Linux Mint Forums

Hi,

Introduction:

Linux Mint is becoming an important project and so it's time for it to get good promotional material and to give people the means to efficiently promote it. In comparison to other projects, we've made almost no efforts at marketing Linux Mint. I guess you're all aware of the marketing campaigns lead by Microsoft and Apple, and we can also appreciate the quality of the material provided by projects such as Fedora and OpenSUSE. Our desktop is among the best available, we're growing fast and it's been done with people talking to people and our popularity slowly spreading from ear to ear..

... surprisingly, our artwork has been very good too and there have been numerous talented artists signing their name onto our releases and the wallpapers made available to the community. So I guess all we need is to get started, to get organized and to work at promoting our project.

We're new to this of course, so I'm not really sure where to start. I guess the best thing is to let the artists throw the first drafts and follow their own intuition, and for us to provide the SVG versions of our logos and links to what is being done within the other projects in regards to marketing materials.

The Mint logo:

The Linux Mint logo is available in SVG, attached to this forum post.

Other projects:

Fedora:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/PromoBanners
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Banners
http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/banners/
http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/artwork/

OpenSUSE:
http://en.opensuse.org/Buttons
http://en.opensuse.org/Artwork/Banners
http://en.opensuse.org/Artwork/Countdown
http://en.opensuse.org/Artwork/Miscellaneous

Ubuntu:
http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WebsiteButtons
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerBanners
http://crunchbang.org/archives/2007/11/ ... rs-part-2/

Thanks in advance to everyone for helping out with this.

Clem.

If anyone has ideas for slogans/text for websites, post those also. I can put together a decent looking web-banner, the only hard part for me is writing the text. I should be able to get some together this afternoon.

For some time my laptop has been "tattooed" with a big Linux Mint Sticker I had made with a good quality PNG file I found hanging around the site.

It's simple, has the logo, the name and the tagline "from freedom came elegance". I didn't get the care to trim everything to look xtra nice, but still it is complimented when I open the little guy around in cafés and libraries. In fact, I even got people to try Mint on their machines just because of their curiosity!

The image of my little companion is here: http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/7519/mintsticker.jpg

Also, I'm about to start my exam period at university right now, but after that is through I'll see if there is anything left to be done!

Cheers!
Felipe Sentelhas

Good Ideas, I've made wallpapers with text & added mint logos, but I really haven't done anything else, would be glad to help with text, text images, text manuipulation if possable. Just leave me a message
jay514

I just finished messing around with a little idea I had, while I wait for the exam schedule.

Its a 80x15 button, in fact, more of a project, since I need to spend more time looking at it to see if I can improve things a little bit. It is attached Also! I need to ask Clem, what is the font you used for the name of the distro? juto to get the typography right!
In fact, I need it to write the "Get" before "Mint" in the banner!

Cheers!
Felipe Sentelhas

This is great! I'll get to work on a wallpaper.

reverend_nerd wrote:I just finished messing around with a little idea I had, while I wait for the exam schedule.

Its a 80x15 button, in fact, more of a project, since I need to spend more time looking at it to see if I can improve things a little bit. It is attached

mint_button.png

Also! I need to ask Clem, what is the font you used for the name of the distro? juto to get the typography right!
In fact, I need it to write the "Get" before "Mint" in the banner!

Cheers!
Felipe Sentelhas

There is no "real" official font, the closest we've got is this!

BTW, I'm also game for anything graphical or text wise - just toss out ideas if you've got them.
And not to toot my own horn here, but it would probably be nice to base the promotional material for Gloria on Mint Dew, to keep the look and user experience professional and uniform. - Just my 2 cents.

Zwopper wrote: There is no "real" official font, the closest we've got is this!

BTW, I'm also game for anything graphical or text wise - just toss out ideas if you've got them.
And not to toot my own horn here, but it would probably be nice to base the promotional material for Gloria on Mint Dew, to keep the look and user experience professional and uniform. - Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for the font, it is on a early stage and may receive some polishing, I'll consider doing that as well in a time soon.

As for the Dew theme, I second your opinion, we must have something that is a identifiable "trendmark"

In fact, I was going to suggest something interesting in that same way. Due to the flavoured name "Mint" holds, I believe that in the small buttons, constrained with small direct messages, we must use "taste mint", rather than "get mint".

Just like these button drafts I present.
The first with the typography from the logo,


Then two with the "taste mint" idea, first in Liberation Sans the second in Sans Bold. (these are good fonts to work with in ultra-low size)




Hope you like it! I just got an idea for a bigger banner, I'll get right into it!

Cheers!

Good job reverend_nerd.

Please note : This banner is a WORK IN PROGRESS,updated banner work continues at this link
( http://forums.linuxmint.com//viewtopic. ... 04#p156154 )

Old Banner : JaysBannerWork4.JPG Deleted

Nice there Jay, maybe a little busy...
And the font is kind of hard to read...

Just finished a banner



though, i'm not happy with the results yet! I'm trying to get the fell of the mint 7 splash loading screen! so slick!

That's all for today folks!

I think Jay's is a little too busy, when promoting elegance I think simpler is better. I really like reverend's design.

I agree with john that we should have some physical advertisements in the form or t-shirts and such. I know theres alot of Die Hard Linux fans out there that love to show off their geeky-ness. I personally would love to buy a Linux Mint T-shirt and support the project. I may not be a bad way of bringing in some funds as well.

Another Idea I had was some sort of flash video of mint and its features, like many of the flash adds we see everywhere, and of course it would like back to the site.

Please note : This banner is updated at this link
( http://forums.linuxmint.com//viewtopic. ... 04#p156154 )

Old banner GreenMossMintLogoWork6.JPG was Deleted from this post & updated at link.

Here is another banner from one of my wallpapers, I tried to keep it simple,just another Idea. I admit I think I am better at photography than I am at graphics. Comments are welcome.

Regarding text, I'm unfortunately too busy to try to write anything from scratch; but I would be more than happy to proofread/edit any text other people write, if you'd like. I do quite a bit of proofreading and editing for a living.

I think it is vitally important to ensure that the promotional text on the Web site is grammatically correct and easy to read. Novell's Web site is rife with typos in its promotional materials for OpenSUSE, and it, quite frankly, makes it very difficult to take their "we can topple Windows" stance seriously when their text is so poorly written.

EDIT - I forgot to mention that I would be proofreading/editing English text.

Also - if any help is needed on the Web site, I'd be more than happy to help with that, too.

A number of posts above have mentioned youtube videos, tutorial videos etc. For those interested in being involved in such things, check out the following thread:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=152&t=26525

Snapper.

jdcaraujo wrote:Hey everyone,

I had an idea for a t-shirt and a coffee mug, but I don't have a site or a ftp to drop the images for you to download.. Can somebody host them for me? they are small, don't worry:P (PM me)

I could try also to make a wallpaper, but I think we have plenty of awesome Mint wallpapers, so I will try to do different things:)

Daniel

imgx.org
deviantart.com

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Here's my banner: