> artists, user interface designers and others whose contributions would be valued by the community :)
Have you seen any discussions around things like: new Firefox UI, concepts for new LibreOffice UI, new versions of Gnome and KDE? Many communities certainly aren't very good at letting designers feel valued. Graphics is a perfect bike-shedding issue: everyone can have an opinion, can point to X examples that are "better" and many projects have difficulties to deal with that.
Graphics also profits very much from a consistent style, which a) requires someone to create such a style, b) for contributors to adhere to it. This makes small-scale contributions harder and less interesting, so it is harder for new designers to get started. Which again makes it harder to find people willing to do most of the work (which would lead to more consistent styles).
Most projects have coding leads that police code contributions in style. For graphics, you'd need a graphics lead that can have a similar role for design and is backed enough that they can ignore some criticism. Which leads back to the issue of getting people started and into such a trusted position. It requires trust by the designer that their invested time will be worth it, and trust by the project that handing a lot of control to the designer will have a good result and that they'll stay on board.
It seems to me that as a code contributor it is easier to "rise through the ranks" from small commits (and potentially staying there without issues). Splitting graphics work in small but interesting chunks seems way harder.
One game where it seems to have worked reasonably well is the transportation simulation Simutrans. There is a multitude of tilesets, but some of them work really well, despite being made by multiple people. Most of them are whimsical pixel-art style, which probably makes it easier to mix and match styles.
(Sorry if this comment is a bit all-over-the-place, but as I was writing new angles appeared)
Have you seen any discussions around things like: new Firefox UI, concepts for new LibreOffice UI, new versions of Gnome and KDE? Many communities certainly aren't very good at letting designers feel valued. Graphics is a perfect bike-shedding issue: everyone can have an opinion, can point to X examples that are "better" and many projects have difficulties to deal with that.
Graphics also profits very much from a consistent style, which a) requires someone to create such a style, b) for contributors to adhere to it. This makes small-scale contributions harder and less interesting, so it is harder for new designers to get started. Which again makes it harder to find people willing to do most of the work (which would lead to more consistent styles).
Most projects have coding leads that police code contributions in style. For graphics, you'd need a graphics lead that can have a similar role for design and is backed enough that they can ignore some criticism. Which leads back to the issue of getting people started and into such a trusted position. It requires trust by the designer that their invested time will be worth it, and trust by the project that handing a lot of control to the designer will have a good result and that they'll stay on board.
It seems to me that as a code contributor it is easier to "rise through the ranks" from small commits (and potentially staying there without issues). Splitting graphics work in small but interesting chunks seems way harder.
One game where it seems to have worked reasonably well is the transportation simulation Simutrans. There is a multitude of tilesets, but some of them work really well, despite being made by multiple people. Most of them are whimsical pixel-art style, which probably makes it easier to mix and match styles.
(Sorry if this comment is a bit all-over-the-place, but as I was writing new angles appeared)