Preface

-------

Every single corporation, organization, society or community has its

own unique identity, even though their members don't take an

intentional control over it.  Having an strong identity plays a

significant role in the way the organization presents itself to both

internal and external stakeholders. It expresses the values and

ambitions of the organization, its business, and its characteristics.

It provides visibility, recognizability, reputation, structure and

identification to the organization by means of graphic design,

communication, and behavior.  This kind of control is expensive and

not all organizations are able to maintain it.  Nevertheless,

organizations can assume an acceptable degree of compromise and, based

on pragmatic facts, work on a consistent idea that can be

progressively improved through time.

To work on a consistent idea of identity, the organization defines its

mission and makes it public in a place everyone can read. Then, the

organization identifies each single manifestation where it shows its

existence on in order take control over their presentations. The

presentation of one organization is controlled by graphical components

like names, symbols, colors, logotypes and, social components like

rituals, behaviours and communication. All these components are

interrelated and affect the organization identity.

To effectively and efficiently control each single manifestation the

organization is made of, the organization creates and publishes its

``Identity Manual.'' In such a manual, the organization clearly

identifies the visual manifestations it wants to take control of and

how exactly to do that. It is a tool. It is a reference manual that

describes the organization itself.

Trough the years the CentOS community has shown a growing interest on

helping to develop The CentOS Project. Some people seem to be very

clear about what the project's needs are and how to maintain it being

a highly stable project, but others however don't get what The CentOS

Project is (even it is explained time after time) and sometimes decide

to put their efforts in the wrong direction making everything to be a

waste of time and source of distraction from what is really needed. In

order for the community to concentrate efforts in the right direction

effectively and efficiently, the community needs a visible reference

describing what these right directions are.

_The CentOS Project Identity Manual_ identifies and describes the key

manifestations of The CentOS Project identity.  This manual answers

the question ``What can I do for The CentOS Project?'' identifying

different work lines that relate one another and everyone can join in.

It describes a working environment where there are graphic designers

producing images, documenters producing documentation manuals (whose

use images produced by graphic designers), programmers producing

automation scripts (needed to standardize production tasks),

translators localizing source files created by graphic designers,

documenters and programmers and packagers collecting information from

all work lines for building RPM packages.

_The CentOS Project Identity Manual_ organizes content in two main

parts. The first part of the book (<<identity>>) describes conceptual

ideas about The CentOS Project corporate identity (e.g., mission,

names, symbols, colors and visual structure). It sets the background

information you need in order to understand the second part of the

book (<<repository>>) which describes the implementation of The CentOS

Project corporate identity (e.g., how to produce images, translations,

documents and packages).

Copyright

~~~~~~~~~

Copyright (C) 2009-2013 The CentOS Artwork SIG.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document

under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or

any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no

Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A

copy of the license is included in <<licenses-gfdl>>.

Feedback

~~~~~~~~

_The CentOS Project Identity Manual_ is a community effort and it

needs of your collaboration in order to get improved. If you find

problems in this book, please send your corrections, comments and

suggestions to CentOS artwork mailing list

(mailto:centos-artwork@centos.org[centos-artwork@centos.org]). This is

the central vain of discussion about The CentOS Project identity

inside the CentOS community.

When you send corrections to CentOS artwork mailing list, please be

sure to define what the problem exactly is, define where it is, and

the possible solution. This increases the chances that someone could

take it and implement it. Poorly described problems might be skipped

by people responsible of implementing the solutions. You might also

find useful to propose your initiatives as a community effort so they

can be validated and supported by the community itself.

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