Improve Bartik's "Blue Lagoon" color scheme

I know there was supposed to be nothing said in regards to the logo but I think from a branding perspective that the Drupal logo should stay as the blue drop and not as a grey drop.

jaymiejones86, please see #848312: Create a new Druplicon logo for Bartik

Count this as a sub, I'll be back to actually say something later.

I think the idea is nothing about the logo in this issue, because we already have #848312: Create a new Druplicon logo for Bartik for discussing that. :)

Also, I marked #873086: Change the default footer color in Blue Lagoon color set of Bartik as a duplicate, even though it's older, since this issue attempts to resolve the issue more holistically.

Guidance from Jen there on footer colour was:

Yeah, actually, I agree with this. I made it brown to go with the blue when Blue Lagoon was not the default, and the grey/black & white theme was default. I didn't want the alternative-color-schemes to all have a dark-grey footer too, I wanted to show the user that the footer background changes, and give them some ideas..... figuring that many people would just go ahead and change the footer from brown to something else.

But now that Blue Lagoon is default, none of those ideas make sense anymore, and yeah, the brown is grating on my nerves too. I originally had a very dark blue for a while, but I don't like that either.

Let's change the footer background to a dark charcoal grey. 100% is too strong. And anything too light will cause contrast problems.

Looks like that's on the order of what Bojhan's suggestion is doing. (though I must say, I vastly prefer the current header gradient to this new one...)

On the short-list of concerns, could you elaborate on 3? (The visual style has a lot of resemblance to Drupal.org) The other two are clearly sub-optimal, but I'm not sure why this one is.

How about blue-grey(#23445F). Passed color contrast analyzer test.

How about blue-grey(#23445F). Passed color contrast analyzer test.

-1 – I don1t like that #23445F :o(

Thanks for creating a more holistic issue about Bartik's default color set! But I have to say that I like the recent header gradient too. :o)

It' s importatnt to remember, that Bartik has Featured and Triptchy regions, however they can't be seen in a fresh D7 install. They are some kind of light grey, and when we change the Footer (and maybe the Header...) we have to remember them. (If they weren't there I would try to set a light gray to the footer, just like the redesign of drupal.org...)

I think a dark grey works well, when the site has content. But it's too strong without content (think of a fresh install!). So I still recommend (to test) #0368a7 as footer color!

Ok, if it is allowed to critisize current Bartik theme, I'll share my thoughts as well.

Its design is primitive. Simple and primitive are two different things. It is another a-la Bluemarine theme, with no individuality. And Bartik has a mission of the first impression for the upcomming D7 release. One of the reasons - colours. I understand that we have to stick to Drupal's corporate light-blue colour or gray, but still we can make it more interesting.
Font... Sorry who decided to use all those Georgia, Helvetica Neue, Lucida Grande fonts? Windows has 95% market share and lacks all those fonts. So, Times New Roman is going to be the theme's default font?

I tried to imagine the whole idea of this theme.
Keywords: woman, technology
Tags: retro, printed circuit board (pcb), punched card

I'm almost sure the header fill shouldn't be monotone. We can make it look "more rich" with gradient fill, or with some pattern (see attached samples).

Please have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card
And especially this one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blue-punch-card-front-horiz.png
Its blue-gray colour fits perfectly, and provides good background for both white and black text.

I would go even further and would suggest a "watermark" for the header, or something like that.

One more possible watermark. Just a general idea.

I don't want to touch the color of the Featured and Triptych, just wanted to remember ourselves that they are exist and the color of Footer and Header must go with their color... Thanks for doing a picture about my suggestion.

I'd like to apologize for the "-1", I didn't know that I shouldn't use it here. I just wanted to say that I dont like that blue-grey. It does not looks nice, so that is not a good idea IMHO.

I' don't think that my recommendation is the best, it is an idea, a way to try.

I think that drupal.org colored drupal sites don't weaken the drupal.org brand. Drupal.org has is own layout which makes it different from standard drupal installations. But if you are right, maybe we should not use a blue color set as default, instead of we should use something else.

Bojhan, I like the grey footer in #2, and it fits in with jensimmons's request to use a dark grey.
I agree with webchick, I think the current header is fine.

I think the similarities between Bartik and the d.o redesign, and even Garland, is a huge plus. I don't think it weakens the brand, I think it reinforces it. It is an immediate sign that "This is a Drupal site". Re-coloring is so simple that we're not forcing this on them, but I think it provides a unified experience when first installing D7.

mertskeli, almost everything you said is out of scope. We're discussing the color scheme, not adding a background image (which wouldn't work well with color.module), and the font stack is completely unrelated. Also, Georgia is web-safe and released by Microsoft in 1996, and bundled with IE4.

I tend to agree with tim.plunkett on the branding issue.

On concern #2 (the header visually has a lot of resemblance to Garland), one 5-second solution to this would be to make one of the other colour schemes in Garland the default, and change the screenshot accordingly.

Patch and screen shot attached.

Moving on, again - I hate it if this would turn into a brand discussion, we can simply fix the header and footer.

Er. Well I don't understand how we can fix the header/footer colour if we can't answer the question, "Is Drupal looking similar to Drupal.org (post-redesign) desirable or not?" Or are you saying that within the confines of this issue, we aren't changing the base colours of the theme, just making them match? Because if so, I can definitely get behind that idea: it helps scope the discussion to "We're doing a blue header, similar or equal to what's there now, and we need a good matching footer colour."

But if that's not what you're saying, I don't see how we can kill off the brand discussion on this issue, at least as it relates to the colours of our brand.

Ok, sorry for interference. I worry it not to become less "expensive" than Garland.

Great discussion here. To me #8 reminds me of bluemarine color scheme. Blues and Greys. I must say that it looks a million times better than bluemarine though.

We are indeed still doing a blue header and a matching footer, but we need to apply some nuance to the header to make it not look so similar to other brand parts as Garland and Drupal.org

Ok, perfect. That helps scope this issue down to something decently manageable, rather than the true definition of a "What colour to paint the bikeshed?" argument. :)

I'll now try to stay out of this issue and let the designers work. :)

EDIT: Duh. I now see this was in the original post all the time! /me obviously needs reading glasses... :\

The patch failed due to CVS being stupid, but I won't bother to reroll it until we've come to a consensus.

So far all we've done is tweak the footer color (with no decision yet), which was what #873086: Change the default footer color in Blue Lagoon color set of Bartik was about.
Those who want to change the header, please make a suggestion so we can keep things moving.

I'm quite happy with the look of #18 - although I'd love that druplicon changed (that's not in this issue, I know I know...).

Good, #18 is the screenshot I uploaded. Reroll!

I think #18 is an improvement ... and the patch in #27 looks good.

#18 looks bloody great- the blue is very clean and crisp and brings more definition to the tabs, the dark gray footer compliments well. Good work.

So we are indeed wanting to stay with blue for default ? :(
I can see it would have been to bold a step for d.o., but for our base theme...
This would be missing a big chance to show "This is not the drupal you used to know".

For the blue style it should be enough to give the footer a better fitting, non-brown color. #27 makes it quite a bit better, while I'd rather suggest the footer to be a bit less dark, using #444444 looks fine for me.

The scope of this issue is wider, though: It is (so I hope ;) ) not yet decided we go with a blue style for default. Let's leave it with the blue one for the moment and instead develop a bunch of nice color styles and improve the existing ones over here:
#883422: Add Green Color Scheme to Bartik
and choose one for default if we made some that are good. If it be for the blue one in the end, be it. But not without having tried other ones...

I started out with a green one (attached as patch). It is not set as default, but is named "Grass". I also made the content headers recolorable to allow for more variations. Leaving the patch over at the other issue to not confuse with the existing one here.
Screenshot of Grass style:

@Bojhan So it is decided that blue will be default?

As far as I know its decided the default is the blue scheme (it was one of the changes made by webchick prior to the core commit as far as I recall), we need to focus on the blue scheme and get that looking really good.

Maybe this title will help keep us on task ...

@eigantor: making blue lagoon the default color scheme was a requirement enforced by webchick before she would commit Bartik to core, so yes the decision has been made. If you want to open a new issue to discuss changing that decision, please do

I agree making the default Bartik look resemble drupal.org too much can easily be a misfire. Let's keep that look/brand for drupal.org.

Why is this "critical" rather than "major"?

Also, why isn't it RTBC? :) Is the idea that we'd prefer to change all the colors at once rather than committing an interim patch just for the footer? Otherwise, seems like this should be committed...

To avoid bikeshedding, this issue should focus on the default alone. That is what 99% of Drupal installers will see, and it's the only important scheme by a very large margin.

There seems to be a consensus (at least somewhat) that the patch/scheme in #27 works well, and doesn't infringe too much on the new drupal.org look...

Follow up issue #1: #848312: Create a new Druplicon logo for Bartik

Needs sign-off from Jen.

Let's have Jen mark it RTBC then. :)

At code sprint, we agreed that this is non critical. We all want it of course.

Can we also agree that RTBC != RTBJ? :)

I mean, it's great we have maintainers and all and obviously maintainers' input should get a lot of weight, but I don't like the idea that only one person can mark something RTBC and we have to wait around for them no matter what. When I signed up at #621618: Revamp MAINTAINERS.txt to be a maintainer, that's not what I signed up for... Bartik is part of Drupal core and therefore belongs to everyone, and this is a small patch which could easily be rolled back if it turns out there is some reason to.

Well, based on http://drupal.org/node/45111 this would definitely be "major" not "critical" - but on the other hand, we probably aren't following that to the letter elsewhere either.

If it gets committed, then it doesn't matter what priority it was :)

We don't technically need sign-off from Jen so I'd be more than happy to just commit it. Given that it changes her visual designs, I feel like I want to give her the opportunity to chime in. Designers often feel passionate about their designs, so I want to respect that. If she doesn't respond in the next couple of hours, I'll go ahead with what we have and then we can follow-up with other patches, if necessary.

I don't think this issue is 'critical' either, but I'm not worried that it won't get it so I'm OK with leaving it as 'critical' for the next couple of hours.

Talked with jensimmons in IRC about this before she boarded her plane. We're obviously sticking with a dark grey, but she's right that it could use a contrast check so that we pick the exact shade of grey.

I'll leave her to mark it RTBC, and we'll be on our way.

(Still not critical, but I'm not getting mixed up in that disagreement.)

I appreciate people wanting to make sure I've had a chance to look at things like this before making a change. I am getting on a plane in a few mins. So here's what I've got so far.

About the Header image:

I absolutely did not want to put a fixed/set image on the theme. Most people would have no idea how to change that image and would not want to use the default. Other themes in contrib can have images that are permanently part of the look.

I do love the idea of providing a way for people to upload their own header image. I would have added that to Bartik months ago if it was possible to do so in a core theme. It's not. Providing that kind of functionality is a feature that must be added to all of core — not to just one core theme. And that's a bigger project that can only happen during a code thaw.

Meanwhile, I really wanted to provide a way for people to place their own images in the header of Bartik. So, I've been talking to different developers about the idea for months. Finally, a frantic and fun conversation with Jeff Eaton led him to jump on the idea and create Noggin: http://drupal.org/project/noggin So now, the functionality exists — it's just a matter to telling people to go use that module.

And if people who make decisions about Drupal core like Noggin, and like the technological approach, then perhaps that module can be moved into core for D8.

OK — these colors. I do think changing the footer background color is the way to go. Like tim.plunkett just said, I want to double check the color contrast and make sure it's strong enough. That shade of grey is right on the edge. I'm working on that now (although I'll probably have to wait until I land in CPH to finish.)

Ok. I think that #2d2d2d is bit too light. It's playing right on the edge of AA-level accessibility color contrast, and I think we should be more inside the limit for the default color scheme. I've played on that edge with some of the alternative color schemes (staying inside the limit), but for the default, I'd like for the contrast to be more clear.

So let's use #292929 as the footer background color.

Done. Passes tests, looks awesome.

Screenshot:

Looks RTBC to me.

I guess that wraps it up, though @tim, please don't mark your own patches rtbc...

A-l-l-righty then. Committed to CVS HEAD. Thanks!

Regarding RTBJ, if there's a patch around that makes fundamental changes to the developer-facing API of DBTNG, I certainly would wait to get Crell's feedback on that before committing it, even if 15 other people thought it was a good idea.

I therefore don't think it's unreasonable to get Bartik's architect involved in major user-facing changes to the default branding of the design, regardless of how many +1s a patch has. The situation doesn't change just because we're talking about colours instead of function signatures.

Glad to see this is committed, though.

So I'll try not be too derailing ;)
If we really wanna get away from Garland an drupal.org resemblance, the header can not be such a saturated blue.
Well, this point seems to be a bit controversial - the original issue description mentions it as a problem, but there were also voices pro Garland and d.o. resemblance because of branding.

If it shall be done and one reduces the saturation and make the header color brighter, the theme starts to look a bit pale and not so cheerful.

Maybe #883684: Make Bartik Content headers recolorable gets interesting for this, because it allows for moving some of the color accent into the content area, so the other areas do not need as much color.

Downgrade per Dries's comment and per our Priority guidelines (which apply to all issues. help make guidelines better.)

I'd like to resurrect webchick's suggestion in #16. Now that default Bartik looks great, why don't we leave it alone and just pick a different default Garland color scheme?

Changing Garland Color does not help - People remember blue Garland from 3792 ugly drupal sites.

I'm not really certain about this brand confusion issue - seems to me it could, as easily, reinforce the brand, as opposed to weaken it.

Are subtle changes really going to make much difference - won't most just see a fat blue header?

Given that we need to maintain the contrast ratio one thinks the only direction is more contrast, more saturation etc - i.e. a fat dark-blue header?

Personally I like the status quo.

Well, if one makes the color a lot brighter, it is definitely different.

If one likes it, is another thing (can this avoid the connotation "baby-blue" ?)
But - definitely different.

This is just my opinion, but alot of the themes are kind of clustered up with a ton of stuff on them, a little delineation doesn't really hurt here.

@cainchild - the color scheme is all that will be discussed in this thread... and at this point in D7 development, major theme changes like footer redesigns, etc. will have to be tabled. Just fyi.

Actually, there are larger redesigns being contemplated, for example, #889982: Move secondary links to the header in Bartik. However, as stated previously, this issue should stay on topic about the colors. If you want to do something about footer stuff, feel free to create a a new issue.

That being said, for what it's worth I like the colors in #65. It makes the grey druplicon stand out more. (Although that might be changed in #848312: Create a new Druplicon logo for Bartik.)

@amc - yes but these are more like tweaks in response to the outcome of other long standing issues i.e. 1) moving the secondary links to the header is a requirements change - previously we had decided core themes could place secondary links in the footer, but after a very long discussion this is now reversed, and 2) "omg not that same old same old drupalicon as a logo - its time for something new", which does not require a change in the header design.

There is an outstanding design issue regarding the header region which needs to be solved.

sub

While Bartik may be a technically good theme, and work well for most starter sites, it's flat, dated and frankly dull.

The default theme for Drupal 7 should offer a "wow factor", look slick, three-dimensional (rounded bevelled corners), glossy, and make people want to "buy" Drupal. And ideally it should be available in half a dozen customizable colors.

It should also demonstrate basic functionality such as rotating banner heading, title, subhead, mission, breadcrumbs, fixed/100% widths, multidemensional drop-down menus, lots of areas.

Drupal's "look" is first thing that people see. It should look... wow!

@iantresman - when posting in the issue queue please keep on topic, this is about improving the color scheme. While you may have a difference of opinion regarding the default core theme this is not the place to discuss it.

I'm not sure I see anything else here to be done for D7. The footer colour is fixed, and that's probably about the best we can do.

Agree with webchick, I think we're done here - to me header is just great as it is and I can't see a great driving force to change it at this late stage. Lets move on, lots of other Bartik issues to work through in the next couple of weeks...

Well if its any consultation by the time the (mythological) d.o redesign rolls out Bartik will probably be ancient history... ouch! Just kidding...

When was this confirmed as a "considerable bug"?

Bojhan, in #18 you clarified that both webchick and I thought that the header color wasn't an issue, and you made the good suggestion that we "keep iterating". I did my part to help fix the footer color, but since Dries committed that, there has been no other progress made. There are 40ish other Bartik issues open that are actual bugs, let's focus on them.

That said, I agree that this could be valid for D8, so I'm not going to reclose this.

This is not critical, nor is it a task - its a strait out feature request. A task implies this is something that should be done, however I believe we are long way from that conclusion. If the design is to be changed it's a feature request or a bug, regardless of the reasoning. I don't see a bug here.

Bojhan, who decided that I was a non-designer? Unless you weren't referring to me. Either way, I eagerly await debating you for D8 :)

Oh thanks, that was immensely helpful! I would also love to know if the banner images are responsive? I mean a rotatable banner images as in the "Blue Masters" theme? This was the only reason why I was thinking to jump to the Blue Masters theme, otherwise I love Bartik! Its simple and elegant.

With reference to #51