Oracle Developer Community is breaking new ground...

Poor branding, badly executed.

Branding

I am not normally very interested in branding and marketing, nor really qualified to comment on it, but as you are asking for opinions:

• "Groundbreakers"
  • Why has this term been chosen as being representative of the Oracle development community?
  • This is not a common word in either American or British English. It will therefore be even less familiar to non-native speakers of English (who make up most of this community), for whom it is more likely to conjure up images of the onset of construction work rather than be understood in its idiomatic sense of "an innovator; a pioneer".
  • As a native speaker of English for nearly 50 years, whilst being quite familiar with the adjective "groundbreaking" I do not recall ever using the noun form "groundbreaker" to refer to another person. "Inventor",  "innovator", "entrepreneur", "pioneer", "visionary", "genius", "trailblazer" perhaps, "groundbreaker" never.
  • I am not alone in this. Quick searches of a few UK-based web sites also show that the term is not widely used:
    • BBC: Our national public service broadcaster returns most hits (304), but 99% of these refer to one recent local TV programme, none of whose subjects have anything to do with software development or modern technology.
    • The Times: Britain's newspaper of record returns 229 hits, but is split on whether the spelling is "groundbreakers" or "ground-breakers".
    • The Guardian: This more progressive journal uses the term 118 times, but mainly in cultural rather than technological contexts.
    • The Register: A technology and computing news site that records a paltry 20 uses of the word "groundbreakers".
  • The work of the developer community is not necessarily "groundbreaking". Many of the best solutions discussed here involve nothing that is in any way innovative, but deal with correctly applying established techniques, following proper software development principles and methodologies, and utilising well-known and proven algorithms and design patterns.
• "Make, break, build."
  • It is not at all clear what this tag is supposed to mean (if anything).
  • In software development "make" and "build" are essentially the same thing, so the slogan is pointlessly repetitive as well as being opaque.
  • "Break" can have several more or less technical meanings in software terms, many of them unfavourable. In juxtaposition with "build" its connotations are entirely negative.
• Colours
  • What is the reasoning behind the colours used?
  • Personally I find the combination of red and what I will refer to as "teal" and "gold" to be jarring.
  • The red hue used (#F80000) is that specified in the Oracle Brand guidelines, but neither the teal (#57C2E0) nor gold (#EA9D01) colours are from the prescribed palettes.
• Typography
  • Both the "Oracle Groundbreakers" text and the "Make, break, build" tag line are set in the Univers typeface specified in the Oracle Brand guidance. However, this is not the typeface used by the community site, which is specified in CSS as "Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif". For consistency, shouldn't both the site CSS and the "Oracle Groundbreakers" graphics be using Arial as this is the supplemental face to be used in web typography?
  • The "drop shadow" effect used on the space title is an unfortunate throwback to 1990s desktop publishing.
• Design
  • Why are the elements of the branding banner positioned as they are?
  • The space title appears above "Oracle Groundbreakers" although it is supposedly subsidiary to it in the site structure.
  • Text size indicates that "Make, break, build" is the most important thing on the page, but it has no meaning and serves no purpose.
  • What are the blobby bits appearing at the start of the black section of the banner?
  • Why are the gold navigation elements cut off at congruent angles to frame a completely empty space?
  • Why are these angles different from those between the teal and black sections of the banner?

Technical Execution

The actual implementation of the banner image and navigation elements is amateurish at best, certainly not what would be expected from one of the biggest technology companies in existence.

• Text as images

  • The textual content of the banner ("Oracle Groundbreakers" and "Make, break, build") is rendered using images of the text. The result is poor quality, low resolution, and not accessible. This technique is very far from "groundbreaking", being a truly venerable (and obsolete) concept dating to 25 years ago. There has been no need to do this—even for reasons of backward compatibility—for about 10 years. The best option would be to include the branding information as HTML content within the page. If this is not possible (we are dealing with Jive after all) then CSS rules can be used to inject the text as anonymous replaced elements using the content property and styling it as required. If for some reason this cannot be achieved and a background image is the only option available, then all current browser have support for SVG backgrounds that render as scalable vector graphics and text

  • At a detailed level, text positioning within the banner is somewhat odd. The "Oracle", "Groundbreakers", and "Make, break, build" elements all sit at slightly different levels. This is only just perceptible, so it is unlikely to be intentional (particularly as there is no apparent reason for "Oracle" and "Groundbreakers" to be treated as separate elements). The "Oracle" text also appears to be slightly truncated or cropped at top and bottom, and could even be very slightly smaller than "Groundbreakers".

• Image format
  • The banner image is in JPEG format. This format is intended to be used for photographic images. It is not suited to the presentation of text and line graphics, and this is another reason for the poor quality of the banner image.
• Not responsive
  • Contrary to Oracle's branding guidelines, the banner is decidedly not responsive. When the width of the viewport changes, the banner size changes disproportionately, resulting in deformation of the visual elements. This is particularly noticeable in the Oracle Signature logo on the right.
  • As the width of the banner shrinks, the "Oracle Groundbreakers" text moves left to appear beneath the activation text for the placeholder pop-over, seriously compromising the legibility of this navigation component.

• Space header image
  • The header image to the left of the space title is rendered using some unorthodox CSS, which in this case fails to account for the APEX space image having a non-standard size/aspect ratio, resulting in it being cropped despite there being sufficient space in the banner to display (most of) it.
• Navigation elements
  • The navigation links on the gold strip are also weirdly out of alignment. The Overview/Content/People/More links on the left, Actions/About, and the social media icons on the right are positioned at slightly different levels, but not enough for this to appear intentional. (Compare with the original layout on the untouched Enterprise Manager space.)
• Not accessible
  • Oracle clearly do not intend severely visually impaired users to benefit (?) from the new branding. Delivering it in the form of a background image means that this "content" will not be rendered by screen readers or refreshable Braille displays.
  • The "drop shadow", random layout of the banner image text, and potential visual interaction of the banner with functional page text cause serious problems for users with less severe visual impairments, and those with learning disabilities or cognitive problems.
  • The contrast ratio of the Overview/Content/People/More/Actions/About navigation link text to the gold background is 2.25:1, which is below the 4.5:1 minimum required by WCAG 2.0 criterion 1.4.3.

To preempt any criticism that these comments are not constructive, that is because I find nothing that is in any way positive in these changes. If Oracle is really serious about improving this site for its members, then start by listening to them. No one has ever asked to be called a groundbreaker. If you really want to engage developers and build a strong community, there is no need for bizarre branding. All you have to do is create a site that actually meets our needs by fixing fundamental issues when we report them, and implementing good ideas that attract significant community support.