[nighthawk]

I really like it although I would change the download button so that it doesn't just show ubuntu (I take it the one shown is just for an example).

[Manko10]

Matt-SD Wrote:It's just verdana with 0.2em spacing.

Far too much for running text.

freaktechnik Wrote:Maybe you could spread the gimp file, so we can try around with it, to play around with it, try other things etc.

I would strongly advise against this. You are welcome to create your own draft but we should rather not tweak other people's work. As a movie needs guide of a director, so does a design need a clear guide of a designer. If too many people edit on one draft they clutter it up. A better way is to present drafts and let people comment on it.

By the way, I've done a draft myself and will present it as soon as I have digitalized it (I won't show you the sketch for now).

[Matt-SD]

freaktechnik Wrote:Maybe you could spread the gimp file, so we can try around with it, to play around with it, try other things etc.

It's not a gimp file. It's actual HTML & CSS.

I'd rather save the time by writing the code as I design it rather than design once then code it again.

[Matt-SD]

  Nightingale Project » Home 2011-05-14 12-03-40.png (Size: 193.86 KB / Downloads: 347)

NOTE: The changes made here only affect the header bit. The bottom half has stayed EXACTLY the same, so just pretend it's there too.

I've made the logo & Nightingale text smaller. Now that I've done that I agree that it was a too big. I could still make the Nightingale text smaller again, but I think that'll take away from the impact of seeing it.

As Manko10 said, I've also removed the letter spacing. Which (again) looks better now that I've done it.

I've also taken out the glow in the background because it didn't look right with the navigation bar.

Quote:I really like it although I would change the download button so that it doesn't just show ubuntu (I take it the one shown is just for an example).

The download button will show different distro's logos (only the major distros though) & their appropriate download formats. I've used Ubuntu just as an example.

EDIT: I could make all the text into the same font as the Nightingale title. Or I could just make all titles that font (It's Ayita Pro).

[Manko10]

Quote:EDIT: I could make all the text into the same font as the Nightingale title. Or I could just make all titles that font (It's Ayita Pro).

No, Ayita Pro is not a good text body font. We could indeed use it just for the titles, but I'm not sure if that is a good idea. Anyways, the semi-bold style is the only free style of its family and it's only available as TrueType Font, no web font license. We would have to purchase one.
We could, however, still use another font for running text than boring and overused Verdana. I'll have a look at that.

[Matt-SD]

(05-14-2011, 07:02 PM)Manko10 Wrote: We could, however, still use another font for running text than boring and overused Verdana. I'll have a look at that.

For all titles I think we should use one with serifs because titles are large enough for them. Plus, they look nicer because of that.

[Manko10]

Quote:For all titles I think we should use one with serifs because titles are large enough for them. Plus, they look nicer because of that.

Not necessarily. If we use another font for titles, it must be for a reason. "It just looks nice" is not really one (could be but not necessarily). Good typography is very crucial but often neglected.
On refining-linux.org I use serif titles but that doesn't mean we have to use it everywhere. Serifs are not appropriate in all cases. It all depends on what you want to convey. I don't mean that we must not use serifs, but it should be a real design decision. The different fonts also have to work together.

[Manko10]

So, this is my draft. I've adapted the very basic ideas of Matt-SD and turned them into something completely different.
They reason why I decided not to use such a dark design is because the other drafts are drowning in black. Therefore I create a design which is much brighter, so now we have more contrast for a more pleasing visual experience. The increased contrast takes up the default user interface, which also consists of contrast between native and non-native elements (and bright and dark elements, depending on the user's GTK theme).

The two screenshots should be two different windows/views/themes/whatever. For now I have just used the default Black Copper theme and the more native alternative. We could change that as soon as we have implemented the theme so we can create real screen shots (which takes less time than creating them by hand ). I know, the perspective isn't quite right (used Firework's quick'n'dirty deform tool), but it's just for the sake of demonstration.

The gray boxes on the right need to be replaced by proper images, of course.

[Matt-SD]

I like that. It's clean, simple & it gets to the point. That's certainly better than my design.

All I can say is maybe a change to the "other platforms". Instead of the existing list, I think we should do something like this: Ubuntu 64-bit, Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian, More..

Other than that, it's great!

Quote:They reason why I decided not to use such a dark design is because the other drafts are drowning in black

I'm not a designer & the only successful color-scheming I can do is with dark colors. The existing design was done by a TERRIFIC designer (It was LIB53. Some may remember him)

[Manko10]

Quote:All I can say is maybe a change to the "other platforms". Instead of the existing list, I think we should do something like this: Ubuntu 64-bit, Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian, More..

The list is not fixed. I put Ubuntu 64-bit in there because der big download button only offers 32-bit and for the other distributions both, 64-bit and 32-bit are listed on the page where the link points to. I would suggest using one page for all, just with different anchors (e.g. like this download page for Miro: http://www.getmiro.com/download/all/ ).
Furthermore, I think we don't need Ubuntu AND Debian (we can proably put them together on the downloads page). The same applies to RHEL and Fedora for instance.