[Vote] Budget request for graphics agencies – 24k euro

Hi,

As requested by Italo Vignoli @italovignoli , I am submitting to the directors for approval a budget request for 24K euro per year to engage two different graphics agencies to help the project with branding and visual support for announcements and conferences.

The two agencies, one in Albania/Germany and one in Indonesia, have already contributed to the project with volunteer work and have shown their professional capabilities at international level.

Each agency would be retained for an amount of 1K euro per month, which will be spent in projects spanning several months each.

The vote runs 72h from now.

Best,

Eliane Domingos

1 Like

I am totally in favor of this request.

My vote: + 1

Best,
Eliane

I’m in favour as well.

Paolo

  • Please post @italovignoli 's request; it is difficult to evaluate this proposal without it.
  • What kind of branding and visual support are we asking for?
  • Is this a one-time expenditure, or will this be expected every year?
  • Does such expenditure not legally require some sort of tendering process?

24K EUR is about 20% of the overall expenditure on the annual conference in 2024 - so, not a small amount in relative terms.

I imagine such a proposal would require some discussion before being put to a vote. Can you please post its contents here as well?

1 Like

Hi,
+1 on my side also

Cheers
Sophie

My vote is to approve this request

S

+1 indeed.

and for reference : [libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice Podcast, Episode #1 - Marketing free and open source software (FOSS) – The Document Foundation Mailing List Archives

vs

https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/1gl7a4y/ai_in_agencies_nowadays/

What is meant by these references? Discussing LLM AI use with the agencies is a good idea although I think they are smart enough to not fall into the traps we read about all the time these days. See, for example, this collection of horror stories: https://aftermath.site/ai-video-game-development-art-vibe-coding-midjourney

“I have no idea how he ended up as an art director when he can’t visualise what he wants in his head unless can see some end results”, Bradley says. Rather than beginning with sketches and ideas, then iterating on those to produce a more finalised image or vision, Bradley says his boss will just keep prompting an AI for images until he finds one he likes, and then the art team will have to backwards engineer the whole thing to make it work.

“He doesn’t know that the important thing isn’t just the end result, it’s the journey and the questions you answer along the way”.

“What follows from these discussions is me explaining why, usually over hours rather than minutes, that these tools have no place in a professional game development pipeline or production and actually hinder the development of visuals”, Francis says. “I also find myself explaining to them how the iteration and ‘idea’ phase of a project is where the best stuff happens, how exploring things through artistic labor is where your best ideas come to fruition, and why would we want an AI (that we don’t even own) to do that for us with art that isn’t ours to use?”

1 Like

I think @EyalRozenberg (legitimate) question was, in part : who are “they” ? :innocent:

Hi, I support this vote.

Mike

I still don’t understand what you meant by your references to a podcast episode and a discussion about AI use in design agencies.

1 Like

Hi, I also don’t understand what the link to the podcast episode is supposed to mean here. Please elaborate :blush:

Anyway, I support this because we (the LibreOffice project) really need some high-quality, consistent visual branding IMO. None of us in the team are graphic designers, and while we’ve had some great contributions from the wider community over the years (many thanks for them!) it would be good to have regular, consistent work for things like:

  • Announcements, press releases and the conference (as Eliane mentioned)
  • Social media images and banners
  • Fundraising campaigns
  • Infographics showing what we do and how we work
  • Flyers, posters, rollup banners etc. for events

The answer to the question “who are them” is rather easy: they are members of our global community who have helped as volunteers in several instances, such as the organization of community events in Albania and Indonesia, including the LibreOffice Conference in Tirana in 2018 and at least two LibreOffice Asia Conferences, the organization of other LibreOffice Conferences, and several major announcements of LibreOffice.

In addition to being volunteers, they also are professionally skilled in visual arts, which makes them ideally suited for the kind of consultancy that we need to escalate our current visual identity and enrich our announcement with visual images.

Several members of the team have worked with these volunteers, have met them at events, and have developed a good relation with them. Based on these good relations, I have discussed with them the opportunity to work as consultants for TDF and LibreOffice based on a reasonable monthly retainer (professionals can’t always work for free, especially if we want them to provide their best not only in terms of visual skills but also in terms of strategic communication consultancy.

The monthly retainer we have set is extremely competitive for professional consultants, especially if you think that we will have a team of people working for TDF. Tendering the task would probably end up in a higher project cost (a monthly retainer is rather unusual for visual agencies, but gives TDF the possibility of having a predictable budget for the task, and has been accepted based on the good relations we have developed over the years).

A global agency focused on brand and visual support for announcements, apart from not knowing the open source environment, and as such missing most of the fundamental background we need to avoid spending days to provide a brief, would cost in the region of 100K euro per year. I am not working in the same professional area, but the daily cost of a professional in public relations would be between 2K euro and 5K euro according to the level of experience, and is not completely different from the cost of a professional visual consultant.

I will work with the two agencies to help them provide the best results for TDF, and will be supported by Mike Saunders for this task, and knowing the people I am sure we will be able to provide good results. Timing, unfortunately, is tight, as we should have started working on TDF branding, on a refresh of LibreOffice branding, and on better support for major announcements a long time ago.

1 Like

Hi,
And of course, is this new branding will be open sourced for communities ?

The idea is to create a flexible branding both for TDF and LibreOffice, with elements which can be used by native language communities by following specific guidelines and elements which can be used only by officials for formal communications and documents.

At the moment, LibreOffice trademark is not flexible - something which is rather normal - but this represents a limitation for native language communities which would like to integrate the logo with a sign which is specific to their language or culture.

We cannot make the trademark completely flexible, as otherwise it would not be possible to protect it, but we will find a solution. In any case, we will create a guide to help people, in order to avoid misuse of the trademark.

Although we have not yet started to work on the topic, I think that there will be two versions of the trademark, with the second one providing the needed flexibility for native language communities. Also, we will improve the LibreOffice Technology and the LibreOffice Ecosystem logo, to convince people to use them more frequently.

Looking at the license, we will have to ask a lawyer about the best options. Ideally, I would like to have a registered trademark which is easy to integrate with other elements (like a flag or a symbol), provided that the integration follows specific rules and does not modify the registered elements.