"Stephan B. Wessels" swessels@one.net writes:
I agree with the sentiment that a sexy look is good marketing. I truly believe that. When a product is a pleasure to look at people want to know more about it. In the case of Smalltalk, after they hopefully see the lightness of the language and depth of the class hierarchy they will be hooked.
I am not just suggesting "squeak needs a new look", what I hold to be true is:
รถ Community growth
The community growth may be determined by two factors: the quality of squeak (as software) and marketing. The first factor is already at a high level, the second becomes significant. Since we do not pay bribes of any kind, marketing is somwhat limited to intellectual work such as art.
o Good art needs good artists
Designing a look (the artwork) is a job that should be done by professional (graphics) designers. You may replace "look" by "corporate design" to get the idea.
o No squeak graphics designers avaiable
The squeak community has excellent programmers and visioners but lacks designers. Therfore implementing a look is primarily seen as a programming challenge. The artwork is underephasized. Programming a look is difficult if you don't know what the outcome should be like.
o Open source art
The basic ideas of open source can be extended to include non programming tasks, such as designing a look.
o Themes are too much
Themes are a programming challenge. Themes are not needed for what I suggest here. You don't do that with corporate designs. You can change the look every couple of years to make a new version visually obvious.
Windows doesn't have themes and they are in a position where they could replace raised popups by flat popups and sell this as a new version. Linux has themes but it didn't help much on the desktop. Java/Swing has themes.
o License to attract artists
Someone (me ?) has to go and find some artists who are willing to make this kind of contribution. This person would have to speak in the name of the squak community. There is a common understanding on how to contribute software to squeak. There is no such understanding on how to contribute art. It is not even clear if art contributions are welcome.
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