The <filename class="directory">trunk/Identity</filename> directory The trunk/Identity directory implements The CentOS Project corporate identity based on the The CentOS Project mission and release schema. The CentOS Project exists to provide The CentOS Distribution. Additionally, The CentOS Project provides The CentOS Web and The CentOS Showroom to support and promote the existence of The CentOS Distribution, respectively. The CentOS Project corporate identity is the ``persona'' of the organization known as The CentOS Project. The CentOS Project corporate identity plays a significant role in the way The CentOS Project, as organization, presents itself to both internal and external stakeholders. In general terms, The CentOS Project corporate identity expresses the values and ambitions of The CentOS Project organization, its business, and its characteristics. The CentOS Project corporate identity provides visibility, recognizability, reputation, structure and identification to The CentOS Project organization by means of corporate design, corporate communication, and corporate behaviour. The corporate design is focused on the effective communication of corporate messages. Corporate messages are all the information emitted from the corporation to a target audience. In order for such communication to happen, it is required to put the messages on a medium available for the target audience to react upon. These media are know as corporate manifestations, because the corporation manifests its existence through them. The specific way used by the corporation to set their messages on different media is what the corporate design is about. The amount of manifestations a corporation uses to communicate its existence may very from one corporation to another. In the very specific case of The CentOS Project, the following corporate manifestations come to mind: The CentOS Distribution — This corporate manifestaion is built from SRPM packages. There are SRPM packages that make a remarkable use of images (e.g., Anaconda, Grub, Syslinux, Gdm, Kdm, Gsplash, Ksplash, Rhgb, Firstboot, etc.), packages that make a moderate use of images and packages that don't use images at all. Also, there are some packages that make use of text-based information that need to be changed, too (e.g., release notes, eula, the welcome page of the web browser, etc.), in order for The CentOS Project to comply the redistribution guidelines of its upstream provider. The CentOS Distribution corporate manifestation focuses its attention on SRPM packages that use images in a remarkable way, specifically those packages that contain branding information, in both image and textual format, from the upstream provider. This way, replacing image and text-based files, we implement the corporate design of The CentOS Distribution corporate manifestations. The CentOS Web — This corporate manifestation exists to support The CentOS Distribution corporate manifestation. The CentOS Web corporate manifestation covers web applications used by The CentOS Project to manifest its existence on the Internet. These web applications are free software and come from different providers which distribute their work with predefined visual styles. Frequently, these predefined visual styles have no visual relation among themselves and introduce some visual contraditions when they all are put together. These visual contraditions need to be removed in order to comply with The CentOS Project corporate structure guidelines. The CentOS Showroom — This corporate manifestation exists to promote The CentOS Distribution. The CentOS Showroom corporate manifestation covers industrial production of objects branded by The CentOS Project (e.g., clothes, stationery and installation media). These branded objects are for distribution on social events and/or shops. They provide a way of promotion and a route for commercialization that may help to aliviate The CentOS Project expenses (e.g., hosting, servers, full-time-developers, etc.), in a similar way as donations may do. The corporate manifestations above seem to cover all the media required by The CentOS Project, as organization, to show its existence. However, other corporate manifestations could be added in the future, if needed, to cover different areas like building, offices, transportation and whaterver medium The CentOS Project thouches to show its existence. The CentOS Project corporate communication is based on community communication and takes place through the following avenues: The CentOS Chat (#centos, #centos-social}, #centos-devel on irc.freenode.net) The CentOS Mailing Lists (). The CentOS Forums (). The CentOS Wiki (). Social events, interviews, conferences, etc. The CentOS Project corporate behaviour is based on community behaviour which take place in . The CentOS Project corporate structure is based on a monolithic corporate visual identity structure. In this configuration, one unique name and one unique visual style is used in all corporate manifestations of The CentOS Project. In a monolithic corporate visual identity structure, internal and external stakeholders feel a strong sensation of uniformity, orientation, and identification with the organization. No matter if you are visiting web sites, using the distribution, or acting on social events, the one unique name and one unique visual style connects them all to say: Hey! we are all part of The CentOS Project. Other corporate structures for The CentOS Project have been considered as well. Such is the case of producing one different visual style for each major release of The CentOS Distribution. This structure isn't inconvenient at all, but some visual contradictions could be introduced if it isn't applied correctly and we need to be aware of it. To apply it correctly, we need to know what The CentOS Project is made of. The CentOS Project, as organization, is mainly made of (but not limited to) three corporate manifestions: The CentOS Distribution, The CentOS Web and The CentOS Showroom. Inside The CentOS Distribution corporate manifestations, The CentOS Project maintains near to four different major releases of The CentOS Distribution (e.g., the operating system), parallely in time. However, inside The CentOS Web visual manifestations, the content is produced for no specific release information (e.g., there is no a complete web site for each major release of The CentOS Distribution individually, but one web site to cover them all). Likewise, the content produced in The CentOS Showroom is created for no release-specific at all, but for The CentOS Project in general. In order to produce the correct corporate structure for The CentOS Project, we need to concider all the corporate manifestations The CentOS Project is made of, not just one of them. If one different visual style is used for each major release of The CentOS Distribution, which one of those different visual styles would be used to cover the remaining visual manifestations The CentOS Project is made of (e.g., The CentOS Web and The CentOS Showroom)? Probably you are thinking, that's right, but The CentOS Brand connects them all already, why would we need to join them up into the same visual style too, isn't it more work to do, and harder to maintain? Harder to maintain, more work to do, probably. Specially when you consider that The CentOS Project has proven stability and consistency through time and, that, certainly, didn't come through swinging magical wands or something but hardly working out to automate tasks and providing maintainance through time. Said that, we consider that The CentOS Project corporate structure must be consequent with such stability and consistency tradition, beyond the work it might require initially. It is true that The CentOS Brand does connect all the visual manifestations it is present on, but that connection would be stronger if one unique visual style backups it, too. In fact, whatever thing you do to strength the visual connection among The CentOS Project corporate manifestations would be very good in favor of The CentOS Project recognition. Obviously, having just one visual style in all corporate manifestations for eternity would be a very boring thing and would give the impression of a visually dead project. So, there is no problem on creating a brand new visual style for each new major release of The CentOS Distribution, in order to refresh The CentOS Distribution visual style; the problem itself is in not propagating the brand new visual style created for the new release of The CentOS Distribution to all other visual manifestations The CentOS Project is made of, in a way The CentOS Project could be recognized no matter what corporate manifestation be in front of us. Such lack of uniformity is what introduces the visual contradition we are precisely trying to solve by mean of themes production in the CentOS Artwork Repository.