Originally set up to meet the Unity Linux core branding demands, the Graphics Team will also participate in any design and artwork-related needs for branches.

For the primary Unity Linux logo, they are presently at the black-and-white ideas stage.  From there, they will get deeper into a general visual identity, colour scheme and such.

To follow what’s going on, check out:

• Graphics Team blog. (RSS)
• Planet Unity aggregate blog, which will include Unity Linux-specific graphics updates.  (RSS, Atom)
• Graphics Team mailing list. (Feeds)

Any major announcements will also be made here and through the usual channels.

The team has slowly grown in number and more designs have appeared.

We currently are at the plain “Black and White” phase of the project, exploring concepts and shapes. Here is a sneak preview of the last prototypes …

Enjoy

variation1 : pdf / svg

variartion2 : pdf / svg

Christopher Wrinn, one of the Unity-Linux Graphic team members, introduced us to a little yet interesting article about Linux distribution logos.

Its good to see what other have done before us!

The linux & Unix Menagerie / Tech Source From Bohol

For informational purposes, i jumped on some logo designs that have become famous and are seen as standard in logo design for computer software: Andreas Dilgers Linux Logo Page / Linux 2.0 Penguins

Welcome to the Unity-Linux Graphic Team Blog.

Many people have stepped forward to help in building Unity-Linux’s visual identity. This charge will be carried on by a small team of enthusiasts. Some are professionals and some are new in graphic design. Some took part in open-source projects and some hardly know what a kernel is! All are willing to put all they have in giving a project a visual identity!

Our first task will be to create a logo to brand Unity Linux releases and interfaces of communication. This is going to be tedious because we have no real factual base and only a raw concept to work from… The basic elements are the nature of Unity-Linux : “A family of Linux distributions sharing the same base – trunk – and released as remasters – branches – of the base release. Sharing a same base and core, every Unity Linux-based release will be able to evolve – metamorphose / mutate – or regress to another branch; a new one or even back to the trunk.”

A Lot of proposals and discussions took place on the Unity-Linux Forums about that… and a lot is going on on the Unity Linux Graphic Dev elopement Mailing List at Google Groups… Follow us here and on Unity-Linux Planet Blog …

As was hinted in a post at Team Granular blog, Granular will now be a part of the Unity Project. Unity is in it’s beginning stages, but development is already on full swing. The enthusiasm of developers and members can be seen clearly on Unity’s devel mailing list and its public forum. At this point of time, I’ll refrain myself from giving full details about the association of Granular with Unity, but detailed announcements will come out at a later stage. What all I can tell you right now is I am pretty happy with the progress that’s been going on at Unity and Granular.

One more thing. You see only the Granular logo at the left and no logo of Unity as it’s still being finalized. But I am sure the creative artwork guys there will come up with something interesting pretty soon.

Tom (aka Kurakroma and cbar2 on Granular Community Forum) was a very active member of the forum and one of the global mods there too. He used to be the live wire of the forum, and had a very keen mind which he utilized in discovering new things and putting forward questions, and sometimes trying to help people facing problems using Granular (or Linux in general). But under some circumstances not known to the Team Granular members, he left the forums quietly; not leaving even a single message of this sudden action of his.

Just recently, some one at the Granular forum put forward a question asking whether we owned the .co.uk domain of Granular Linux, perhaps the British community of Granular (no, we don’t own any such domain)? On checking which link he was referring to, we were quite surprised to find out there indeed existed a .co.uk domain of Granular.

Check it out for yourself. Rest is self-explanatory. Boy, what a way of expressing his regret. Let me assure you Tom, all your apologies are accepted. And all our doors are still open for you.

My favorite project, my Home Sweet Home... is a place I started with my friend Dadster called Linux Graphics Users
We wanted to create a place for artists / designers, where they could just relax and share and learn from one another, far away from the restraints of a distro-centric environment. A place where we could just kinda hang-out and talk about the various graphics software within the Linux platform.

We are getting ready to enter into our 2d year (official) and also getting ready to begin discussing ways to really dress up our community/forum, and attract new members. We are all taking some time to put some ideas together, individually... and after the Easter holiday, will have a meeting to discuss those ideas, and find the best ways to go about making them a reality.
We are blessed with a really great member base at LGU. And we are hoping to put some nice ideas into play which will make the site more attractive to new and prospective members.

This year... the 3 old fools (err, I mean wise men) That being the admins Dadster, Jaws, and myself decided to split the cost of hosting for our 2d year... and just as long as no one touches my crayons, I'm good with it (hehe)

But, this is my public way of saying "Thank You" to everyone involved with LGU... because a person just could not ask for a better staff, or a better group of members than we have there.
I have not been as involved as I wanted to be over the last year, due to personal matters... but this is about to change greatly. But, Dadster and Jaws... and everyone else, have been keeping things running pretty smooth and that is a really nice feeling.

So, if you have ever wanted to create your own wallpaper, or anything graphics related, using any of the wonderful graphics software available under Linux (which beats any commercial software IMO) swing on by, we'd be glad to have ya... And don't let the little things like "But I have no talent.." stop you. This is a group of some of the most laid-back, nicest people you could ever run into, and we will help you along the way...
I am the type who feels that "everyone" has talent. There are so many different levels and views to art that it has to be considered beautiful in the eyes of the beholder... and even if you are the only one beholdin'... who cares, as long as it is beautiful to you, and you feel good that you made it yourself.

Hope to see ya soon

Continuing my Java learning stint, I started experimenting on RPM packages in the Granular 2008 repository by extracting meta data from them using various Java classes I had written for my on-going college major project. To give a shape (end-user interface) to these leisurely done Java programs, I used my existing project MyBlog to create a website that could display information (extracted by the Java programs) about every RPM package in the repository. In other words, the Java programs store information about each RPM package in a central database which in turn is used by a PHP-based website to display that information, and much more.

In the introduction to Granular Package Archive post I wrote on the Team Granular blog, I explained the various features it has to offer. My personal favorite is the ability to leave comments on individual RPM pages. Other than that, I am quite satisfied with the overall look-and-feel too. In another of my Team Granular blog post, I explained the working of this package archive system, and the way to use it with any other repository of RPM packages.

Some guys at the Unity Project are also contemplating the idea of using this package archive system with their repository too.

In a bid to help save Tasmanian Devils from extinction, Linus Torvalds decided to release the latest Linux kernel with the “Tuz” logo as the console image at the LCA 2009 conference. Tuz is a name perhaps derived from the popular Linux mascot Tux, plus Tasmanian Devil (Taz – as it was known as a Looney Toones cartoon character). So Tuz replaces Tux as the console boot image for the kernel release 2.6.29.

So 2.6.29 isn’t quite out yet, but I’ve merged the new Tuz logo, so now my laptop boots up with two of these guys showing. See an earlier post about the plush version of this that I got while in Hobart for LCA 2009.
- Linus Torvalds

In another news, GMail gets support for writing emails in Indian languages. The Google Transliteration technology had been around for some time now (through Google Labs), and this support for Indian languages in GMail was built using Transliteration.

We currently support five Indian languages — Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam — and you can select the language of your choice from the drop-down list next to the icon.
- Google Blog

Yet another rough idea I had on the Logo for Unity Linux. Combining the "U" & the "L" into one, unified character. Not sure as to the integrity of this design... but I like to just get the ideas out into a visual form when they come to mind, otherwise they get lost in the swill.