"Stephan B. Wessels" <swessels at one.net> writes:

> I agree with the sentiment that a sexy look is good marketing.  I truly
> believe that.  When a product is a pleasure to look at people want to know
> more about it.  In the case of Smalltalk, after they hopefully see the
> lightness of the language and depth of the class hierarchy they will be
> hooked.

I am not just suggesting "squeak needs a new look", what I hold to be
true is: 

ö Community growth

  The community growth may be determined by two factors: the quality
  of squeak (as software) and marketing. The first factor is already
  at a high level, the second becomes significant. Since we do not pay
  bribes of any kind, marketing is somwhat limited to intellectual
  work such as art.

o Good art needs good artists

  Designing a look (the artwork) is a job that should be done by
  professional (graphics) designers. You may replace "look" by
  "corporate design" to get the idea.

o No squeak graphics designers avaiable 

  The squeak community has excellent programmers and visioners but
  lacks designers. Therfore implementing a look is primarily seen as a
  programming challenge. The artwork is underephasized. Programming a
  look is difficult if you don't know what the outcome should be like.

o Open source art

  The basic ideas of open source can be extended to include non
  programming tasks, such as designing a look.

o Themes are too much

  Themes are a programming challenge. Themes are not needed for what I
  suggest here. You don't do that with corporate designs. You can
  change the look every couple of years to make a new version
  visually obvious. 

  Windows doesn't have themes and they are in a position where they
  could replace raised popups by flat popups and sell this as a new
  version. Linux has themes but it didn't help much on the
  desktop. Java/Swing has themes.

o License to attract artists

  Someone (me ?) has to go and find some artists who are willing to
  make this kind of contribution. This person would have to speak in
  the name of the squak community. There is a common understanding on
  how to contribute software to squeak. There is no such understanding
  on how to contribute art. It is not even clear if art contributions
  are welcome.