...for an Apple Dev site to chide "poor" UI designs when their own site needs dome fixin'. For starters, the tips menu items hang over the boundaries of the box beneath them. Also the text is forced to a smaller size than is comfortable to read on screen and by using this size text the bold headline sbecome blurry and even more difficult to read. To be fair, I'm guessing they designed their site to be viewed on Apple systems and there is a difference in screen metrics because Macs are basedon a 72dpi resolution while PCS use 96dpi (though they can be changed to anything from 72dpi-144dpi).
I'm not even going to get into some of the innacuracies used to make the Mac UI look better or the complete lack of professional advice being utilized. Much of these arguments are based on the premise that "Mac users like it this way" and assuming that the typical Mac user is a UI expert.
Oh, give me a fuckign break. Do you have numbers or statistics to prove this? Of course you don't, you're just karma whoring by trying to make Linux look more secure. Well, let me clue you into something buddy, Linux survives a complete hard drive wipe as well as Windows or Mac. They couldn't care less what data is on the machine.
If the thief DOES care what is on the machine I truly believe they will either know how to hack into it or they will have someone they trust do it for them. The target will be specifically picked out (random dumb luck isn't a good way to run an operation like this) and a plan will be in place down to what to do with the data once they have it.
...and statistics. This article was bit misleading and overstated the importance of the sudden surge in Linux server acquisitions. The actual numbers only suggest that 41% of an undisclosed number of CIOs had changed their Windows servers to Linux. While this sounds good up front (as the article intended), when one considers that if this undisclosed number were a small percentage of CIOs considering purchases then 41% of, say 5%, is not a whole lot. I think the article failed to mention how truly insignificant this 41% really is on purpose.
Before you start calling people arrogant pricks, perhaps you should apprise yourself of Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 506 of the US Code. Copyright violations can incur criminal charges.
Actually the World Series was created by the owners of the Boston Red Sox. They felt thay had the best ball team in the, at the time, major leagues (I forget the actual league name). They challenged the next best ball team to a championship series (best of 5 I believe) and it would be the most spectacular championship the world had ever seen, hence the name WOrld Series. The name as stuck and teh Red Sox took most of the series until 1918 when they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees and teh Red Sox haven't won a series since. They've come close only to lose it on a stupid error or other mishap.
...I meant obscelesence. As someone who has recently gone through the painful process of cleaning up a flooded basement due to hot water heater giving out, it's quite clear. Devices have built in obscelesence otherwise people woudl not purchase more. Batteries die in a given amount of time and people run to the store to buy more. Where is the incentive for Energizer or Duracel to make their batteries 10x more efficient? Cares with 100mpg have been built but the patents have been bought by the big three and locked away. Look what happened to Tucker and his automobiles. I'm not condoning this practice but obscelesence is a common factor in a capitalistic society.
...over/. once again. Many here decry the government's attempts at gaining access to information through laws and other legal avenues yet you also have no problems poking your noses in other people's networks without permission or through legal means. Regardless of how open these networks might be you have no right to acces them nor use their bandwidth for your own personal enjoyment. One might get the that many/.'ers are self-centered narcissists.
Windows needs it so they ship it with Windows already. IE the application can be removed. IE the underlying HTML rendering engine is intertwined with Windows and third party applications such that its removal would break applcations. The nine states are using the courts to dictate tehcnology Microsoft's competitors don't agree with. There is nothing that preculdes me from using Mozilla on my Windows XP system and completely ignore the existence of IE.
I have a bachelor's degree in Recording Industry Management: Production and Technology focus from MTSU so I'd say that not only do I have a better idea what the RIAA is and what it does, I have a much greater understanding of the music industry.
Depends on what you're doing but Word can reveal field codes and non-printing codes. If you want to know about a particular block of text, click on help -> what's this -> then click on the block of text. A dialog baloon will appear informing you what's going on with the block of text. Paragraph and font formatting are both revealed in this dialog. Alternatively you could press shift-F1 to call up the what's this pointer.
Excuse me but the RIAA is a non-profit organization compriosed of record labels themselves, and not just the big labels either. If you cut out the RIAA you cut out the people investing in the music business, the labels themselves. Or were you just looking for some/. karma and bashing the RIAA without having a clue as to who they are and what they do?
This article was full of such mind-boggling bullshit about the future I feel like I need a shower to cleanse myself of the filth. I've seen far less fear-mongering from Fox News and Bill O'Reilly than what was exhibited here. In the future we will be locked out blah blah blah. Bullshit. If you believe this guy can tell the future then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Show me the facts that Microsoft, or any other proprietary vendor has demonstrated a user lockout of their documents.
In MS Word 2000 there are 28 different file formats I can save to and 27 different file formats I can open from. Granted if I want to use some of the formatting features of Word I might not be able to save it out faithfully in an older word format and I might have problems using RTF but this is to be expected. I don't expect to be able to save out a PSD document to JPEG and still maintain layers for future editing. It is absurd to expect this.
If I don't want to use any of the file formats in the save dialog drop down selection box I always have the option of obtaining Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat integrates with Office nicely but even if Microsoft wanted to keep Adobe from integrating with Office in this manner in the future one could still use PDF technology as it installs as a printer on your system. Microsoft would have to completely shut out PDF technology altogether and the likelihood of this happening is about as good as/. spontaneously becoming an ardent Microsoft supporter.
The fact is this guy if full of himself and uses this fear-mongering bullshit I expect from Bill O'Reilly to push his wares on the OSS/Linux community. Many will fall at his feet and call him l337 because he bashes Microsoft in the article but few will actually listen to what he says, instead choosing to blindly follow because if it's Microsoft bashing from a Linux developer, it must be true. Bullshit, bullshit, twice again bullshit.
Perhaps this guy could get a guest spot with Miss Cleo if he's this good at telling the future.
It would look like the cell phone market. There would be no real solutions to problems, only competition creating new standards to wipe out their competitors.
Now where in my comment did I approach theproject leaders with contenpt for their efforts? Let me save you the effort of looking it up. I didn't. You mistook my open contempt for the process of OSS and many of the people leading the teams for the methods I choose to approach them. Pardon me for trying to help. In the future I'll be sure to pass because it is clear that with attitudes like yours OSS will go nowhere in the areas of user friendly UI development.
As I am a designer, not a programmer, I have to rely on others to implement the GUI designs I come up with. My experience to date has been rather sad to say the least. There is a "my camp"/"your camp" distinction because most of the developers I've offered my services to have snubbed me or flat out ignored me. So be it. But don't whine when your apps look like crap and are about as user friendly as punch cards on an old Honeywell or Data General main frame.
So far the OBOS group has been fairly receptive to the overall GUI look, though nothing is set in stone yet, but the functionlity has been an uphill battle. Some developers want things one way, some want things another and yet even more don't want any real advancement in GUIs for the OS at all. Until OSS groups learn to set firm project guidelines and milestones for these goals you will find help such as my own few and far between, if at all.
"Guess it's time for the OSS people to make some decent-looking scalable both-screen-and-printer fonts (preferably TrueType). At minimum, we need nice-looking serif proportional (to replace Verdana), a sans proportional (to replace Georgia), and a mostly-sans fixed (to replace Andale Mono), all with good language support."
Verdana is a sans-serif font, Georgia is a serif font and Andale Mono is a fixed-width font based on a sans-serif typeface, there are no mostly-sans font types. Fixed-width fonts mean the spacing between characters is equal. These fonts were designed for use on terminals but are not very good modern on-screen fonts as many of the parameters the fixed-width fonts were designed to solve are no longer an issue. Fixed-width fonts have NEVER been good for print.
As font design can take years per font and even longer for an entire font family, I doubt you are going to get any professionals to donate their work just so they can have it named after themselves. Designers aren't as vein as many make them out to be. We take pride in having our work displayed but we also like to be compensated for our efforts.
I designed the Boston Breakers (WUSA) logo and I get giddy every time I see the signs outside the BU stadium or on NESN. By the way, my own website has another version of the logo I felt was much better suited for a sports team, so if you don't really care that much for the logo as is, blame the client. I designed a MUCH better wave and stashed the words "Boston" in a pill box beneath/slightly over the word "Breakers". I'm sure the designers at Chermeyeff and Geismar are rather elated whenever they see their own work on TV, billboards and signs around the country.
Anyway, my point is we don't design to have our names on the logos, fonts or collateral materials, we do it because we love design and solving problems. Our hobbies are our jobs and vice versa. We get paid doing something we truly love to do.
Now, this isn't to say we never donate our time and efforts. As a matter of fact, I am the creative design lead for OBOS (soon to be renamed). I have developed some preliminary design ideas for a modern GUI and am in the process of developing some functionality concepts to create a more user-friendly GUI. Hopefully the OBOS developers will see the wisdom behind the GUI and adopt the ideas I've been working on.
The biggest problem of most OSS projects is they do not make themselves available to people like me. Most developers think design is opening Photoshop and creating pretty pictures. Design is problem solving in much the same way programming is. We use a different language and set of tools but it is problem solving none the less. If the OSS community wants us to help them they are going to have to do better than offer to put our name in the credits, they are going to have to open their minds and listen.
I found NWN to be a second rate Baldur's Gate with the only major change being the use of a completely 3D environment. The shear number of load screens is ridiculous and the game becomes very monotonous at times. I was excited about gettign NWN but after playing it once, I doubt I'll be getting much replay value out of it unless a VERY cool module is released.
I'm not sure if it works with WINE or Crossover Office but you might consider getting Dungeon Siege instead. Not only were the graphics better, the total lack of loading screens (except for when you load a saved game or start a new game) was VERY, VERY cool. I guess this game spoiled me and I expected too much from NWN.
Also, not only is there a toolkit available to develop your own DS modules, there is a gmax module designed specifically for DS so you can make your own models for use as characters, objects, and terrain nodes. The DS community has also joined in to help develop tools to write skrit scripts and edit current modules. Granted, these dev tools require Windows but so does the Aurora toolkit for NWN.
So, basicaly, youre saying that contributing to an OSS project is like giving away your work for free to a lot of people that will use it for their project? Yes, thats the way OSS works too. I dont see whats wrong with that either, code is an art form too, so why is it okay to release code for free and not graphical art?
I never said one way or the other whether it was ok to release code or not. I find that the debate to use an open or closed license ridiculous and to villify one group or company for using a license you disagree with to be even more absurd.
What I did say is many OSS proponents do not fully appreciate what it is I, and others inmy profession, do. I am a graphic designer with experience and knowledge in GUI design and when I tell a programmer, that clearly lacks skill as a UI designer, their application needs to be better designed from a user standpoint I expect them to listen and not aruge.
If the OSS community wants designers to help, they are going to have to make concessions. This is for pratcical reasons as much as respecting what it is designer do. How would you as a programmer feel if someone else mangled your code beyond belief and you were blamed for it? If someone knows I designed a UI and someone else comes along and mangles it for their own purposes, it is very likely that my name will be associated with it in a negative way. I now have to become proactive in defending the original work I did and claiming no relation to the mangled work. Believe me, it's a mess and yes, it has happened to me both on a professional level and on work I have done for myself.
But frankly, its too bad that you are a part of the very small minority of artists/designers that ever heard about OSS and that is willing to contribute one way or another. Maybe you can give a clue to your fellow artists?:)
I think programmers need as much a clue as designers do. Many don't want to contribute because our advice is often times not heeded and when it is the implementation is half-assed. I would argue that programmers need to grow up and learn that they might know how to code but they don't know everything there is to know about designing an application:)
My apologies if this sounded argumentative and reporachful, this was not my intent. I'm writing this quickly and have not taken enough time to thoroughly consider my answers. Consider this a rough draft that I would be happy to clear up if you want to take the time to hunt down my e-mail through the OBOS project, perhaps take a peek at the work I have done already.
I think you should go through design school before you speak for the lot of us. I believe there is a VERY small minority of designers who truly believe they will have the impact of Paul Rand, Jan Tschihold or Saul Bass. The rest of us just don't like our work being ripped off by a group of people who lack talent to truly appreciate or understand our work. Being a graphic designer or artist is not about being able to use Photoshop, it is being able to communicate with visual and/or typographic elements.
Now, this is not to say that we won't get involved with OSS projects. In fact, I am currently the project lead for the OBOS creative design team. I've developed some ideas for a new GUI for the OS and am currently in the process of coming up with some new methods for working with a computer through a GUI. I'm donating my time and effort, not because I want to give the OSS community graphics they can rip off but because I have skills this project (and many other OSS projects frankly) could use. I also want to test out some ideas I have in GUI design and I can't do that without a project such as this. Since I don't program and none of the programmers can design this is seemingly a win-win situation for this group.
Slashdot Mirror
...for an Apple Dev site to chide "poor" UI designs when their own site needs dome fixin'. For starters, the tips menu items hang over the boundaries of the box beneath them. Also the text is forced to a smaller size than is comfortable to read on screen and by using this size text the bold headline sbecome blurry and even more difficult to read. To be fair, I'm guessing they designed their site to be viewed on Apple systems and there is a difference in screen metrics because Macs are basedon a 72dpi resolution while PCS use 96dpi (though they can be changed to anything from 72dpi-144dpi).
I'm not even going to get into some of the innacuracies used to make the Mac UI look better or the complete lack of professional advice being utilized. Much of these arguments are based on the premise that "Mac users like it this way" and assuming that the typical Mac user is a UI expert.
Oh, give me a fuckign break. Do you have numbers or statistics to prove this? Of course you don't, you're just karma whoring by trying to make Linux look more secure. Well, let me clue you into something buddy, Linux survives a complete hard drive wipe as well as Windows or Mac. They couldn't care less what data is on the machine.
If the thief DOES care what is on the machine I truly believe they will either know how to hack into it or they will have someone they trust do it for them. The target will be specifically picked out (random dumb luck isn't a good way to run an operation like this) and a plan will be in place down to what to do with the data once they have it.
...and statistics. This article was bit misleading and overstated the importance of the sudden surge in Linux server acquisitions. The actual numbers only suggest that 41% of an undisclosed number of CIOs had changed their Windows servers to Linux. While this sounds good up front (as the article intended), when one considers that if this undisclosed number were a small percentage of CIOs considering purchases then 41% of, say 5%, is not a whole lot. I think the article failed to mention how truly insignificant this 41% really is on purpose.
"Just what is it about the combination of blonde hair, motherhood, a cell phone, and a big gas-guzzling SUV that destroys brain cells so completely?"
:)
How many intelligent blondes do you know? You have to have brain cells to destroy first
Before you start calling people arrogant pricks, perhaps you should apprise yourself of Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 506 of the US Code. Copyright violations can incur criminal charges.
Actually the World Series was created by the owners of the Boston Red Sox. They felt thay had the best ball team in the, at the time, major leagues (I forget the actual league name). They challenged the next best ball team to a championship series (best of 5 I believe) and it would be the most spectacular championship the world had ever seen, hence the name WOrld Series. The name as stuck and teh Red Sox took most of the series until 1918 when they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees and teh Red Sox haven't won a series since. They've come close only to lose it on a stupid error or other mishap.
...I meant obscelesence. As someone who has recently gone through the painful process of cleaning up a flooded basement due to hot water heater giving out, it's quite clear. Devices have built in obscelesence otherwise people woudl not purchase more. Batteries die in a given amount of time and people run to the store to buy more. Where is the incentive for Energizer or Duracel to make their batteries 10x more efficient? Cares with 100mpg have been built but the patents have been bought by the big three and locked away. Look what happened to Tucker and his automobiles. I'm not condoning this practice but obscelesence is a common factor in a capitalistic society.
...does this sound like a pyramid scheme to anyone else?
...over /. once again. Many here decry the government's attempts at gaining access to information through laws and other legal avenues yet you also have no problems poking your noses in other people's networks without permission or through legal means. Regardless of how open these networks might be you have no right to acces them nor use their bandwidth for your own personal enjoyment. One might get the that many /.'ers are self-centered narcissists.
Windows needs it so they ship it with Windows already. IE the application can be removed. IE the underlying HTML rendering engine is intertwined with Windows and third party applications such that its removal would break applcations. The nine states are using the courts to dictate tehcnology Microsoft's competitors don't agree with. There is nothing that preculdes me from using Mozilla on my Windows XP system and completely ignore the existence of IE.
I have a bachelor's degree in Recording Industry Management: Production and Technology focus from MTSU so I'd say that not only do I have a better idea what the RIAA is and what it does, I have a much greater understanding of the music industry.
Depends on what you're doing but Word can reveal field codes and non-printing codes. If you want to know about a particular block of text, click on help -> what's this -> then click on the block of text. A dialog baloon will appear informing you what's going on with the block of text. Paragraph and font formatting are both revealed in this dialog. Alternatively you could press shift-F1 to call up the what's this pointer.
Excuse me but the RIAA is a non-profit organization compriosed of record labels themselves, and not just the big labels either. If you cut out the RIAA you cut out the people investing in the music business, the labels themselves. Or were you just looking for some /. karma and bashing the RIAA without having a clue as to who they are and what they do?
And it will only get better when Yukon and Exchange.NET are released.
This article was full of such mind-boggling bullshit about the future I feel like I need a shower to cleanse myself of the filth. I've seen far less fear-mongering from Fox News and Bill O'Reilly than what was exhibited here. In the future we will be locked out blah blah blah. Bullshit. If you believe this guy can tell the future then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Show me the facts that Microsoft, or any other proprietary vendor has demonstrated a user lockout of their documents.
/. spontaneously becoming an ardent Microsoft supporter.
In MS Word 2000 there are 28 different file formats I can save to and 27 different file formats I can open from. Granted if I want to use some of the formatting features of Word I might not be able to save it out faithfully in an older word format and I might have problems using RTF but this is to be expected. I don't expect to be able to save out a PSD document to JPEG and still maintain layers for future editing. It is absurd to expect this.
If I don't want to use any of the file formats in the save dialog drop down selection box I always have the option of obtaining Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat integrates with Office nicely but even if Microsoft wanted to keep Adobe from integrating with Office in this manner in the future one could still use PDF technology as it installs as a printer on your system. Microsoft would have to completely shut out PDF technology altogether and the likelihood of this happening is about as good as
The fact is this guy if full of himself and uses this fear-mongering bullshit I expect from Bill O'Reilly to push his wares on the OSS/Linux community. Many will fall at his feet and call him l337 because he bashes Microsoft in the article but few will actually listen to what he says, instead choosing to blindly follow because if it's Microsoft bashing from a Linux developer, it must be true. Bullshit, bullshit, twice again bullshit.
Perhaps this guy could get a guest spot with Miss Cleo if he's this good at telling the future.
It would look like the cell phone market. There would be no real solutions to problems, only competition creating new standards to wipe out their competitors.
Now where in my comment did I approach theproject leaders with contenpt for their efforts? Let me save you the effort of looking it up. I didn't. You mistook my open contempt for the process of OSS and many of the people leading the teams for the methods I choose to approach them. Pardon me for trying to help. In the future I'll be sure to pass because it is clear that with attitudes like yours OSS will go nowhere in the areas of user friendly UI development.
As I am a designer, not a programmer, I have to rely on others to implement the GUI designs I come up with. My experience to date has been rather sad to say the least. There is a "my camp"/"your camp" distinction because most of the developers I've offered my services to have snubbed me or flat out ignored me. So be it. But don't whine when your apps look like crap and are about as user friendly as punch cards on an old Honeywell or Data General main frame.
So far the OBOS group has been fairly receptive to the overall GUI look, though nothing is set in stone yet, but the functionlity has been an uphill battle. Some developers want things one way, some want things another and yet even more don't want any real advancement in GUIs for the OS at all. Until OSS groups learn to set firm project guidelines and milestones for these goals you will find help such as my own few and far between, if at all.
I stand corrected. For printing source code in books and manuals it is perhaps a better choice than a proportional font :)
/. has admitted to being wrong.
Now everyone run and hide. Someone on
"Guess it's time for the OSS people to make some decent-looking scalable both-screen-and-printer fonts (preferably TrueType). At minimum, we need nice-looking serif proportional (to replace Verdana), a sans proportional (to replace Georgia), and a mostly-sans fixed (to replace Andale Mono), all with good language support."
Verdana is a sans-serif font, Georgia is a serif font and Andale Mono is a fixed-width font based on a sans-serif typeface, there are no mostly-sans font types. Fixed-width fonts mean the spacing between characters is equal. These fonts were designed for use on terminals but are not very good modern on-screen fonts as many of the parameters the fixed-width fonts were designed to solve are no longer an issue. Fixed-width fonts have NEVER been good for print.
As font design can take years per font and even longer for an entire font family, I doubt you are going to get any professionals to donate their work just so they can have it named after themselves. Designers aren't as vein as many make them out to be. We take pride in having our work displayed but we also like to be compensated for our efforts.
I designed the Boston Breakers (WUSA) logo and I get giddy every time I see the signs outside the BU stadium or on NESN. By the way, my own website has another version of the logo I felt was much better suited for a sports team, so if you don't really care that much for the logo as is, blame the client. I designed a MUCH better wave and stashed the words "Boston" in a pill box beneath/slightly over the word "Breakers". I'm sure the designers at Chermeyeff and Geismar are rather elated whenever they see their own work on TV, billboards and signs around the country.
Anyway, my point is we don't design to have our names on the logos, fonts or collateral materials, we do it because we love design and solving problems. Our hobbies are our jobs and vice versa. We get paid doing something we truly love to do.
Now, this isn't to say we never donate our time and efforts. As a matter of fact, I am the creative design lead for OBOS (soon to be renamed). I have developed some preliminary design ideas for a modern GUI and am in the process of developing some functionality concepts to create a more user-friendly GUI. Hopefully the OBOS developers will see the wisdom behind the GUI and adopt the ideas I've been working on.
The biggest problem of most OSS projects is they do not make themselves available to people like me. Most developers think design is opening Photoshop and creating pretty pictures. Design is problem solving in much the same way programming is. We use a different language and set of tools but it is problem solving none the less. If the OSS community wants us to help them they are going to have to do better than offer to put our name in the credits, they are going to have to open their minds and listen.
I found NWN to be a second rate Baldur's Gate with the only major change being the use of a completely 3D environment. The shear number of load screens is ridiculous and the game becomes very monotonous at times. I was excited about gettign NWN but after playing it once, I doubt I'll be getting much replay value out of it unless a VERY cool module is released.
I'm not sure if it works with WINE or Crossover Office but you might consider getting Dungeon Siege instead. Not only were the graphics better, the total lack of loading screens (except for when you load a saved game or start a new game) was VERY, VERY cool. I guess this game spoiled me and I expected too much from NWN.
Also, not only is there a toolkit available to develop your own DS modules, there is a gmax module designed specifically for DS so you can make your own models for use as characters, objects, and terrain nodes. The DS community has also joined in to help develop tools to write skrit scripts and edit current modules. Granted, these dev tools require Windows but so does the Aurora toolkit for NWN.
...annoy^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing...
Why must the geeks beat this stupid joke into the ground? Say what you're going to say and be done with it.
So, basicaly, youre saying that contributing to an OSS project is like giving away your work for free to a lot of people that will use it for their project? Yes, thats the way OSS works too. I dont see whats wrong with that either, code is an art form too, so why is it okay to release code for free and not graphical art?
:)
:)
I never said one way or the other whether it was ok to release code or not. I find that the debate to use an open or closed license ridiculous and to villify one group or company for using a license you disagree with to be even more absurd.
What I did say is many OSS proponents do not fully appreciate what it is I, and others inmy profession, do. I am a graphic designer with experience and knowledge in GUI design and when I tell a programmer, that clearly lacks skill as a UI designer, their application needs to be better designed from a user standpoint I expect them to listen and not aruge.
If the OSS community wants designers to help, they are going to have to make concessions. This is for pratcical reasons as much as respecting what it is designer do. How would you as a programmer feel if someone else mangled your code beyond belief and you were blamed for it? If someone knows I designed a UI and someone else comes along and mangles it for their own purposes, it is very likely that my name will be associated with it in a negative way. I now have to become proactive in defending the original work I did and claiming no relation to the mangled work. Believe me, it's a mess and yes, it has happened to me both on a professional level and on work I have done for myself.
But frankly, its too bad that you are a part of the very small minority of artists/designers that ever heard about OSS and that is willing to contribute one way or another. Maybe you can give a clue to your fellow artists?
I think programmers need as much a clue as designers do. Many don't want to contribute because our advice is often times not heeded and when it is the implementation is half-assed. I would argue that programmers need to grow up and learn that they might know how to code but they don't know everything there is to know about designing an application
My apologies if this sounded argumentative and reporachful, this was not my intent. I'm writing this quickly and have not taken enough time to thoroughly consider my answers. Consider this a rough draft that I would be happy to clear up if you want to take the time to hunt down my e-mail through the OBOS project, perhaps take a peek at the work I have done already.
I think you should go through design school before you speak for the lot of us. I believe there is a VERY small minority of designers who truly believe they will have the impact of Paul Rand, Jan Tschihold or Saul Bass. The rest of us just don't like our work being ripped off by a group of people who lack talent to truly appreciate or understand our work. Being a graphic designer or artist is not about being able to use Photoshop, it is being able to communicate with visual and/or typographic elements.
Now, this is not to say that we won't get involved with OSS projects. In fact, I am currently the project lead for the OBOS creative design team. I've developed some ideas for a new GUI for the OS and am currently in the process of coming up with some new methods for working with a computer through a GUI. I'm donating my time and effort, not because I want to give the OSS community graphics they can rip off but because I have skills this project (and many other OSS projects frankly) could use. I also want to test out some ideas I have in GUI design and I can't do that without a project such as this. Since I don't program and none of the programmers can design this is seemingly a win-win situation for this group.