Linux Mint
Branding update #36
Replies: 26 comments 47 replies
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A new branding (design) change would be amazing. Would love to see this happen. ❤️ |
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What exactly are you looking to change? Logo? Theme? Wallpapers? And what ideas do you have in mind exactly? |
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@ApexSport yes, it can. In fact, we are preparing a branding concept that we will announce soon and it will have some "easter eggs" regarding Mint Mobile vision |
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I think there should be a mobile version of Linux Mint. Just like Ubuntu having a mobile version called Ubuntu Touch, You guys should make a mobile version called LMSPE (Linux Mint Smart Phone Edition) Here are my suggest list... 1. Place the UI that shows the Clock, Battery, Volume, Update Manager, Crash Reports, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth In the Right side of the corner (to prevent having to place the UI differently On other devices). |
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I forgot to mention something which im not sure if it's possible or legal, But can add a implement a feature that allows you to play games that are not available in your country (For example, Drift Spirits is a game i found like years ago and when search it in the app store it was nowhere to be seen so i thought it was android exclusive until yesterday when i found out it's an Japan exclusive) So yea it can useful. |
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Not sure why a Mint mobile version is even really being included in this. It's a desktop OS and always has been. There has never been and are not any plans for a mobile version to the best of my knowledge. |
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Oh ok. |
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Pinged @clefebvre, let's see what he thinks. |
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Good luck with this, Egor. You seem to have a well-put together argument here (and I recently met someone who really sold Linux to me :) |
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I think Linux Mint, the best OS in the world, does not deserve a template for their website design! |
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Amen |
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think of all things what I like the most about the current Mint branding is their website, haven't seen a distro with a better one yet, this doesn't mean it can't be improved but personally don't see the need for a radical change. Icons , themes, colors, typography, that's where I see an important contribution could be made. I'm a bit concerned about the recent changes to the mint themes and maybe some professional aid could help to achieve better implementations Maybe even coming up with a HIG website like GNOME has to help developers comply with the design patterns and goals of the Linux Mint project |
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See Elementary OS, Zorin, those are much better as they correctly showcase the features. The current website has ONE screenshot on the homepage. This is too little. |
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I can't agree on the point of the web design. While I can understand your point content-wise (including the copy and even content flow), I don't think that design-wise it's good: it's way too heavy text-to-visuals, weak in terms of positioning (not even to mention the presentation) and let's face it - it's very old-looking. I fully agree that among many distros it's not the worst website and that a Linux user, who knows what to expect from a distro like Mint might be ok with that, but imagine what an absolute newbie would feel with this website, what message they would get from it and what type of UI they would be expecting to see in the product before even trying the distro. With all that said, a single store page of majority of the mobile apps right now do a better job at presenting and giving a product feel that the current main page. |
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We really need more screenshots. A carousel at the top, and more screenshots showcasing the features next to them. Why tell me about GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice and others I don't know of when you can show me? |
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@Zmaznevegor Can you show us some of your previous work? |
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You can find our studio's portfolio here: https://klad.design/portfolio2023.pdf |
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While I'm not amazed by anything there (just not my taste), it indeed shows that you are good. Can't wait to see what Clem says. |
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It is not your (or mine) style, but they're still talented. |
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Nice to hear your perspective even though it seem to be a poor judgement at the very least cause there was not a single stock photo used with fully custom 3Ds. In any case, "to each their own" and I don't expect to get constructive criticism from every community member. I think that our experience, work and awards speak for itself. |
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@Zmaznevegor Tbh, it was only in september 21 that the website had a revamp https://blog.linuxmint.com/?m=202110 btw, I really like your portfolio, it's certainly eye catching. |
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Good point ngl. But if we're going for a brand facelift, we'll eventually need to refresh the website to match the stylistics. Like I've said before, the current site is great in terms of content, but visually it also gives the 'old-school corporate' vibe that might contradict with distro's beginner-friendliness aspect for many users. As for the timeline, if we green light the branding update anytime soon, the earliest we can probably start working on the website would be about 3-4 months later. After that, we'd still need about 1-2 months to get all the Figma prototypes in place for the website revamp. So, we're looking at January 2024, at the earliest, to have the website design ready. If markup would be the core issue, I believe that I will be able to involve some of the front-end devs that worked with us on the previous projects. Also huge thanks for the kind words in regard to the portfolio ❤️ |
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I think Mint-Y's application icons need to change new style. Mint-Y also revamped at 21.1 with Papirus elements. But, Application icons still Moka. So, I redesigned some icons for Mint-Y. Is it good?
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I agree that icons need an update. At the same time, I believe that icons and any extra materials should be changed once the branding is updated to maintain visual and brand coherency among all the visual elements. But in any case I personally like your take on icons. |
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Just change the Nemo icon to not be just a folder. |
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While it's great to see this offer (I, for one, like the portfolio, even though I might understand how a design language so close to Windows's Fluent might not be others' cup of tea), the Mint website itself has been redesigned very recently and I don't expect a change to be accepted very soon. Themes are also being incrementally updated (e.g check out the release notes for Vera and Victoria, sections "Look and feel") and I assume the devs are quite invested in the bottom-up process as it is now. Victoria will add (experimental) support for blur/bump maps in themes which would give a lot more freedom to design looks like the ones in your portfolio. Other than that, I'm not sure what will come next. |
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My apologies for the rough comparison :) I do see why it was a bit reductive of me to mention Windows Fluent. My intention was to present the bigger picture and show some information about where the Mint design process is now (since I noticed others are mentioning hyperspecific fixes they would want to see, which, while good to take into account, might derail the discussion & lead to bikeshedding). Of course, I would like to see you work on a new, unified design. The issue is that I half-expect the devs/decision makers will make the sunken cost fallacy and just keep doing things the way they are doing them. |
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I want to keep customisation. My desktop should be mine. I'm not a fan of this 3D render, blurred, neumorphist look. Remember you weren't doing a design for an entire OS before. Deepin has a similar look your portfolio. However, once you install a 3rd party app, that magic goes away. |
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I'm not sure why you believe customization is at risk of going away, or why you chose to reply to this comment in particular. But thank you for giving your (personal) preference, I guess. |
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Because Figma prototypes may be ok for web or Android app design, not for Linux though.
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While this is already going off-topic and I feel that you're not exactly replying to the comments above, it's still not quite clear to me how some designers using Figma to deliver some artifacts would impact your ability to customize your DE. Just go into the theme picker and choose another theme. The designs also affect the website, forum, blog, and community website, so yes, there would be web design involved. And who said they would have to use Figma? Egor literally mentioned an (open source) alternative in his reply and there is no decision made yet on that either way. Not sure why you're getting so worked up on that. |
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I'm concerned about the inconsistent corners in Mint. Apps has rounded corners on the top But on the bottom... There's no rounded corners for some reason 🤷♀️ App menu and notifications have rounded corners, but it's much smaller than the app's top corners. |
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That is something specific to the Mint-Y GTK theme. I agree with you, about the corners. In fact, I am concerned about too many things in Mint-Y. I won't list here all the things I don't like in Mint-Y. I am thinking about creating my own fork of the Materia theme instead. That's for later, one day, maybe. Thanks to @Secret-chest for pointing me into that direction. EDIT: Yes, I know, there are some "bad corners" in the Materia theme too. That's why I am thinking of creating my own fork... |
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I'd like to collaborate @SebastJava. I like the style of Materia too. About the corners, the bottom ones aren't rounded so they don't cut window content. Sure, they might look "ugly" by themselves, but imagine a cropped scrollbar... |
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That's a great comment! I also mention a lot of the theme's inconsistencies (don't get me started on the colour inconsistencies) and a lot of room for UI improvement in general, but (and this is just pure imo from the perspective of the design studio) I feel that the great majority of such issues comes from lack of open design materials. I know that themes have repos, but it doesn't help for the UI designers - they need prototypes with the maintained UI libraries - this is the only way we can engage the designers in work and ensure that themes and UI elements are consistent. This is actually one of the things that we wanted to implement with the whole rebranding initiative: systematize all the design materials (including the creation of the needed prototypes and Figma/Penpot UI libs), so it would be easier to engage designers in the processes and to see/track the changes before they get implemented. I am still confused about how the user testing and community engagement are done during the UI design without the interactive prototypes (if you know where they are, please share a link, I'd be more than grateful) and without design review processes before it gets implemented. In the ideal world, I see the following things to be done (and our team is ready to help to do this):
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This is not how it works. We're not designing Electron, or mobile apps. We're designing GTK. |
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Parallel work, related: Completely revised and re-edited design for the forums.linuxmint.com |
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LinuxMint-logos-SVG.zip |
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I agree with logos 1 and 3. It has a lot of legacy, 2 would be too much. And I don't like edgy fonts like Exo 2 either. Overall, good. If I were Clem I would switch to design 1. |
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Unfortunately, I can't agree that any of the current alternatives solve the design issues comprehensively. And if the solution is not comprehensive, I don't think it makes sense to change it from the current solution that has exact same issues. Also keeping it both nostalgic, literal or close to original is more of the design limitation in this specific case. |
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I like the 3rd logo more, I dunno i just like it when logo letters are next to each other and have a lower case letters. |
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Sure, but we can't change too much or we'll risk losing recognisability. The name has to stay; what logo metaphor would you use then? |
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We'll present our concept of how we see the brand very soon |
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Announcing a fresh rebranding concept for Linux Mint We are excited to propose a comprehensive brand redesign for Linux Mint, aimed at creating a cohesive and recognizable identity with consistent visual and communicative materials. This initiative addresses the current lack of visual consistency in open-source operating systems, starting with a refreshed logo that enhances simplicity, readability, and modernity.
Learn more: https://github.com/klad-design/linuxmint-brand |
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Huge thanks for providing constructive feedback!
Overall note: so far we mainly spent time on brand research and redesign concept, as it creates a visual foundation for the rest of the materials. We would love to work more on the web design and OS UI but we firstly wanted to align that our vision align with the project and its maintainers. As you understand, creating a scalable design system takes a lot of time, and since we are a small company, we are doing it in parallel with client work. So, ideally to get a green light before we move forward, so we don't waste the efforts as we don't want it just to remain concept. |
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I agree with the floating panels. I find the Lm GUI is efficient and customisable, this is important and must not be compromised. I don't like floating stuff either, since it reduces the actual maximum rectangle for content. Having it as an option would be nice, but for now shouldn't we focus on the design to make it easier to implement, then features? |
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Rounded window corners don't make that much sense IMHO. Top corners can be rounded, the OS controls decorations. Rounding bottom corners clips content. Windows 7 did it well, since it added a border so the actual app content sat inside - but this looks more cluttered. |
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As for the window menu it would look much nicer if it were at the left edge of the bar (right when using left buttons), especially now that they have to be centred. It could also show the icon. |
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For #2. The arrow thing can't work. That is application specific functionality that we can't really access from input on the titlebar. Even for just the window menu, it's probably not a good idea. Since Muffin doesn't have control of this on all windows it doesn't make sense to do that and just leads to even further inconsistency. I'm also assuming this is pretty much all Cinnamon specific. Considering that Mint actually ships with 3 different DE's and we don't really have control of 2 of them. |
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Also, what about de-emphasising Linux? Many people are scared of Linux. When I tell someone to try Linux Mint they will refuse, thinking you must type terminal commands and learn programming. Or they think it is used only by hackers or poor people. |
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Linux is the core. I don't think it makes to much sense to drop it tbh. |
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Yes, we can make people think of Linux in a better way. |
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I had to stop watching the video, because it was giving me a headache, and I was afraid it might trigger a seizure. It will probably appeal to younger folks, however. I missed the old-fashioned LM logo. For me, that means Linux Mint. I also consider "Linux" to be essential to the branding. It signals that LM is part of the Linux distro spectrum, and that if people switch to it, their experience is going to be different from what they are used to (especially Windows). I don't care about such details as window corners or the look of icons, so long as I can identify the app I want to use, and it opens in a usable window. I greatly dislike having to hunt for what I need. That was my big complaint about Win 10 and the MS Office redesign. Sleek and new may look pretty, but when it interferes with functionality, I get annoyed. I've been using PC's since before there was Windows, so I am heavily keyboard-oriented, and a mouse-centric interface means I have to keep taking my hands off the keyboard--and they don't always land back on the proper keys, lol! Both graphical apps and keyboard commands have their uses, however, and one is often more efficient at a given task than the other. Let's keep options open for everyone. Clem and the team have a pretty clear vision for what LM is and should be. I will be very interested to see their reactions to the suggested changes. |
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Google shows a logo concept I made 2 years ago when searching for Linux Mint for some reason. |
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I have to say, that Linux Mint logo looks stylish. |
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The geometry is imperfect though. Maybe someone has ideas to fix it. |
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I very much appreciate that you've put time into the Lm design. We need it. However, the problem is that distro restyling is very hard, and the Lm apps need to support themes. The design must be constrained by GTK CSS. |
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wow long thread So I am left with a washed out cinnamon , KDE that doesn't look good at all(the themes break it), and a usable but very grey desktop (gnome). All themes are inconsistent and sometimes unusable like that popular neon purple pink theme for gnome and kde, right now I have been looking for better things but no avail changing the os is not what i want (apparently most people in the Linux community like that) The design upgrade is true need to make the Linux mint ecosystem grow its user base and trust me it will. Also a design upgrade on the software store is needed, all apps looked washed out and the spacing is odd |
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@Zmaznevegor would you and your team still be willing to work on this if it got devs attention back? |
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Ofc |
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@Secret-chest Ironically I made an almost identical logo today without even seeing yours. Just gonna share it here:
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As an old Linux desktop user and co-founder of Klad, a design studio focused on branding and UI/UX, I appreciate Linux Mint's commitment to user-friendliness. The current branding resonates with the existing audience, underlining its utilitarian approach, but a refreshing rebrand could extend its appeal to a broader audience and can work as a good foundation for the future design of the distro.
To contribute to this project we adore, we propose a free and open visual brand update for Linux Mint. This would entail not only a systematic overhaul of the brand visuals, but also an update to the website design, giving it a fresh look and audience appeal. Our entire design process, from concept to finalization, would be openly shared and accessible.
We realize such an initiative would be a significant commitment, likely exceeding eight weeks of dedicated team effort. As passionate as we are, we hope our work wouldn't be wasted. Therefore, we want to carry this initiative with the community and managing team support. We understand that a lot of LM followers are satisfied with the current materials but we believe that it might be one of the things that keeps distro from the broader appeal and that in the worst case scenario it will at the very least help the project systematize its design assets.
TLDR:
⭐️ UPD: we came up with a redesign concept, you can learn more about it here.
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