Re: [LUG] Canonical's use of non-Free Software

Hi All

In regard to the Canonical not using Open Source for their Brand Guidelines, I just want to say that recently I have been working with a new business setup by a designer who's background was Photoshop, InDesign et al. in fact we used the Ubuntu Internet cafe at EICC to train and experiment with GIMP and InkScape, Scribus etc...

The company is now setup and has done some commercial work from design to print using a completely Open Source tool chain. The results have been excellent and even the printer commented on the high standard that the print ready PDF artwork had been produced to.

Rather neatly Scribus have taken to building CMYK colour separation into their product removing the need to install this not GIMP, so you'll find that GIMP, INkScape and Scribus will give you print ready artwork out of the box on Ubuntu, brilliant.

So if any of you guys come across anyone needing some design work or graphics, website visuals etc... And you want to feel confident about it being done using Open Source let me know I can point you in the right direction.

I just need to persuade home the joining DCGLUG is a good idea.

Regards and Best Wishes

Rick Timmis

Abazander Ltd

Sent from my Dragon 32

On 16 May 2011, at 21:35, colin james <doodlesmcpooh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 16 May 2011 17:11, Stuart Metcalfe <stuartm2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 11:11 +0100, Grant Sewell wrote:
> I can't remember how I got here, but I came across this page today:
> http://design.canonical.com/the-toolkit/canonical-brand-guides/
>
> I downloaded the PDF document that is linked and discovered that the
> PDF document's original title was:
> canonical_interim_guides.indd
>
> I figured I knew what a ".indd" file was, but just to be sure I checked:
> http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/indd
>
> Now, I appreciate that Adobe InDesign is considered to be the "industry
> standard" by many, but I would have thought they'd make the effort to
> use Free Software considering who they are and what their biggest
> product is.

Actually, the vast majority of Canonical staff use all open source tools
and there's a strong culture of dog-fooding. There are a few people
dotted about who, for one reason or another, use non-free alternatives
but they're definitely the exception. "They" in this case, is probably
a designer who comes from a commercial background and (when this
document was written in the middle of last year) still used the tools
they were most comfortable/productive with in order to get the job done.

Stu

It might also have been outsourced to a design company.

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq