README.rst

Images for the Fedora Magazine

This repo holds the Source SVGs for the graphics we design for the Featured Images on the Fedora Magazine.

Each article in the Fedora Magazine must have a featured image. The image gives the article added visual appeal. It also appears in links on social media, to attract more viewers.

Quick guidelines and git usage instructions are below. For full documentation on creating a featured image, see the Fedora Magazine docs.

Image Guidelines

We have a small set of guidelines for the format of the images that help them look their best on the Magazine site. These are:

  • a size of 1890x800 pixels
  • a 100px bleed area at the top and bottom of the 800px height. The background should extend into the bleed area, but the main focus and content of your image should not. This is because the images are trimmed at the top and bottom for the Recent Posts sidebars on posts.
  • a 192px bleed area at the left and right of the 1890px width, some social sites automatically crop wider images, and keeping content in these bleeds makes sure your lettering and icons are not truncated by these sites. The template.svg has guides to show both vertical and horizontal bleed markers.
  • exported images that are uploaded to WordPress can either be PNGs or JPGs. If you have an image that uses a photo, please convert it to a JPG to reduce the filesize.

How to use this repo

These images are created as SVG (scalable vector graphic) images. To work with these images, you should install a SVG capable application such as Inkscape. You will also need the git utility installed.

Getting started with the image repository

Follow the instructions in the Git for docs writers documentation.

Creating a new image using the template

  • Install inkscape package if you don't have it installed already:

    su -c "dnf install inkscape"
    
  • Open Inkscape, and choose File > Open... (or hit Ctrl+O). Navigate to the project folder, then into fedoramagazine-images, then into images. Choose the template.svg file.

  • Save this as a new file with a different name.

You can use the assets inside this file to start with the right-sized document, with some pre-configured backgrounds. Feel free to look at other SVGs for guidance. If you don't have experience with these images, try to stick with fonts and motifs that you see in recent banners. But also feel free to experiment! For instance, use photographs (freely licensed, such as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA) with a text overlay for a nice look. Unsplash.com has a large library of images in the public domain you can use to get started.

When done, if you enter the images folder, you can create a JPEG version of your creation in the correct aspect using the provided Makefile. If your file is called foo.svg, run the command make foo.jpg to create the JPEG version. This can be uploaded to the Fedora Magazine as a featured image.

Getting your work reviewed

After you have pushed your changes, can return to Pagure and submit a Pull Request. This lets the Magazine team know you have an image ready to review. Visit your repo at:

https://pagure.io/fork/<username>/fedoramagazine-images

and you should see the Pull Request button next to the branch listing. Select it, and follow the form to submit the PR.