Add branding assets to seasonal announcements in #changelog

[minalike]

What feature are you proposing?

Possible Ideas

• Add server icon as embed thumbnail
• Add server banner as embed image
• Add shoutout to users that contributed branding assets

Current sample announcement:

What is your justification for the proposed feature?

We have lovely branding that we use throughout the year based on the season or holiday, and have automated #changelog announcements that describe the event.

However, if you're not online during each seasonal transition, looking back at #changelog announcements might be unclear since the announcement itself isn't paired with any visuals in the message.

I think adding the images to the embed will help users make that connection, especially if they're not familiar with the event.

Giving credit to the members that spent time making the branded assets would also be a nice touch.

[TizzySaurus]

+1 on the three parts of this issue.

[vivekashok1221]

Agreed, sounds cool and useful.

Giving credit to the members that spent time making the branded assets would also be a nice touch.

How will the bot obtain this information?

[DMFriends]

Agreed, sounds cool and useful.

Giving credit to the members that spent time making the branded assets would also be a nice touch.

How will the bot obtain this information?

One way could maybe be to have mods record the users who help with branding via a command like !branding record <mention user> in a mod channel or smth like that. Not sure how you'd code it, but I feel like there is a way to do it like that. What do people think?

[wookie184]

Add server icon as embed thumbnail

I like this idea. Adds some context, as well as colour!

Add server banner as embed image

I'm not sure this would be necessary if we add the server icon, as the only difference is usually the "python discord" text coloured differently. I think it would add a bit of clutter.

Add shoutout to users that contributed branding assets

Not sure this would be worth it either. It seems like it would quite a bit of effort to trace back current events to work out who created the branding, as well as the fact that branding is often created collaboratively, and it's not clear whether someone modifying an existing asset should be mentioned. This seems like it would require some effort to maintain and isn't that relevant to the event. I think a manual message in #changelog when the assets are originally created is enough.

Another idea I'd like to add on to this, would be adding some text to the description for some events explaining the relation of the logo to the event. e.g. for the current logo we could add something like:

The server logo incorporates the colours red and black, as they are used on the pan-african flag to represent "noble blood that unites all people of African ancestry" and "the rich land of Africa" respectively.

[gustavwilliam]

I love this idea. Using the server icon and not the banner seems best, since the banners are often very large and contain a lot of empty space. The icon would work more to complement the embed, compared to the banner which might become a bit too prominent.

Should the icon be an author image or thumbnail? Not sure. Both would probably work well, and have their respective pros and cons. I’d love to see examples of how this would look in practice.

I agree with @wookie184’s response on whether or not to credit the authors of the design in the embed.

[vivekashok1221]

If this materializes as a bot issue, I'm interested in working on it (unless you, mina, wants to claim the issue. I'm kind of also stretched thin by IRL stuff but I'd like to give it a shot.)

[minalike]

Go for it @vivekashok1221! And I don't think this is urgent at all so you should feel free to take your time with it. Poke me when you work on it so I can learn too. Maybe this can be moved to the bot repo?

[vivekashok1221]

Yeah, you can do the honors and whisk us away to the bot repo.

[wookie184]

@vivekashok1221 Are you still planning on working on this?

[vivekashok1221]

Wow, blast from the past. Totally forgot about this one, sorry.

I can still work on this issue but not in the next few days. Maybe I can give it a look after a week or so.

[kwzrd]

Hi @vivekashok1221, are you still planning to work on this? If not, I would like to give it a try.

If I understand correctly, the agreement is to include the server icon as either the author or the thumbnail of the embed. We're not intending to go for the other ideas at the moment, correct?

[vivekashok1221]

@kwzrd Go for it 👍

[kwzrd]

Thanks!

@minalike Shall I be assigned? And should we remove the s: planning label?

[kwzrd]

I have explored the proposed approaches.

The easiest option is to include the icon in the embed thumbnail:

Another option is to use the author field. However, the author also needs a name, in addition to the icon. This opens a nice opportunity to move the event's name there, but the problem is that we currently include the event name in the body of the description:

It's difficult for the bot to remove the name from the description, as it's already included when we fetch the content from the branding repository. I think that the best solution here would be to remove the names from the descriptions in the markdown manifests, and instead move the names into the frontmatter. So there would be the name, the start and end dates, and then the description. The bot would then be able to place the name where it belongs. It's more work, but feasible.

In fact, I like the idea of moving the name into the frontmatter for other reasons as well. For the calendar view, the bot currently extracts the event names from their paths. It's awkward and error-prone. If we place the name in the frontmatter, the bot can simply use it in the calendar as well.

What do you think?