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Keep Calm and Carry On Poster.svg

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Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 20 Oct 2011 at 22:21:51 (UTC)

Inaccurate rendering of a 1939 poster
Reason
This is an inaccurate, faithless rendering of a 1939 poster. I have (so far) four main complaints: 1) The font weight seems just a little too much. 2) The letter spacing is completely wrong - much too close together. 3) The sentence spacing is too tight. 4) The colour is completely wrong; the original is not a dayglo red. These things being the case - certainly the last three - it just is not the same as the original. On what basis are we featuring something which is (at least for me) a travesty of the original?
Articles this image appears in
Keep Calm and Carry On
Previous nomination/s
Promoted, Earlier, not promoted
Nominator
Tagishsimon (talk)
  • Comment Hi there, this is Mononomic, the creator of this image. This originally was a task I picked up from the Graphic Lab, so I feel somewhat at fault for the accusations made here. I'll address the complaints one by one.
Firstly, the vector image was traced in Illustrator from one of the higher-resolution images out of the countless sources from the Internet (copyright has long expired). The idea of having one "original" is somewhat flawed: the original is in a glass case somewhere in England; no "original" can exist in digital form, only close representations of that image. I can guarantee that it matches pixel-perfect to a specific source image, but people's different photographs (angles, lenses, lighting) are bound to produce totally different images that only approximate the original work. As for the font, the sentence spacing and text weight is not a "font face" as some have mentioned: many fonts are similar to the type used here, but historians have agreed that the type was set by hand for this design and is thus impossible to reproduce with a commercial font. As for the color concerns, even the original poster—the one printed by the Ministry of Information—has undergone color shifts over time due to fading, etc. and I picked something close. Even so, a ten-second fix in Illustrator could fix the color issue without having to break out the mob and delist this from Featured status.
It seems that my work is seen "faithless" depiction of a poster, a "travesty" perhaps. If you'd like, I'd be happy to retrace the poster from a new "original" that is deemed to be more of an accurate representation of the true original. I believe that presenting this historical object in vector (SVG) format emphasizes the graphic qualities of the original artwork, instead of the photographer's ability to take a picture of the poster which may or may not be an original. By distilling an iconic image such as this one into vector format, we are providing a professional and accurate depiction of the fundamental intent and message of the poster.
I hope this clears some things up. I'll be checking back to see how it progresses. Cheers, —Mono·nomic 04:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Can you provide the source of the image you used to trace from? There's TONS of remade versions of this floating on the internet, from new products, t-shirts, everything. The link above is a photograph of a real original poster (at some book store that found a copy and has it on the wall), it's pretty high resolution, just not a straight on shot, so it needs fixed in Photoshop before you can trace. I have SIGNIFICANT experience in Photoshop and illustrator (10 years working in graphic design from newspapers to magazines) so I'm not a total noob here. I have a strong feeling that either (a) there are multiple versions of this that the government put out, which is possible, poster making in that time wasn't really an exact process and there was variation between the versions. It's probably stenciled and hand painted posters, if I had to guess. All I can say is the poster I compared it too, it is not an accurate match to it, the front spacing is off, the line spacing is off, and the crown is the wrong size and not in the same position. I'm not 100% sure that you didn't accurately retrace another version of the poster, and from what I know of poster making of the period it's very possible that there is wide variation in each poster. But please show us what you traced so we can decide from that? — raekyt 04:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's definitely not an image of an original poster, that's someone's recreation of it. From our comparisons with original posters there is some fairly significant differences in the typeface and formatting. It can probably be resolved, but as it stands I'm still sticking to delisting until theses issues are resolved. — raekyt 06:02, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to accept that Mononomic's recreation is a faithful copy of whatever he/she copied it from, but as observed here and elsewhere, it is not a copy of the original. That makes it faithless. And the colour is a complete and utter travesty. Sorry dude, but even accounting for colour shift arising out of the passage of time, the original was never a dayglo gloss red. In the event that you do recreate it and wish it to be featured, you need to make a much better colour choice than you did this time around. I don't know how you create a matt orangy-red in photoshop, but I can advise that it is not a uniform d00000 (which would be what? Some sort of primary red colour?).
Your comments on the "mob" are not helpful. The fact is that by the lottery of these things, the photo came up as prospective picture of the day. That was the point at which I became aware that it was featured; the image had been pissing me off for some time previously - vide my recaptioning in September. It's clear to me that the original listing was flawed, and the correct thing is to delist, pending an improvement such that a recreation can be considered for a new listing. The incorrect thing is to keep a flawed image listed, on the off chance that an improvement can be made. I'm sorry, but not very surprised, that you are now a bit pissed off. But that's what happens when you pass off a flawed copy as an original, even if you're unaware that that is what you're doing. --09:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagishsimon (talk • contribs)
  • I understand your concerns. I'll see if I can trace a new poster based on the image raeky provided that would be more suitable. I believe FP delists have 14 days from the original nomination until a verdict is reached, no? We'll see what I can get done by then. If you can find another source image that would be more suitable, please let me know. Cheers, —Mono·nomic 15:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I admire your reaction to all of this. I suspect in your position I'd have succumbed to the temptation to say say "sod it" or "bugger them" and walked away from it all. So you have my vote for red poster wikipedian of the year; if that helps. I don't know of any other online sources of the poster, but point you at the final comment of the first thread on the KC&CO talk page Talk:Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On#Poster_shows_modern_recreation.2C_not_original which (assuming good faith) has a link to a scan of the original. Right now, possibly related to the ongoing trade mark dispute, Barter Books has taken down their original copy. I'll see if I can find out where it is and get a photo of it. Finally, I wouldn't worry about whether or not this instance is delisted. If you come up with a faithful version, you'll get widespread support - including mine. Time is not of the essence; accuracy is. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:08, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've uploaded a snap of the original poster Image:Keep Calm And Carry On - Original poster - Barter Books - 17-Oct-2011.jpg and have swapped out the SVG from the article page. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:24, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like we have our replacement candidate. Does somebody want to take this on or do we have to bring it to the graphics lab? upstateNYer 00:43, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't support that as a replacement, it has reflections from the glass frame and the skewing isn't exactly right. — raekyt 05:26, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed; it's not & never will be a candidate for a FP. Meanwhile I've started a discussion on the KC&CO talk page as to whether we'd prefer a flawed photo of a shiny synthetic replacement. Contributions welcomed. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:26, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or abort nom as per previous comment that this is the wrong channel for raising the complaint. I've now made a minimal fix to the file, which is to put the crown symbol in the same relation with the "KEEP" text as is found in Tagishsimon's uploaded image. I'm under no illusion that this puts things right, but I'm confident that others will build on my work to make it so. Have at it! Samsara (FA • FP) 11:23, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. The colour is still all wrong. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure how that was relevant to my previous statement, but I'll just point out that there seems to be no consensus yet on what the colour should be. I should emphasise that I in no way volunteer to be your foil for this issue. If you want to debate the merits of showing the colours as faded vs. what they would have looked like in the day, please find someone else who has that sort of expertise. Samsara (FA • FP) 22:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let me spell it out, Bubba. You're recommending that the nomination be aborted and, if I understand you, that we keep the featured status. I disagree, because I think the colour is wrong. I'm not seeking to make you a foil for this issue. I'm merely disagreeing with your assertion that this should be a featured picture. That's the sort of discussion we tend to conduct in delist pages such as this. I note that at least a couple of people who have seen original versions of the poster disagree with the throbbing red of this image. I accept that you do not wish to be drawn into a discussion on colour, and that's fine. But getting your panties in a bunch as you have just done when what seems to be legitimate opposition to your view is expressed, is less fine. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The apparent resolution of the issue, although I'm somewhat surprised at the colour "compromise" that Tagishsimon seems to have jumped to, after characterising the colour of the current FP as "dayglo red" and insisting that this was the wrong colour. I did look up dayglo red and was left wondering if any of this debatering had actually got us anywhere. I believe an impartial analysis of whether Stuart Manley's "folded poster at the bottom of a box of random books he'd bought at auction" is in any way authentic or even faithful is still outstanding. Meanwhile, someone else has picked up the story. Perhaps someone has the time to read the thesis cited therein, as I am suspicious of the journalist's synopsis thereof (not that there isn't plenty else to be suspicious of...). Samsara (FA • FP) 21:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delisted --Makeemlighter (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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