Community Ubuntu business card artwork uses old branding (no "official" version available)

[Nathan Haines]

The official artwork for Ubuntu members to use for business cards has not been updated since the new Ubuntu brand was unveiled 18 months ago. This leads to a serious problem of brand dilution as some Ubuntu members have kept their old card and others have created their own designs. The designs added to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BusinessCards are radically different and do not all follow the Ubuntu brand guidelines.

With as much hard work as Canonical have put into their branding efforts across Ubuntu, Canonical, advertising, and merchandising, it would be really beneficial if official artwork were provided as an way to unify this particular representation of the Ubuntu Brand.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Hello Nathan, thanks for the idea and filing it in the bug tracker. Lets see if Marcus can schedule a couple of hours for Tom/Emily to do a design for you, perhaps as a Friday project.

See also bug #827149 and bug #833044 for getting the existing designs updated to the post-2010 logo (now mostly done, but not the fonts). If the design team manage to get something done, and you're happy with the design afterwards, would you be willing to help upload it to:

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BusinessCards

aswell so that other can use it? BTW, I find my aubergine-designed Canonical Ltd cards very useful (Canonical on one side, Ubuntu on the other, so I can see why you'd like some too!).

Marcus/Tom/Emily: would one of you be able to work on a design template for community use. My guess is that at the end, we'll want to supply it as an Inkscape SVG file.

Nathan: business cards come in three sizes (European, Asian, and US-sized). Which are you after first? Could you also give an idea of the set of details you'd like to incorporate on your own card in addition to the "Ubuntu" and "Ubuntu Community Member since YYYY" text (eg. Location, Telephone, Nickname, role, anything else …).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Nick: would you be able to schedule (with Marcus) a couple of hours for this for either Marcus/Tom/Emily to do an Ubuntu-specific business card design covering (ideally) the three sizes. This would be for Nathan and wider community use. We try to be of service, so hopefully they'll be a chance to slot this in somewhere!

[Nathan Haines (nhaines)]

Thanks, Paul. I'd be after American-sized ones first, although I didn't have much trouble adapting the old-branding European ones to American size. Naturally I'll be more than happy to get things uploaded and sorted on the Ubuntu wiki. I may have a look at the other bugs as well to see if I can help adapt them.

I think name, email address, phone, URL, and GPG key are good starts, similar to the older design. Location might be very useful as well.

This may not be the place, but I'm not sure "Ubuntu Community Member since YYYY" fits since the cards are for Ubuntu members only.

[Nathan Haines (nhaines)]

I realize with the release, UDS, and other duties that this was not a high-priority project and other concerns have taken the forefront. But I was wondering if we could get a status update--whether this is still something we can expect from the Ubuntu branding team or whether I should continue using the original Ubuntu branding for the next several years (I have boxes of the business cards remaining and see no need to replace them with the current non-standard designs).

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Nathan: I'll inquire again and see whether we can get some designer time on it.