User talk:Qgil-WMF/Presentation template

We need a template

Regardless what we do, we need a template. To my surprise there seems to be none! Let's work on a simple & minimalistic template that others can use as default. Something fitting these (negotiable) requirements

• Free software.
• Free font.
• Color schema.
• First and last slide with editable text fields for title, presenter...
• Slide with one big sentence.
• Slide with a text block e.g. a signed quote.
• Slide with big image and sentence.
• Slide with bullets list.
• Slide with full-screen image and sentence.

Since this is a little project in its own, it is worth creating a subpage for it. We will move it later to a definitive location. Qgil (talk) 21:35, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

2A01:E35:2EFA:4A10:D8EF:E5A5:AD01:7820 21:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Starting to experiment on an icon-based languages for the MediaWiki slides.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/c/ca/Template_test_for_mediawiki_slides_%28FOSDEM_related%29.png

(Layout and typo test in Keynote)

Minimal = easy to translate, easy to HTML/CSS-ize

Iconic = international, semantic yet not textual.

(also, I prototyped some animation with it in Keynote: works very well, it makes for cool transitions -- it's superfluous/distracting for a talk, but that means we can give the slides to an After Effects pro/am and get a cool animated video back :-)

I took your idea of a doubled deck with text that can be halved for stage.

Colors will need to be adjusted.

Typo is in (so bland and pervasive) Helvetica now.

1 or 2 nice open fonts will be selected to give it a better touch, but it will work with any modern Sans Serif the presenter would fall back too (Arial, Verdana, Unbuntu…)

Also, sorry for the fake 25% data on bugs -- the rest is correct. I just wanted to test some percentage.

Feedback welcome, and real data / things to communicate much welcome too! Juliendorra (talk) 01:41, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Since we have to deal with holidays and timezones, let's focus stubbornly on the template first until we are happy about it. Once there is a template it will be easier to build the rest. Let's try to build

• the opening slide.
• a regular secondary slide with title and image.
  • the same slide adding a text block.

I believe we can nail most of the problems focusing only in these 2.5 slides.

Your first designs look good... but my first thought was that they didn't look very MediaWiki / Wikimedia to me. I kept thinking until being able to explain why (which took me a while).  :)

• The spirit is about minimalism, informative style, probably white / light background, rectangles, thin lines...
  • One reference is the look & feel of the Wikipedia mobile app.
  • Another one is the WMF annual report.
  • And perhaps also The Impact of Wikipedia video testimonials, also with white background and a treatment for subtitles that maybe we could look at.
• About colors, we don't have a clear palette but you have seen in the example above the role of whites for background, black / dark grays for text and that yellow. Then we have the MediaWiki logo (also with yellow, that blue and the brown that might or might not be useful for our exercise - no idea yet). And just in case, the Wikimedia logo (with the characteristic red, blue, green). These are the possible ingredients and we need to make the hard choices.
• Font: yes, let's go to for a Sans Serif but let's default ourselves to a free font already. It needs to be one well supported in multiple scripts. I have no preference (neither much knowledge), but I suspect there is not much to choose from anyway.
• Icons: they look good. What icon set is the one you have used?
• Images: yes, everybody does rectangles  ;) but this is also the easiest to get and crop. I'm not convinced about the circles... As you see the report makes extensive use of squares. I'm not that convinced about that either, but maybe you find something. Otherwise I think classical rectangles can do well.
• Text blocks: I think it is better that they don't land on top of the content of the "previous" slide. Those slides without text blocks should have always a region without much going on, giving space for breathing and also for landing of the text block. Such block could use some transparency, making it more of a floating layer.
  • Maybe those subtitles of the Wikipedia videos also give us a clue. I kind of like the dark strips with light text inside. It's an original treatment for text in slides.
  • Don't be shy defining a physical limit for these strings. We don't want to explain the Bible there.
  • If we want to have a longer quote in a very specific slide then we can simply go for a different treatment e.g. using a Serif font for title and description, Wikipedia mobile style.

PS: sorry for long post. And there is another one coming. :) Qgil (talk) 23:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Icons

I'll try this:

Focus on a select a subset of icons, free/public domain.

Eg. a small collection from The Noun project, for example.

Icons of this kind can be easily be turned into significant and beautiful pictures :

http://playhundreds.com http://responsivemuseum.com/ (ok, this one is a quick project my friend Geoffrey and I did to shake up museums. Still, he cleverly turned icons into a logo, some strong pictures in just a few hours)

That would allow us to build a very simple, clean, modular *and* distinct feel to the template. Juliendorra (talk) 21:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know about http://thenounproject.com/ and it sounds like a very good idea! Qgil (talk) 23:22, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the Noun project is fairly new, but it took off very, very fast in the design community. Nearly all my friends who design and/or need to build presentations use it at some point.

It host Public Domain, CC0 and CC-BY icons.

By the way, the great thing is that's a commercial project, AFAIK, so it's a nice exemple of a company creating both external and internal value with free licences.

I'm currently trying something with a small collection of icons - and we should use only CC0 or Public Domain icons.

(Rationale: CC-BY is great, but when building a template that will be used and re-used, it can be a little bit impratical to be sure that everybody will keep track of all the designers they need to attribute too. We don't want to be caught making that kind of mistake. So let's stay on the safe side and use icons that don't need attribution - of course we should be polite and say thank you to the project somewhere.) Juliendorra (talk) 20:11, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Some days ago I found this Agora Icon Set. It makes sense to use those icons whenever they serve the purpose, since they embed the "W" look & feel.

Let's have a look at it to see if that is good, and if not what are we missing. If there are better alternatives for specific icons at The Noun Project then we can just use them and probably propose them to the Agora project. Qgil (talk) 20:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

To complement the Agora icon set that is focusing more on UI design,

here is a selection of CC0/public domain icons from the noun project that might be useful in adding something:

(didn't uploaded the whole selection, just some interesting examples) Juliendorra (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Julien, you might also want to look at a similar discussion at Talk:How to contribute#c-Nemo_bis-2013-01-28T22:14:00.000Z-Icons. guillom 15:51, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation template?

Is there a template for WMF presentations? Juliendorra (talk) 22:12, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Nope. Qgil (talk) 23:13, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes there is now :) It's well hidden though: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brand/Presentations Halibutt (talk) 11:28, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Examples of Wikimedia presentations

I just came across the Echo project slides. A good example of a decent MediaWiki presentation that didn't find any template.  :) Qgil (talk) 21:37, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Free typeface of choice

It's time to make decisions. Let's go for Liberation fonts as free typeface to be used in this template.

If someone has a better proposal for a free font then we will consider. Qgil (talk) 20:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Aligning with Wikimedia design principles

One of these days I found Wikimedia Foundation Design. Even if it's sketchy and focusing on (mobile) web design, I think it's the best starting point we have. Let's use it whenever it's useful and let's keep it in mind whenever doesn't have the answers we need. Qgil (talk) 20:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

We have a second customer!  :)

Zeljko.filipin(WMF) also got a session approved at FOSDEM and I'm sure he will welcome a template - as long as we have on for him.  :) Qgil (talk) 18:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)