Goals
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The trunk/Identity describes what The CentOS Project Corporate Identity is and the components it is made of.

Description
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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.

Figure: The CentOS Project Corporate Identity.

Corporate Mission
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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.

Corporate Design
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Corporate design is focused on the effective communication of corporate visual messages. Corporate visual messages are all the information emitted by a corporation that can be perceived by the people through their visual sence (i.e., the human eye).  In order for such visual communication to happen, it is required to put the visual message on medium available for people to see.  These kind of media are know as corporate visual manifestations, since the corporate manifests its existence through them using corporate design.

The amount of visual manifestations a corporation uses to communicate its existence is very specific to each corporation itself. Inside The CentOS Project Corporate Identity, considering The CentOS Project Corporate Structure, The CentOS Project Corporate Mission and The CentOS Project Release Schema, the following visual manifestations were defined:

The CentOS Distribution

     The CentOS Distribution visual manifestation exists to cover all actions related to artwork production and rebranding required by the The CentOS Distribution (see Directories trunk Identity Themes Models Default Distro) in order to comply with its upstream redistribution guidelines.

     The CentOS Distribution is made of software packages. Inside the distribution there are packages that make a remarkable use of images and there are packages that don't use images at all. The CentOS Distribution visual manifestation gets focused on software packages that do use images in a remarkable way (e.g., anaconda, grub, syslinux, gdm, kdm) and that way, through images, implements the corporate design in The CentOS Distribution (i.e., the operating system).

The CentOS Web

     The CentOS Web visual manifestation exists to support The CentOS Distribution.

     The CentOS Web covers web applications which let The CentOS Project to manifest its existence on the Internet. Through these web applications The CentOS Project provides Corporate Communication.  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

     The CentOS Showroom visual manifestation exists to promote The CentOS Distribution.

     The CentOS Showroom 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., electrical power, hosting, servers, full-time-developers, etc.), in a similar way as donations may do.

The visual manifestations above seem to cover all the media required by The CentOS Project, as organization, to show its existence. However, other visual manifestations could be added in the future, if needed, to cover different areas like building, offices, road transportation and whaterver visual manifestation The CentOS Project thouches to show its existence.

Corporate Communication
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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 (http://lists.centos.org/).

  * The CentOS Forums (http://forums.centos.org/).

  * The CentOS Wiki (http://wiki.centos.org/).

  * Social events, interviews, conferences, etc.

Corporate Behaviour
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The CentOS Project Corporate Behaviour is based on Community Behaviour which take place on Corporate Communication.

Corporate Structure
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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 visual manifestation of The CentOS Project.

In a monolithic corporate visual identity structure, internal and external stakeholders use to 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 visual manifestions: Distribution, Web and Showroom. Inside the Distribution visual manifestations, The CentOS Project maintains near to four different major releases of CentOS Distribution, 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 visual 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. 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. In fact, whatever thing you do to strength the visual connection among The CentOS Project visual manifestations would be very good in favor of The CentOS Project recognition.

Obviously, having just one visual style in all visual manifestations for eternity would be a very boring thing and would give the idea 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 visual 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.

Usage
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The trunk/Identity directory structure organizes most files used to build and implement The CentOS Project Corporate Identity. In that sake, the following work lines are available:

Brushes

     This work line provides brushes for GIMP. When you prepare the repository, brushes in this location are made available immediatly for you to use in the ``Brushes'' panel of GIMP.

     See Directories trunk Identity Brushes, for more information.

Fonts

     This work line provides the typography information required by all different visual manifestations of The CentOS Project. When you prepare the repository, fonts in this location are made available immediatly for you to use in GIMP and Inkscape.

     See Directories trunk Identity Fonts, for more information.

Images

     This work line provides output location for final images that don't need to use background images (e.g., brands, icons, illustrations, etc.).

     See Directories trunk Identity Images, for more information.

Models

     This work line provides design models for final images that don't need to use background images (e.g., brands, icons, illustrations, etc.).

     See Directories trunk Identity Models, for more information.

Palettes

     This work line provides palettes of colors for GIMP and Inkscape. When you prepare the repository, palettes of colors in this location are made available immediatly for you to use in the ``Palettes'' panel of GIMP and Inkscape.

     See Directories trunk Identity Palettes, for more information.

Patterns

     This work line provides patterns for GIMP. When you prepare the repository, patterns in this location are made available immediatly for you to use in the ``Patterns'' panel of GIMP.

     See Directories trunk Identity Patterns, for more information.

Themes

     This work line provides theme design models and theme artistic motifs for The CentOS Project. If you are interested in creating brand new visual styles for The CentOS Project this is the place for you.

     See Directories trunk Identity Themes, for more information.

Webenv

     This work line provides the HTML/XHTML and CSS standard definitions used by The CentOS Web visual manifestation. If you are a web developer and plan to improve The CentOS Web visual manifestation, then the files in this location may result very useful to you.

     See Directories trunk Identity Webenv, for more information.

See also
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See http://en.wikipedia.org/Corporate_identity (and related links), for general information on Corporate Identity.

Specially useful has been, and still is, the book Corporate Identity by Wally Olins (1989). This book provides many of the conceptual ideas we've used as base to build The CentOS Artwork Repository.