Deevad wrote:Hi,

Having the new splash screen feature since a week makes me want to dive into study how to have a cool one for Krita. Here are my proposal. For other, feel free to use this thread to propose yours.

Template png with alpha : http://david.revoy.free.fr/forums/krita ... -alpha.png

Some exemple of how it looks with community artwork :








Note 1: The picture from Alexey and Ico-Dy normaly have a CC-By-Sa-Nc license that restrict me to publish 'cropped' or close-up version as it can be considered as a 'derivative work' from their original publishing ; but I think they will accept if it's to promote mainly there artworks without doing a bad-looking derivative and for a cool feature... On asking from them, I can remove the pictures.

Note 2: The Krita brush icon+splatter I created (I have it in SVG, and I use it as an icon too ) is based on a mix from Sebastian Kraft Mypaint brush icon (GPL) and Faenza's Matthieu James splat icons (GPL too ). Font 'prisoner sf' is a free public license fonts ( on every website of font , distribued without license ).

Thanks for include my artwork on the proposal. Yuo have also creative freedom to use my images marked as CC.any doubt, ask me please. i found the desing on the upper part very interesting too. make Krita looks cool (cooler than usual) . i have to finish the image by the way

This is mainly a mockup of the template. Most things can be swapped out as needed, including the artwork, the icon and the slogan (although I quite like all of them I've tried to work on a few of the points I brought up before. I've also added a mock screenshot to show how the splash looks in context, which I think is important to think about. Anyway. 'nuff rambling. On with the show:






The screenshot mockup (please view full size)

Kubuntiac,

Is this more of the direction you envisioned for the paint brush?

@Verbalshadow, while I start off talking about your image above, this is general thoughts about logo design for everyone. This isn't all aimed at you specifically.


They're definitely much better than the versions we've seen previously, especially the ink nib - which fits nicely with Krita being a part of Calligra... There's still a certain amount of cartooniness to them and yet, either way... while clear, I question whether a paintbrush is a little too obvious / generic for a logo at all... Let me explain.

Generally logo's / icons work best in my opinion when they represent the concept of what the app is trying to achieve.

For example the logo of FireFox (designed by a logo professional) is not a picture of a webpage. It's a (literally) blazing fast, tricky character (a fox) managing to explore the entire world. This emphasised Firefox's goals (at the time): Let people explore the world with more speed and freedom than ever before (when FF launched it was a *lot* faster than it's main competitor IE).

To me, the concept behind Krita is unlimited, professional-grade creative freedom and not just "painting". That's what makes us different from other projects like Kolorpaint which are also "painting", but have very different concepts behind them.

Illustrating a concept (exploration / creative freedom), rather than just a thing (webpage / paintbrush) also encourages us to find more distinctive, visually interesting images than straight representation of tools, which seems to me, to be an unwritten part of any effective design brief.

@ Kubuntiac : Maybe I read here about too much high expectation in general . Ambitious target looks to freeze the process, even if I understand it. Krita still run with the **** splash screen actually. I just want a better one, because for the moment I would be personaly ashame to start Krita to do a demo with in a conference.

@all artist : Thanks for your autorisations

@all : thanks for feedbacks

So, my initial idea was just to bring something better than what actually exist. For font / logo / dark or light , it's a matter of taste... I'm not against other choice, far from it ! I just gave mine...

Here I justify my choices : Gnome + Faenza icons ( default in Mint, thats why the icon is colored and have smooth curves and gradient ) + a mid-grey theme ( adviced for all computer graphics to have better value ; Blender propose a mid grey theme by default... )

I share the source of my SVG files ( inkscape ) with all vector + the font I used.

Feel free to tweak it to suit your taste.
http://david.revoy.free.fr/forums/krita ... G-font.zip

@Deevad - Sure. It would definitely be nice to get the splash screen replaced with *anything* else! Any of the proposals posted on this thread would be a huge improvement!

Thanks for being the person to get this discussion started! Hopefully we'll see some more great versions and get one accepted quickly! (Even if it's just temporary)

This is probably going overboard, but I wonder how hard it would be to have a light *and* a dark splash, and have Krita choose automatically based on your system colours...

@Kubuntiac : Thx and I agree For me dark or light is not really a big deal. I also like your light version, and I would be ok to have it even using a dark theme.

Krita's indentity is maybe the real root problem of this thread finally ;
- Official font ?
- Official logo ?

This would need to be defined by Boud really fast to drive the community imo ( yep, we need the old master opinion )

I totally agree that a temporary version is better than the current one. I don't think the color matters so much, Blender has a dark splash on dark application and that works too. I especially like the combination with dark + colorful image like the first or third.

For the logo the squirrel is my favorite. For the font I like the sans-serif font.

I'm fine with whichever splash is chosen Sven, either just commit one, or tell me which to convert and commit.

Done. But I still would like to have the squirrel

So , I will work again on the krita logo squirel design. For the moment this one is still too rigid and not enough iconographic.

If you want to change or custom the splash, here is the last SVG + font :
http://david.revoy.free.fr/forums/krita ... G-font.zip

The current one is temporary anyway. So we can wait for the new icon.

Krita 2.4 beta 1 is near... Time to create the final template for the splashscreen contents! I'm thinking of creating t-shirts, one unique one with the splash and a congratulatory text on the back, and ordinary 2.4 celebratory t-shirts for all of us!