[Bf-docboard] Blender 2.40 QuickStart Guide (FINAL)

[Jef Jansen]

Hoi Frederic and Ewout,

Ewout has a big clue. The essence "the quickstart is a must have" next 
to the keyboard it's a excellent help. Quicstart in blue orange . Print 
it the way YOU like it and help is there.

Just a short comment before I leave my Mac for a week.

Greetings,
Merry Christmas and a Blenderfull Year

Jef


Op 23-dec-05 om 00:49 heeft Ewout Fernhout het volgende geschreven:

> Hello Frédéric,
> First of all I want to start by saying you did a great job at making
> this quickstart chart. It's nice for people to have on their desks
> when they just downloaded blender and don't know where to start. It's
> a very good reference for those difficult first days :o)
>
> Now I think there's a few things we want to accomplish with this
> chart. The most important and also the most obvious thing is that we
> want to show the user how blender works. However, that's not the only
> thing in my opinion. It needs to shine a bit aswell, after all this
> will be used by artists, not technicians! I totally understand your
> comments about being distracted, but only partly agree in this case.
> Especially since you do not seem to be working by this principle
> yourself. I found it very strange that you tried to make the icons
> something they are not. Why do you make 'fancy' vector icons that are
> based on the icons in the GUI, instead of actually using those? After
> all, that's what the user sees! It looks like you tried to make the
> document "shining" (as you call it) there aswell...
> Also, you say that the user knows it's Blender, but that doesn't mean
> it doesn't need the Blender stilo (and logo for that matter).
> I actually think that the chart is something between a marketing
> brochure and an educative document, since the user needs to be
> 'persuaded' to use blender. Look at it this way: if the user got a dry
> list of shortkeys and icons without any stiling, he/she would probably
> not be encouraged to read it.
>
> I find the ink problem a non-argument. That's for poor people, they
> should probably not print at all. If it was a whole book(let) I would
> agree, but this is just a sheet of paper, where a couple of more
> inkspots don't matter that much. Again, it's not a russian technical
> document (nofi). I do agree on the saturation, but it's hard balancing
> between boring and attractive.
>
> That said, I think we can draw some conclusions about how the document
> should look (these are all my opinion and I invite everyone to discuss
> this).
>
> * The document should be clearly structured, so the user can easily 
> find things.
> * Attention should be drawn to the important things.
> * The icons should be the actual icons used, not some fancy loose 
> interpretation
> * It's Blender, don't make it look like a generic document. Style
> consistency comforts the user/reader. What does a Blender logo
> hurt/break?
>
> Now about the colors. I think that, if I had to choose between your
> greyish blue or blender blue, I would opt for the last for consistency
> and because the greyish blue you used lacks definition in this
> context. However, that particular blue is pretty dark, so maybe blue
> is not a good choice after all. Blender.org also makes use of a lot of
> light-grey tints, perhaps use that if you want to save on ink?
>
> I would still opt for the orange. Why? Because it looks nice. I know
> it's saturated, but it's just one page. It's not like people will have
> to concentrate a lot on the page for long periods of time. I actually
> printed the last version by Pierre-Luc Auclair, and it's easy to read!
> The first comment I would (rather) give is that the font is probably
> too small. I know you're aiming for a one page document, but if you're
> talking about readability, I think that issue is far more important
> than the orange bars.
>
> About the document size: that's probably caused by the soft drop
> shadows. Your solution (which is what exactly what I proposed earlier
> and nicely done!) is better I think. The header images are just taking
> 10kb extra, which is not a big case IMO. Even the size it is now,
> 200kb, what's that anyway?
>
> Ewout
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