Joining Us

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Welcome to the Art Project thanks for your interest in joining us. For any questions or problems in joining please contact the Art Project mailing list. Be aware that it might take a little bit of time. Now to join please begin by taking a look below.

About the Art Project

The art project attempts to centralize all the OpenOffice.org related graphics and the graphics creation process so that everybody can easily find the needed graphics in one single location, and at the same time all new graphics requests can be directed to a single place.

Here is a brief list of activities inside the project:

  • Building an art directory containing the existing graphics across OpenOffice.org projects - The aim is to create and maintain a single repository where everybody can look for graphics related to OpenOffice.org. The way of doing it is by making contact with the projects, finding out about the existing graphics, and centralizing them in easily browseable galleries.
  • Creating new art - The OpenOffice.org project needs new graphics for its various components and activities. We encourage graphic artists to participate and contribute with their creations. Whether we are talking about new nice screenshots, new OpenOffice.org posters, nice CD-covers or improved GUI icon sets, new contributions in all these fields and many others help the project evolve and remain fresh. There can be freely contributed artwork in which you can put everything you like (i.e. the wallpapers), but there is also coordinated artwork which must be built according to certain specifications in order to keep a unified visual identity of the project. In return for your contributions we will try to promote your volunteer work as much as we can.
  • Translating and internationalizing art - Cooperating with Native-Language Projects is one of our main goals in order to make the graphics art usable for all the OpenOffice.org projects. This means translating existing art and newly created art into as many languages as we can and from specific languages into English in order for other projects to benefit from the contributions made by the Native Language Projects.

For a more complete list of activities in the Art Project visit the Open Tasks Page.

Wanting to Join

  • Register at OpenOffice.org
  • Join the Mailing List, most of our discussion goes on there, there are two ways:
    • 1.) Send an Email to mailto:sympa@marketing.openoffice.org?subject=subscribe%20art with or without content as the mailing list server needs only your Email address and the list you want subscribe to.
    • 2.) Go to this page and make sure your logged in then look for the art@marketing.openoffice.org mailing list and click the subscribe button. Note that you can get these emails in two formats, Digest and Message-by-Message, also note that you can unsubscribe here if you ever need to.
    • In both cases you'll get an Email from the list server (Subject: confirm subscribe to art@marketing.openoffice.org, Body starting with: "Hi! This is the ezmlm program.") you have to reply to before you receive all the mails sent to the list. Only after this subscription your mails have no longer to be moderated and reach the list immediately.
  • Make Yourself Known on our Mailing List, what we want to know a bit about is:
    • Your Name is probably a good start
    • How you got to OpenOffice.org
    • What you want to do?
    • How can we help?
    • Maybe even include previous artwork if you have any.
    • Anything else that is special or unique to you.
    • Or: Just say Hi.
  • Register at the Wiki (you might be on it now), we do most of our work on here because it makes an easy place to work.


Now that you can edit pages, and upload images on the wiki, we suggest:

  • Make Yourself a User page, go up to the top of the Wiki and click on your username. This takes you to YOUR user page, this lets anyone who wants to know a bit about you can just click that link.
    • Add "[[Category:Art]]" to the top of your user page in the wiki, this will add a sidebar which will allow you quick access to Art Project Links.
  • Now Add yourself to the Art Community

Please have a look at the basic contribution rules for the OpenOffice.org wiki.

After You Join

  • Stay in Contact with Our Mailing List
    • Give Us your Ideas (we would be welcomed to help)
    • Problems? Contact us too.
    • Questions? The Same.
  • Look at the Open Tasks Page.
  • Contribute to Work in Progress. Maybe even ask other project members on the list, if they need help, and join their groups.
  • In every case we'd like to know about what you are working on - and if you don't mind, we'd like to comment and/or contribute to your work too.

Creating Artwork

Want to create artwork?

  • Get an Image Editing Program, we recommend free libre open source software (FLOSS), such as Inkscape for vectors or GIMP for raster images, but you can also use something like Photoshop.
  • Get Familiar with the Program, then you can create better artwork.
  • Get Our Artwork Developer Sandbox in SVG or PNG, these give you essential artwork and things to get started.
  • Browse our Resources, if what you need isn't in the Sandbox.
  • Look at the OpenOffice.org Style Guide PDF. This is a little bit old of an file, but most of the information is still relevant. Other information can be found at the Visual Design Webpage and at the Art Project's Visual Identity page.
  • Launch that app and Create the awesome idea you have in your head.
  • Need Help, Want Opinions, Want to Collaborate: feel free to fall back on the Art Mailing List.

Showing the Artwork

  • Feel free to Upload that Image onto the Wiki.
  • Let Us Know by sending a message on the Mailing List.
  • If You were Solving or Contributing to a Task make a note of that too.
  • Then Add them to the right page(s) on the Wiki.
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