I love dinosaurs. Let’s get that out of the way before beginning this topic. I also love KDE Plasma! It allows me to have a much more efficient workflow with a custom layout and workspace grids.
Although I may be somewhat biased, I adore Bluefin’s branding, and because I prefer KDE Plasma over Gnome, I’d have to cast aside my appreciation for dinosaurs if I were to go for Aurora. But yeah, yeah, no big deal; it is how it is. The world doesn’t revolve around my personal tastes, and I can always customize Aurora to look like Bluefin.
Later on, while reading another topic, Rename “Aurora” to “Bluefin KDE” and “Aurora-DX” to “Bluefin-DX KDE”, I observed that there were some concerns about how the name of Aurora has no relation to Bluefin despite it being a part of the same overarching project. Although I disagree with renaming Aurora to “Bluefin KDE”, I understand where they’re coming from.
“Bluefin and Aurora” is a bit of a mouthful if you want to refer to the project behind them. Having them under one unified name would be ideal, and it would also future-proof the project for if and/or when the decision is made to expand into other desktop environments, such as Cosmic. Please consider that by the way, Cosmic looks awesome. But in the end, I just don’t believe that either Linux workstation should be renamed.
That sets the context for the idea that I’m about to propose.
Later on, while thinking back on the branding and my love for dinosaurs, I thought to myself: “What if Aurora had a titular dinosaur mascot of its own?”
Of course, the logo of Aurora wouldn’t need to be changed. Rather, she would serve as a mascot for Aurora and would be featured on locations such as the website and in brand-new desktop backgrounds.
Aurora the dinosaur, together with Bluefin the dinosaur, could bridge the gap in branding between Aurora and Bluefin. With a dinosaur to represent both projects, they could be portrayed together under a unified brand and provide a sense of consistency between how the two projects are represented.
This would also open up new opportunities. Because dinosaurs would now represent the brand of both Aurora and Bluefin, other aspects of their branding could take advantage of that; for example, we could create an overarching project name referring to them both, such as “Paleoblue.” I’m sure there are better names that could be used, but the point is, it would mean that we wouldn’t have to rename Aurora to have a label that could be used to refer to both projects.
Imagine it this way:
└── Paleoblue *(Name Pending)*
├── Bluefin
├── Aurora
└── <new projects w/ dinosaur mascots>
But even if an overarching name isn’t created to encompass both the Bluefin and Aurora projects, I still highly encourage the creation of a dinosaur mascot for Aurora. A consistent element in the branding between both projects would provide a sense of unity, Aurora benefit from having a mascot, and I’d love to see what designs people would come up with for her.