Free Culture Poster: Review
My dearest community, please consider spending a minute of your time reading this early draft of a poster I am constructing. It’s target audience is the general masses attending libraries, colleges and other public places and it’s attempting to genteelly introduce people to Free Culture concepts.
I need to make sure my working is good as well as my spelling, the blue boxes are for images which I’m getting a fellow artist to sketch up and should go in there soon. Do let me know if you want the svg before it’s complete, once out of draft I’ll add it to spread-ubuntu in A3 and Ledger sizes. Thank you everyone!
Tags: art, creative commons, free and open source, poster, the commons, Ubuntu
Looks like a typo “There are simple rules that help prevent abusive in any Commons” should be abuse instead of abusive? Should “Commons” be capitalized?
I like it overall, but I notice a few grammar errors.
“There are simple rules that help prevent abusive in any Commons, the most common abuse is preventing other people from gaining access.”
I believe you meant to use “abuse” rather than “abusive” there. Also, the sentence is a run-on. This might work better:
“There are simple rules that help prevent abuse in any Commons. The most common abuse is preventing other people from gaining access.”
“…These permissions are written down in the licenses that the work is published under and if you use a creative commons work you must follow the conditions.”
Without a comma before “and,” the sentence is a run-on. There are several ways to correct it:
1) “…published under, and if…”
2) “…published under; if…”
3) “…published under. If…”
“Free and Open Source Software is like the Creative Commons but for software, this set of permissions aims to create a community of programmers and users who are able to get together and improve upon any software.”
This is another run-on. It can be corrected in ways similar to the last one.
“…to meet virtually any users needs.”
Users should be the possessive form: “user’s”.
“Use this software, for any purpose without exception.”
Is the comma really necessary”
I would switch Gnu and Firefox… at first sight I was like, “I’ve never heard it Gnu OpenOffice before.” I understand all 4 are separate, but I think it would fit better switched.
I love the general look and feel here here, but I found the word spacing from that justified text _really_ distracting. Hyphens might help? (Though I have the vague recollection of someone telling me that’s a sin with narrow columns. I’m not a typography person).
Maybe it makes sense at bigger sizes… I guess we’ll see what everyone else says
Lots of comments follow!
Forgive me if I see any commas as periods, by the way. They are very similar this size.
*The Commons*
¶1:
“every member of the community…” I have a strange urge to turn that into “every member of a community.” It’s a bit snappier, and we haven’t really defined “the community” here.
¶2
“prevent abusive in any Commons,…” should be “prevent abuse in any Commons.” The comma at the end creates a run-on sentence. The bit after that should be a different sentence.
“comon” should be “common”
I actually found myself wondering why that second paragraph was there. It almost made me lose interest. You’re posing a problem (abuse) and its solution (rules) in the same place, and it doesn’t feel like anything has come out of that. That paragraph could be anywhere! On the other hand, the paragraph introducing what a commons is had a pretty cold example. I can’t say I’m excited by the idea of a public street being a commons. Perhaps replace the second paragraph to simply talk about how awesome commons are
*Creative Commons*
Okay, I like this section. It’s nicely split up, with the rules and permissions on the right to provide the meat. Cool!
Referring to Creative Commons as “the Creative Commons” seems, to me, like it may cause issues. After all, the idea is that Creative Commons provides those permissions; an individual permission is not a Creative Common. You know what you’re doing, though, so I would love to know if you’ve found this a better way of communicating it
¶2
“…as well as helping the community” should be “as well as help the community.”
*Free and Open Source*
¶1
“Free and Open Source Software is like the Creative Commons but for software.”
As a test, read this as “Free and Open Source Software is like that but for software.” See the problem? Have you considered getting rid of the “but for software” part? I would try “Computer software can be Free and Open Source, which is like Creative Commons.”
¶2
“…and users create an” — should be “creates”
“any users needs” — should be “any user’s needs.” Maybe just “any needs?” The word “users” is already used, and I always feel like I’m reading a technical document when I see that word used too much.
¶3
“In order to protect this community” should have a comma after it.
You use the acronym “FOSS” for the first time in this paragraph.
“Give back your modifications to…” doesn’t feel quite right to me, since nobody is deprived of anything in this process. How about “share your modifications with”?
Good luck with this! It _is_ a nice poster. I just like babbling. And the Compose key
Love the idea itself – would be great to have something like this to put up in libraries.
A few thoughts and nitpicks:
- Could a black and white version be created? For those who don’t have access to a high-quality color printer.
- Is the icon beside the “Improve” section a [hardware] nut? It doesn’t stand out as obviously being one, to me at least. Possibly could be made a bit clearer.
- A link to another site, besides the Creative Commons licensing page could be useful, if possible. Maybe a general-purpose OSS site or something related?
Like I said though, really like the idea.
I hope you do more posters in the future. This is the first time that I have seen one that I liked. It looks very professional and is definitely something I could use to explain freedom to folks. (Grammar and spelling errors notwithstanding.) I will review more fully tomorrow.
The bulletpoint in the rights list for opensource comes more under responsibility, rather than right…
In the CC section, it should read “Non-Commercial”, not “None Commercial”.
Regarding the icons in the “Free and Open Source” section:
The icon for “Use…” (an open hand) is likely to be misinterpreted as representing the hand gesture meaning “Stop” or “Talk to the hand”, etc.
The icon for “Improve…” (a nut) would be more recognizable with the addition of a wrench.
The icon for “Share…” (a gift) doesn’t seem to imply the correct meaning. Gifts in wrapping paper are typically physical items which (1) someone can’t easily make a duplicate of, and (2) are purchased. Both (1) and (2) are opposite of what’s common in free culture.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out a replacement for “Use…” and “Share…”, though.
Adam: That’s the hard part, these are the best I could do after several generations of icons. The hand I’ll keep as is, only in America does it mean stop, plenty of other places use the hand to mean help, work, do.
It may or may not be a gift, what ever your doing it’s sharing.
I used to have a spanner on the nut.
FOSS section, paragraph 2:
“an safe ecology” should be “a safe ecology”
paragraph 3:
“impliment” should be “implement”
Looks great! When it’s all finished I would like to post it up in my computer lab!
About the Use icon : maybe you could emphasize on the forefinger :
see http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ri5PucNSQBVj0M:http://images.apple.com/ca/iphone/how-to/content/images/tapapp_p1.png , or http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/006/Purple/f8/75/49/mzl.gfavzrpm.320×480-75.jpg with a 180° rotation
Other suggestion a nut with a tick which means that you can run the program
About the Improve icon : maybe you could show some tools, for instance http://www.feeverte.ch/images/Icones/bricoler.gif or http://crdp.ac-dijon.fr/IMG/gif_cle.gif
The 2 other icons are just great to me
Antistress: Your the first person to come to me with examples and logic, you have successfully influenced my art as a result and your ideas have been incorporated into a third set of icons. Thank you!