[OSM-talk] new logo

[Frederik Ramm]

Steve,

SteveC wrote:
> He's just pointing out what I did a few months back - the design,
> usability and aesthetic of OSM is a big mess.
> 
> My vote is that we just put him in charge of fixing it

You want someone to fix the OSM design and usability whose main area of 
competence seems to be making aesthetically pleasing logos? Who would 
not hesitate to use a logo for OSM that suggests to the world that the 
essence of OSM is collecting POIs, just because it works better as a 
logo (and perhaps because he couldn't be bothered to find out exactly 
what OSM is about)?

> He doesn't know he has to be friends
> with Tom to get something deployed, he doesn't know he'll have to
> fight Matt being defensive about his logo, he doesn't know all the
> political shit that is getting in the way of moving forward in a
> meaningful way.

Oh right, and the proper way to deal with a situation like this is to 
install a "czar" so that in the future, anyone who wants to get 
something going does not only have to jump through all the hoops you 
mention but *additionally* has to be friends with the design czar?

> If he did know all this, I suspect he would go and do something
> useful with his life instead of wasting it here. 

Let's not blow this out of proportion. I know that redesigning the OSM 
start page, and possibly anything else after that, has been your pet 
peeve for the last I don't know how many years. But this thread, until 
now, was *not* about redesigning the OSM start page, or about usability, 
or a design review, or whatever.

This is about someone parachuting in, designing a logo with *no* heart, 
*no* soul, *no* character, that does not in the least convey what OSM is 
about, that looks like it comes straight from a clip-art collection 
(section "geo things"), and having the chutzpah to tell us he had 
somehow reduced the logo to the "essence".

If the same methodology was to be applied to redesigning the project 
then why not change our main page to look like that of Twitter, after 
all Twitter is a big UI success and their page sure "works as a 
webpage". Never mind that we're trying to do different things here.

> So, Robert Martinez, I salute you for pushing on. Things have gotten
> old and crusty here, and it needs some designers with their heads
> screwed on. Nobody means to me horrible to you, it's just the tone of
> the list sometimes and people don't like change. 

I'm sure there are people on this list who don't like change; 
personally, I would appreciate a better logo. This logo, however, is not 
better, and that's all I have said.

About your "things have gotten old an crusty" - do you remember how many 
million times in the API 0.3 or 0.4 days we had some GIS acolyte 
parachuting in and treating us like idiots because we weren't using 
PostGIS but MySQL instead? Did we welcome them with open arms and say 
"Hallelujah, finally someone who brings change?" - No, we said 
"Implement it and we'll consider." We finally did get rid of MySQL but, 
as far as I remember, it was not the work of one of these people who, 
upon finding out that it perhaps was not so easy as they first thought, 
went on to be the messiah to someone else.

> And you can squabble all you want people, but in the mean time waze
> is kicking our ass. I wonder how many Frederik's they have at waze
> writing essays on why design is bad and we don't need new users.
> 
> Oh, I guess I do want this fight again.

Then do me a favour and pick what you want to fight about. I see four 
interwoven messages here:

1. Robert's suggestion for a new logo. I do not like it. You didn't even 
say whether you like it or not. Is this the fight you want, then tell us 
why you think his logo is better than the one we have.

2. Your desire to renovate the OSM user interface, or perhaps more: The 
OSM user experience altogether. My personal take on this is that yes, we 
could do a lot to improve it, but we haven't (yet) got the right people 
to do it. They will eventually come and find a way to evolve things, 
rather than just dumping everything we have and having some guru make it 
better. - You have tried to pioneer this cause a number of times, but 
you more often than not did it in a clumsy fashion, stepping on the toes 
of as many people as possible in the process, and then wondering why you 
caught flak. I'm sure this will sooner or later be addressed by a team 
of level-headed people who do their work well and easily manage to 
convince others that it is good, rather than some ex-cathedra "czar" 
decision which is not to be questioned.

3. A good user interface, obviously, must be based on knowing what one 
wants to achieve. I can see a possible fight here as well; my position 
has always been that growth for growth's sake may harm the project and 
we are right to take it slow. A slick UI is fine but if we attract 
people who don't possess the intellectual capacity and patience to be a 
working member of this community, we could just as well buy data from 
somewhere. Is this the fight you want, then explain what you think the 
main aim of our user interface should be and how this would change the 
project.

4. Your lust for change pitted against a more cautious approach favoured 
by others like myself. I don't think that there is actually much to 
fight over here. You sometimes make it sound as if any change were good, 
and a proof of life, but I am sure I could come up with a number of 
fresh ideas that would have you go "hmm, wait a minute". You also like 
to place anyone who opposes one of *your* ideas in the "resists all 
change" camp but again, that's more often than not just because of the 
way you present them. In fact, I personally am very critical of crusty 
structures, and I have a huge fear that we're heading the the Wikipedia 
direction where decisions seem to be made by zombies with rulebooks. 
(Witness this recent thread on talk-de where I brought this up: 
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-de/2010-April/067218.html) 
- Indeed I would very much like to discuss the way in which we make 
decisions in this project, and how this might be changing in the future, 
and how we could take precautions to remain open to fresh ideas rathern 
tahn becoming some crusty democracy hell where any new idea is killed by 
saying something like "well you can try to convince a majority of 
mappers if you want...". So I think that you and I have a lot of common 
ground here (and a lot of common adversaries in the project as well), 
but installing a "czar" for anything is not something I would consider 
as the first option. Especially not, and that brings me back to point 1, 
if he has not shown me anything that makes me think that he understands 
what OSM is about.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"