[Scribus] Flyer for Scribus

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Samstag, 20. Mai 2006 23:32 schrieb jwminer at accessvt.com:
> Thomas Z. wrote:
> > Please, feel free to tell me what do you think about it!
>
> This is a very promising flyer. Thanks for your efforts.
>
> There are some grammar mistakes and typographical no-nos that need
> to be fixed in order for the flyer to appear as professional as it
> needs to be. On the first page, "More Information and Downloads," it
> should be
> The Logos of Scribus's Friends
> instead of
> The Logo's of Scribus' Friends
>
> An error like that would put me off right away.<g> And I'm not the
> only one, I assure you.
>
> It should be
> Scribus's Friends
> at the top of the left column, not
> Scribus' Friends
>
> I wonder if you could include URLs for the friends. That would be
> helpful to the readers.
>
> There are several things that need fixing on page 2. I'll simply
> move through the text from the top.
> *     What is Scribus?
> and
> Why Scribus?
> don't belong in the top band because the text directly under "Why
> Scribus?" does not tell us why we should use Scribus. Perhaps if you
> moved the two lines at the bottom of column one to the top of column
> two you could leave What is Scribus? and Why Scribus? in the top
> band. You have plenty of room to do this if you reduced the size of
> the pen in the bottom right somewhat.
>
> *     There is no need to hyphenate Linux in "Open Source Desktop
> etc." Just move the whole word to the next line. In any case the
> hyphenation is incorrect because the word is pronounced LIN-uks in
> English, not LINE-uks. Hyphenated, the word is Lin-ux. But I

And while we're at it: publis-hing (last line, first column) must be 
publish-ing).

> wouldn't hyphenate it here.
>
> *     It should be Mac OS X, not MacOSX.
>
> *     Please use curly quotes!
>
> *     Calle d by
> Ne w s forge ,
> "..one of th e
> k ille r applications
> for Linux",

Then we have a missing dot in ".. one of " (first column). You should better 
use a real ellipsis here (Unicode 2026).

Also, Scribus runs on more than three "desktops". I doubt the KDE, GNOME, Xfce 
would like to be subsumed under "one desktop" ;)

Moreover, I wonder why you chose a white background. Personally I wouldn't 
care much about flyers that are simply printed on white paper. A coloured (in 
this case blue as used in the bands and the boxes) flyer is (almost) always 
more appealing, since it doesn't smell like "office" ;)

Finally one remark on the arrangement of texts. As the flyer is designed now, 
I can only imagine one way of it being folded, i. e. the third column of the 
2nd sheet (1st of the 1st) on the middle and then both on the 3rd of the 1st 
sheet/1st of the 2nd). That way, you see the title on the front, and on the 
back you have a lot of whitespace with the blue box at the bottom. That makes 
sense if something like address labels are supposed to be placed there later, 
otherwise, the box needs to be more centered (not absolutely centered, always 
leave a little more space to the bottom than to the top). The same goes for 
"Scribus friends". The eye expects something in the white space to be added, 
so a better distribution of icons and text on the page (again: _not_ equally) 
might help. As for the last page being filled with Scribus's friends, one 
could also think of moving them somewhere else, since one of the first things 
one sees after opening the flyer is "Scribus's friends", and I'm not sure if 
this was intended. All this is, of course, just a matter of personal taste :)

Cheers,

Christoph