@eischmann do you want a totally new design or just an update of the existing design with 2018 edition on it?

It doesn't have to be a completely new design, just something that visually distinguishes the editions from each other.

Hi @eischmann @duffy these are some designs I came up with (one is a bit lighter one a bit darker). I tried to use some elements from the last handbook cover. Please, let me know if we can work with this design or if I should come up with something completely different.

@terezahl I like the motion you've created with the various elements;. I think there's a few things to push on to iterate this further:

• The document icon overlapping with the monitor I think isn't working, it makes things a bit muddy. You could invert the doc icon and see if the overlapping works better (so the lines are white, the doc has a white outline, and the body of the doc is transparent. Or you could remove the overlap as you did with the icon in the lower right.

• I think you need a central focus. Right now it's not immediately obvious where the eye should fall (vs. where you want it to fall.) The old version draws the eye first to "fedora Workstation" with the flag design. You probably want to draw the eye to that here a well. I think the icons and the circle behind them compete too much for attention. Some ideas for tuning down the icons and tuning up the workstation logo:

  • Try to arrange the icons such that the circle is implied even if it's not drawn by the motion of the objects
  • Create some kind of contrasting banner or shape behind the workstation logo so it draws the eye more.

• In October, we might not want to label this as 2018 edition because there's not much left to 2018. Might be better to say '2nd edition' or something like that so it could be used for longer.

• Just one other thing to think about, what does the back cover look like?

Hope this helps, what do you think?

@duffy thanks for the feedback!
For the back cover I thought I'll just use the same gradient as in the background of the front cover - similar to the last version (https://pagure.io/design/issue/raw/files/ca9962db391187ef0e7919c4558c2914f36752773dd3a569464146d55afeaaf1-getting-started-manual-newsize.pdf).
Should I add something more to it?

@duffy one more question: which design do you think is better - the first or the second one? Or should I work with both for now?

@terezahl I think if you use the same back gradient as the old version, it should carry through to the front so it flows from one side to the other. So I wouldnt have a different one on the front vs back if that makes sense. So that makes it hard to say which one is better, but at face value I definitely prefer the 2nd one with the darker background, I think it has better contrast and I think the colors are bolder and more Fedora-y!

@duffy I meant that I'll use the same gradient on the back as I used on the front - I didn't mean to say I'll use the same gradient as last year. I probably wrote it wrong - apolgies for that. Hope it make sense now.

@duffy I meant that I'll use the same gradient on the back as I used on the front - I didn't mean to say I'll use the same gradient as last year. I probably wrote it wrong - apolgies for that. Hope it make sense now.

@duffy @eischmann here's the new version of the design. I added green banner behind the logo and rearranged the icons. Let me know what you think!

@terezahl ooh this is neat, you really took the last round of feedback to account here!! Only minor tweaks are what I'd suggest:

• I'd give the text line at the very top ("Introduction to the...."l more horizontal padding from the edge on both sides. It just seems a bit tight.

• I think "Beginners" in the title should be "Beginner's" because it's possessive / genitive.

• I'd capitalize "E" in "2nd Edition"

• The leading between the fedora logo and the "Workstation" text in the green block I suspect is too big. The Fedora logo bubble also looks a bit too tight to the a. Do you have the official workstation logo source? Importing that in might be easier than adjusting what you have.

• I'm a little worried about the contrast between the white fedora workstation text and the bright green. I know that green isnt as bright on paper. Can you proof it by printing out using the cmyk color values from the logo guidelines to make sure there's enough contrast for readability? (if what im saying here sounds too complicated / unclear, let me know and i can break it down more.)

@duffy I divided the line at the top into two, so it doesn't seem so tight but is still readable (hope it's fine this way).
I fixed the Beginners and 2nd edition texts.
I hope the Workstation logo is okay like this. (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Edition-workstation-full_light-bg.png - the logo there is without the bubble as well, in the last one I used the logo that was used on the last year handbook cover which is with the bubble.)
I'm also attaching a photo of the print - the green box look a bit yellowish on the photo, but is actually green irl - and I think it's readable (sorry for the bad quality).
What do you think?

@terezahl Wow, yes! Awesome iteration!

Only a couple more tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny nitpicks:

• I'd drop the "." after "system" in the end of the line at the top that starts out "Introduction to the..."
• the "TM" at the end of "Fedora" in "Fedora Workstation" isn't really readable, looks like a little pimple on the a. Can you scale it up a little bit?

The other thing is, the Fedora logomark was dropped (intentional?) We might want to have it somewhere on the page. Two ideas:

• Put it back after "fedora" above "Workstation" in the main title
• Put it on the "screen" of the monitor in the illustration (might look cool)

Other than that this looks great! Awesome iteration! The spacing between "fedora" and "workstation" is perfect now.

For the green... the CMYK value we use for that green is 50/0/100/0. The next step is to pull this into Scribus and do the CMYK conversion, so you might want to do a test print then and see how the green looks and make sure there's still good contrast with the white (probably will be!)

@duffy I dropped the logomark because as I wrote, the logo here (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Edition-workstation-full_light-bg.png) doesn't have it, sorry I didn't wrote it clearly. But if the logomark should be there somewhere I put it back. My mistake.
I printed it again, it looks readable.
Hopefully it's all okay now.

@terezahl ohh i missed that - can you try it on the screen? it does look a little weird in the title.

@duffy here you go!

@terezahl Looks fabulous! Can you start converting to CMYK in Scribus? Do you know how to do this?

@duffy I converted it using this tutorial (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_set_CMYK_color_on_a_design_for_printing) I also made the one with the front and background.

@terezahl :100: love it! @eischmann how do you like it?

@terezahl 💯 love it! @eischmann how do you like it?

Sorry for the late response, but I've been busy lately. I really like it and don't have any suggestions for changes. I'll include it in the handbook git repository and release it with the "2018" edition soon.

Thank you very much!