?

[1] I was originally of the mind that the Aubergine tone anchoring the new Ubuntu palette wasn't imitation unto itself, I am now leaning toward the suggestion that the combined culmination of the parts seems to be painting a larger picture of imitation. It isn't a single item, but rather the entire mise-en-scene.

Only A Passing Interest

Is There Something Written There That We Can't See?

Another deluge of fickle internet attention has passed, our cultural tendency to not care about art and design was lifted briefly, and we are free to go about chatting in the little coffee shop here. In addition to trying to finish up a little project, I thought I would attempt to tackle some of the criticism / attacks out there on the last post. I'm a big boy. I make no claims to being correct. I get plenty of things wrong plenty of the time.

We have a pretty good pattern in our culture about dealing with comments. Either you play by a certain set of rules or get labeled a troll and discarded etc. My belief however, is that somewhere in that simple comment that someone posts, there might be something worth learning.

I'll predicate the discussion with a few of my most firm beliefs:

• If you label someone as a derogatory term (EG "troll"), you are effectively dismissing them and, regardless of what they said, you are discarding a potentially valuable insight.
• If we stick everything on a polemical scale of YES / NO or +1 / -1, we oversimplify the situation and make no significant cultural gain or understanding.
• General commentary might be seen as a pretty good averaging of cultural understanding. Biased obviously towards those that are willing to comment.
• The most important thing, I believe, is to acknowledge that there is a real live human behind every comment. A sophisticated and intelligent distillation of many thousands of years of evolution. Is a comment a minor transgression or a culmination of that person's being? Was there a reason for the act at that moment? Have you or I ever done the exact same thing? Did we view our reasons as different?

On that note, let's dive into a selection of comments that I found quite insightful.

Commentary Examined

Why does he think his colours work for his site and Ubuntu's doesn't?

Anyway, it seems that a lot of these bloggers agree on certain key points, why don't a group of them (if they're willing to write so much about it) get together and hash one out? It would be a good way to give back to the open community.- jasonhaley

First, I don't believe I took an issue with the color palette of the new Ubuntu identity. From what I can see, I see two legs of a potential triad. This is a huge step forward from monochrome. I'd love to see the third leg rolled into the presentation, or at the very least, see what happens if we do. It doesn't seem too far off of Mr. Shuttleworth's three pillar approach either.

With regard to my site versus Ubuntu, well, that's me. It is my own little thing. I don't syndicate or publicize this blog. I prefer to let people that are interested find things they are interested in on their own, rather than having things thrust upon people that have no interest to read it. That said, I've been wanting to change the looks of the blog for a long while, and gear it more to be strictly content oriented. With the growing numbers of readers, I suppose I should have done that sooner. Apologies, and your point is acknowledged.

I think that the idea of hashing something out is entirely the hope of all of this. Maybe if we can discuss the merits of a direction based on goals and not random IZUGLY / ZOMGAWESOME, maybe we can get to a culture that sees the value in unique directions for different reasons. That culture is taking a while to build. I think we are getting there though. Heck the fact that this blog posting got any attention at all might be a testament to that.

It's nearly unreadable. Whoever thinks pumpkin orange, magenta, lavender and vomit green should be used -- together! -- for text on a dark brown background, should not be doing usability reviews. - grignr

Again, this is purely a personal little area, as stated above. I honestly never really intended for more than but a handful of people to ever even click here.

Unfortunately, I fear that I may have totally misworded my blog posting if you thought it was about usability. It was intended to be about art, design, and aesthetics. I tend to side with Mark Boulton's belief on usability that if you "Look after the design [...] the usability will take care of itself." But alas, that is another discussion entirely.

It's nice how he believes his interpretation is objective. - eleitl

Oops. Again my bad. I in fact intended for it to entirely be a judgement piece. See, my view on art, design, aesthetics, experience and such is that you are hiring / paying / requesting someone's involvement purely for that judgement and opinion. It is why I value the amazing photography of Claudio Miranda or the phenomenal and heroic work of Matt Mahurin[1]. I don't want objectivity, I want to see the world through the eyes of talented visionaries.

What I do believe however, is that we are able to analyze art, design, presence, aesthetics, and such with an analytical eye. What are the goals? What is the communication? Who are we trying to speak to? In that light, I do firmly believe we can look at the execution and compare it against those constraints. Objective? Likely not. Then again, I am not entirely sure we can ever see things in a Platonic sense. Is it more productive than random conjecture? A resounding yes. This is what art and design study is entirely about - analyzing the work in context. Fair?

That guy might be a what in some cultures is called "a douche".
EDIT: What the f*ck does this even mean: "Publishing grid with a little bending of the rules. Predictable application as well touches on the Reliability tenet. Collaboration and such will implicitly be there by the featured Dents / Tweets / Blog / etc. Positive." - zecg

Apologies again. Through the strange machinations of the web, I have actually had the pleasure of meeting a pretty solid core of people. Those are the people that read this blog. I suppose to many in the outside world, I am just a douche. Granted. I also have extremely little insight into how all of this translates across so many different cultures. I learned full well that poking a joke at "Y'all" has offended some people, where it was a rather careless wording of language in an attempt to draw an analogy to a particular cliche. Point is, I can only control a certain degree of that, and gear this work to the audience at hand. I can certainly acknowledge that I should have explained myself better in areas. "Y'all" was one of them that I addressed in the comments. Your questions though, are equally valid however.

Bear in mind that you get about 10 seconds to have people read things. I can't change that. I tried to be point form specific for the people that read this blog. In order:

1. "Publishing grid with a little bending of the rules. Predictable application as well touches on the Reliability tenet. " Publishing grids are found all over print media. This is a sign that the person creating the work has understanding of that and is a positive indicator. Compare against the work that came before, and you can see the earmarks of skill with regard to the new site design. Again this is extremely positive. It shows talent and care. I'll applaud that any day. The reference to a predictability works well with one of the goals of the project - Reliability - as you can use a grid and create a sense of variation as well. Again I'd say that when a design touches on the goals, it's fantastic. Caveat of course is that it ultimately depends on the context of the audience.
2. "Collaboration and such will implicitly be there by the featured Dents / Tweets / Blog / etc." It's a bigger question here. How do we communicate the goals through the website's design? Collaboration is a damn tricky one. I'm not sure that there isn't a very interesting way to create that sense through the actual layout of the site design. That would remain an open design question that might have a solution. The obvious manner to highlight some degree of collaboration is to syndicate the Dents, Tweets, and Blog postings of the community that is collaborating on the project.

I hope that helps to clear things up.

I am afraid he just seemed to make up excuses for not liking it. I am currently using the theme right now and its a vast improvement over the previous brown. I will admit it could be better and will probably go back to shiki-colors, but I like the direction in which its moving. - flaarg

The posting was an attempt to analyze the merits of the design work in light of the declared goals. We never have had goals before in Ubuntu proper, and so this was a good chance to look at those goals. If I had to boil down my opinions to a single WANT / DONOTWANT, I'd hope that you see I am in favour of risk and change. I am in favour of the basis that is being laid.

There are bigger worries for me. Are we as a culture maturing enough to really hone in on an particular audience and deliver an exceptional experience to them? Are we willing to discuss the merits of one design decision over another based on goals and the audience? Are we willing to accept that things may be completely distasteful to one audience and be extremely compelling for another?

So I guess in short, I tried to examine if there was any direction at all or if it was a random board position from chess? If there is a direction, is there room where the execution or delivery could be more optimized? Are there inherent and low lying issues that are addressed or are we totally blinded by the change? How does it look to someone outside of the Libre culture and why? Extremely tough and challenging questions, I will agree.

he lost me when he started talking about western-centricity, i'm afraid. that's just grasping at straws in this context; the aesthetic of the computer desktop is western-centric by its sheer history, and other cultures have used that look and feel as a baseline even where they've blended it with their own thematic elements. the two articles he linked to in his introduction are a lot better. - zem

Zem, I don't know what to say other than you absolutely nailed it.I agree 110% with you. The desktop is Western centric I suspect. That worries me. I can't help but imagine how the forced solutions are to someone's world that revolves around Mandarin, for example. Are there areas where this likely causes issues in some other cultures? As an estimation, I'd likely say hell yes. And how much are those cultures excluded by traditional proprietary operating system things that we take for granted? Is there not a monumental chance for us in Libre culture to address those needs on a case by case basis? How much of a sincere strength is that when viewed in light of the proprietary and closed offerings? If you haven't read it, please see Marco Van Hout's illuminating piece on the myth of Global Culture.

What I am not entirely certain of is your belief that the melting pot is working. Maybe it is. My visceral reaction is that it isn't. And worse, the nature of exclusion is that you never really ever hear exactly how exclusion is working because the people that can tell you are excluded entirely.

I ask you though, what system to you believe is more capable of delivering that a compelling and experiential oriented computing system to that diversity of culture? Is it the proprietary and limited system or the Libre approach? If your answer is Libre, why aren't we more effective at dealing with it and instead justify our failures to address that diversity by comparing against the two big companies?

That discussion extends well past culture too, right into accessibility needs and requirements as well as industry specific deliveries. Yet another topic of course...

And yes, Jay's and Rich's posts are far better. I'd agree.

I like green.- PostMonkeh

I don't want to pretend to put words into someone's mouth, but what is stated here is a rather archetypal response. In summary, I can see "Well all art and design is subjective. DUH."

And yes. It is. It operates on the singular. It operates on the emotional.

That said, attempting to dismiss the fact that there are people that study it and practise it and analyse the context is difficult to avoid. Why do you look at composition the way you do? What is 'good'? Wasn't Disco good? Then it wasn't? Now it is again? Why? What the heck does a soup can have to do with capital A art? In reality, when you study art / design / etc. you learn very quickly that the language of art and design is constantly evolving in response to the context. It evolves out of response to the culture. It evolves and weaves with history.

In short, while I don't really accept the absolutism implied in Andy Rutledge's excellent article, it nails the general point - design and art are language.

Lastly, there was one comment which has since been deleted. It was something along the lines of:

That is one Pepsi generation explanation. - unknown

Apologies if I mangled the quote.

This last one is the one that perhaps is the most frustrating to me. Not because someone said it, but rather because I truly believe it is not entirely what our culture believes. Dismiss me with it, but please don't dismiss the core of the idea.

I'd like to think that Libre culture has some of the brightest and most intelligent people alive. They not only understand the importance of computing but they also understand clearly its role in our society and why, fundamentally, that that role shouldn't be governed and bound by some corporation.

The problem here is though, that it cuts to the bone of analysis. Should we analyze kernel drivers? Should we scrutinize how the scheduler works in the kernel? Should we evaluate how xxx works in context yyy?

I would hope that you believe the answer is "Heck yes!" to those scenarios. Now ask yourself if you would hold the same degree of scrutiny to the art, design, presence, and experience side of this equation? Do you want people dealing specifically with the issues or do you want glassy thin voting UP / DOWN? Do you want our culture to evolve past where we seem to have been stuck regarding those matters for how long? Do you want our choices to be justified and reasonable to the outsiders that will no doubt tear it to shreds and analyze it with the scrutiny that it deserves?

I don't want to create the illusion that I'm for the waffly bullsh*t-baffles-brains approach that take us down the waffly path that Pepsi took. To be fair though, I don't think anyone can appreciate how much duress that poor design team was under completely redoing the look for a soft drink bastion. That's billions of dollars that you need to justify somehow. Not agreeing with it, but I can surely see the ridiculous pressure there.

So with that, I'll end another ridiculously long blog post. Sorry for those people that need it all boiled down into three words. I'll never be able to do that.

Once again, I thank you all for reading. I'd say there are a lot of good signs that we have evolved tremendously in only a few years. We have a lot of ground to cover still though. If I had to leave you with one request, it would be that we don't try to distill things down to a Digg system, as it grossly oversimplifies the complexities.

I am but the sum of your clicks...

[1] If I had to pick one single individual that has influenced me more, I could do no worse than to cite Matt Mahurin. Long before I really studied photography, his work was impacting my brain. Long before I went onto University to study fine arts, his work was a reference. You may not know who he is. You may know his work. Enough said.

Ubuntu Brand Identity in Context

Uh Oh, Again?

Two reviews are largely responsible for this reaction post. If you haven't read them, I encourage you to check out:

• Jay's analysis of the execution. There is nothing more insightful than reading a piece and saying "Good point. I should have examined that a little more closely."
• Richard Querin's insights. Grounded in logic and largely about the relationship between the higher level goals set forth in the identity page in relationship to the execution.

As a result, I thought I'd dig a little deeper than I did recently into what might be there to be seen.

When you are dying of thirst in a desert, a cup of water seems like the best thing in the world. That said, a small cup of water doesn't get you out of the desert or even close to the salvation that so many it seems are pouring out.

How much of the identity campaign response is truly different than what we had before? How much of it is an outpouring of relief (albeit entirely foolish) that the brown is gone? Where are the deeper veins of change?

The Tenets

First, we have a vocalizing of the brand identity tenets. This is a positive step in the right direction. They are defined as follows:

1. Precision
2. Reliability
3. Collaboration
4. Freedom

MERIT: +1

The Thematic Anchor

Light. "Visually light is beautiful, light is ethereal, light brings clarity and comfort."

Light also brings a plethora of other things to the table, not all positive. I'll assume that the goal of the thematic is to deliver that on the desktop.

MERIT: +1

Who?

Yep. You guessed it. Not there.

Hard to really guess who this is going to deliver the above goals to. We don't even have a ballpark demographic or culture. Well, let's be ethnocentric then and call it Westernized Culture shall we, as when you talk about light, it means some pretty radically different things in different cultures. Apparently they don't care about that.

New challenges for companies that aren't the old dogs should be navigated, not avoided.

MERIT: -2 (Additional demerit for the glaring hole of othering gets bonus points here)

Ubuntu Logo / Wordmark In Context

I'll stand by my evaluation that the typeface is vastly superior merely via addition by subtraction. Yes the older version is that bad. It spattered everything and everyone with a hideous sense that people who use Ubuntu also say things like "Y'all" and muck about with straw hats on our heads. It is that poorly executed.

This typeface is far superior. Does it meet the design goals, however? Again, because we fail to talk about contextual references of the audience, I can only make the grotesque assumption that everyone is supposed to view it through the eyes of a Westernized / European context.

• Lowercase entry letter. Nicely restrained. Touches nicely on Light thematic. Positive.
• Modulated medium to thin strokes. Again touches nicely on Light thematic. Positive.
• Arty farty sharpness touches on the Precision tenet. Positive.
• Pimple wart of the CoF reeks of afterthought. Negative.
• Non absolute black dark tone helps the Light. Positive.
• Good counter and bowls feel pretty airy. Works with Freedom and Light. Positive.
• Head nod to the older CoF speaks of history and therefore Reliability. Positive.
• In contrast to what came before purely on type? Resoundingly Positive.

MERIT: +2 (Bonus merit for banishing that old nightmare face)

The Boot Splash

• Compositionally stronger than traditional vertical centre punching. Close enough with the centre of gravity to hit Westernized composition via Phi. Positive.
• Dark aubergine looks completely acceptable in this look, but does it work to the aesthetic visual anchor of Light? Doesn't need to be on point with a literal light == light work, so I'll give it the benefit of a doubt. Positive.
• Lean sparseness is a rather brutal literal reading of Light, but it still works. Positive.
• Wart pimple looks even more out of place here. That wordmark emblem combination is now going to be around a long time given history. Negative.
• In contrast to the nasty Karmic mess before? Positive.

MERIT: +1

Desktop

• Herein lies the biggest oopsie. This is a gongshow, and rightfully so as the whole point of establishing the design team is to work away from the gongshow. We can't fault the work entirely for this, as they have a long history of neglect and cluster to work out of. Neutral.
• Window decoration. Read Jay's post for a pretty good examination. It's awful. It doesn't touch on a tenet and it doesn't help push the aesthetic goal of Westernized Light. Negative.
• Icons. Handed down. Outline outline outline outline. Can't fault them. Neutral.
• Interface / GTK. Nasty. Can't fault them. Neutral.
• Wallpaper. Uninspired and seriously lacking. A blur on a blob of a blur. Poorly executed. Completely emotionally bankrupt. No audience. Weak. Symptomatic. Negative.
• Type selection. Discuss it. Think about it. Bringhurst and Tschichold are all about giving the type meaning. Bringhurst discusses choosing type for a project based on the type's lineage. None of that is here. Nothing. Empty. Vacuous. Negative.
• What is the context of this desktop? There are two others. A few glaring similarities should be out of bounds purely based on the context. Good idea for them, but we can't go there, especially when we consider what that other system stands for. Propagates more of the same negative connotations with imitation. A different company / mindshare might be able to get away with it. Linux can't. Don't quote Picasso on me unless you know what the hell he meant. Negative.

MERIT: -2 (Extra demerit for even showcasing this mess)

The Website Redesign

• Publishing grid with a little bending of the rules. Predictable application as well touches on the Reliability tenet. Collaboration and such will implicitly be there by the featured Dents / Tweets / Blog / etc. Positive.
• Light overall tone is easy to pull toward Light. Positive.
• Good sprinkling of the loose palette. Positive.
• Nasty plastic machine. Negative.
• Quirky icons for levity pushes toward Light. Positive.
• In contrast to what came before? Resoundingly Positive.

MERIT: +2 (Extra merit for the execution)

Summary

Again, I'd like to say that I believe one of Ubuntu's strongest facets was the idea that there was a connection to humanity implied. It was never executed. Throwing that out may leave them more open to the idea that it is Yet Another Operating System Computer Rubbish.

MERIT TOTAL: +1 ( +6 / -5 )

The positives of actually attempting change should be applauded. I'll stand by that.

That change must also be cautiously tempered with the realization that simply changing a colour palette won't do anything. Change for the sake of changing, logo wordmark aside, is generally not terribly productive.

This is about context. You can get no clear picture of where Ubuntu is going without considering where it is coming from. While much of the picture is equally bleak, there is room for hope in that we are actually seeing attempts at change and experimentation.

One can't evaluate a position on the chess board without examining what came before. Did the player randomly play his move and end up there? What is the process of their evaluation of the board? Does her move have a longstanding history of deep evaluation and thought enough for you to trust her move? Those answers will likely give you some hint as to whether the game will result in success or failure.

We can't expect success 100% of the time or else we handcuff everyone. We need to be a culture that respects innovation and creativity. The new identity campaign isn't entirely risky, but it isn't entirely easy to pull off either.

The creative and the innovative come at a price. That price is risk.

Ubuntu Brand Identity

This post is a quick update thanks to the colossal amount of visits, email, and poking people have been giving me. Why the hell people are asking me to comment is beyond me, but I'll give it my best kick at the can.

Unless you have been living under a rock, Ubuntu has a new brand identity campaign going.[1]

The New Logo

• I'll say that the wordmark is far superior to the old homebrew amateur hack mess. I won't even reference it. The type has a sense of craftsmanship to it, largely due to simply abiding by classical typography rules - not the nasty unmodulated strokes we have come to see everywhere. I sincerely hope the designer didn't borrow too heavily from an existing typeface or the wrath of imitation shall fall upon them. Huge progression away from the old worthless typeface.
• The CoF feels like an add on and poorly thought out. It feels like "Well we are stuck with this so let's put it here." The dot seems to pull the centre of gravity off to the right. I can't say there is an easy solution other than that perhaps Canonical should have employed the extremely talented David Airey to bring his talent to it. If anyone could have made the CoF work with the type, it is him.
  

The Boot Splash

• Solid composition. The centre punching madness is gone on the vertical axis.
• Gravity feels slightly odd, but that is a byproduct of the pill dot CoF emblem I suspect. The palette is likely set, but if forced with it, it may work better with less value to pull some gravity back to the wordmark.
  
• Huge improvement over the eyesore of nastiness known as our current Karmic boot screen. Monumental improvement. When you can't do well, do less, and the Karmic boot did not do well.
  

The Desktop

• Sad to see brown gone. It never had a proper kick at the can, and this desktop is slightly symptomatic. Mauve is chic currently, though, so no huge loss there. Feels like it is really trying desperately to lean toward the good old Canadian kid James White though. Love to see the complimentary tones of the palette creep into it somewhere.
  
• Uninspired blandness in tone. Yet more of the "let's make it neutral for everyone." Here's a thought, how about we make it an emotional experience by thwarting the blandness of gradient hell? A move to an emotional experience is predicated on something that speaks something more than watered down gradients. While it pulls slightly away from the Ubuntufication of art, it needs to pull a heck of a lot harder. Varied palette alone cannot do it.
  
• The window decorations are nothing short of nasty. Has some uninspired usability stamped all over it.
• Consistent palette for the win for a harmonious transition from the splash screen. Let's see those colour compliments ebb in.
  
• Jay over at KiloBitsPerSecond has done a tremendous highlighting of the substandard execution in the desktop itself. Highly recommended reading.

Other Deliverables

• The Swiss 'Big Idea' approach is fantastic, and a fitting quote selected. A non-monochromatic palette is allowed to show its strength here.
• The CD packaging is still in a mock stage. The cover is yet more of the same ghastly photography whatever mehness of old. The interior image of the computer is equally worthless. Nothing speaks a new regime of quality like the old regime of stock photography. Again, commit dammit. Commit.
  
• Typesetting is leagues better than the past incarnations. A publishing grid goes a long way.
  

The New Site

• By far the most impressive visual overhaul for Ubuntu proper.
• Excellent publishing grid work and a real craftsmanship of design.
• Same shoddy weakness in photography. Enough with the crap photography and absolutely stock photo plastic rubbishy computer bits already.
• Lovely site layout and consideration to typography. Best improvement on the whole.

Summary

So where does this leave us?

I'd make a pretty clear vote of support for the changes.

The step away from absolute hobby level typography is a massive plus one. The logo is an overall improvement, but still has the earmark of someone ill-equipped with an I-can-do-that-too attitude. Likely involving someone that specialises in logo work might have been better. Still, a massive improvement on the whole.

The new website, hideous plastic wet floor photography notwithstanding, is extremely tight. This can only be more pronounced when you compare it to the existing look. Fantastic work on that front.

The desktop is still showing growing pains. While I applaud the choice of a non-monochromatic implementation of colour, the real difficulty of "Just what the hell should we do" is still there. The window decoration is brutal in composition / padding / etc., and the flipping of a side will no doubt draw the justified criticism of OSX similarity. The palette on the window decorations also shows a clear disregard for the new scheme. The bold titlebar type and padding! padding! padding! everywhere needs attention as well, and leans still slightly to the heavier and clunky feeling that people have come to accept from Free Software. The oncoming GNOME 3 theme mocks look to have more of that absolutely hideous approach.

I should stress that at no point do I want to create the idea that this is easy work. The team has made colossal steps forward, and deserve a full applause for achieving even that. To the outside world, we only see the fruits of that labour. On the inside however, I imagine there was an incredible battle to get even to where we see in the new brand identity work.

So for this day, I would have to say given the history and trending in all of Free Software, the Ubuntu work deserves full accolades. There is still obviously much work to be done, but at least we can see signs that the old regime is loosening its iron fist.

Thanks to everyone for the email, comments, IRC chitter chatter, and such. I am still shocked that anyone gives a flying rat's ass about what I have to say. Onward...

[1] Identity. A designer can design an identity campaign. They cannot design a brand. The brand is what an audience gives back.