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- Illustrations on what is Tails and how it works
This job opening is closed. Applications received after December 15, 2019, will not be considered.
Summary
Tails, a portable operating system that protects your privacy and avoids censorship, is looking for a design contractor to create illustrations explaining Tails.
About Tails
Tails is made by the Tor Project.
The mission of Tails is to empower people worldwide by giving out an operating system that protects from surveillance and censorship.
Read more about our mission and values.
Details
Scope
This work is part of a larger effort to improve the description and explanation of Tails, adjust the voice and tone of the homepage, and implement a newly developed brand identity.
The contractor will create illustrations to aid in communicating:
On the homepage: what is Tails and what are its main benefits
6 small illustrations or icons, around 200px.
On the 'How Tails works' page: the main properties and features of Tails
10 medium-size illustrations, around 400px.
The contractor will work as a team with the Tails UX designer:
- The contractor will be responsible for all the illustration work.
- The Tails UX designer will be responsible for the structure, text, and integration on the website.
Target audience
Activists, journalists, people who are being surveilled or censored.
People learning about Tails for the first time.
People who have to explain Tails to others, for example, digital security trainers.
Our target audience is exemplified by our personas.
Proposed process
Mockups
- The contractor and the UX designer work together to ideate and create initial mockups for each illustration.
Usability testing of the content
The UX designer integrates the initial mockups into the draft content.
The text and illustrations is tested with a few potential users using the think aloud protocol.
The contractor is encouraged to participate in the tests if they have experience or interest in usability testing.
Mockups might be refined as needed during the tests.
Design & illustration
- Full illustration (16 images)
Revisions
- 1 round of revision, based on feedback from the Tails community.
Proposed timeline
Final delivery: January 2020 or earlier
Week 1: In-person or remote sprint
- Ideation and initial mockups
- Usability testing and refined mockups
Week 2-3: Full illustration
Week 4-5: Feedback
Week 6-7: Final illustrations delivered
Licensing
All work will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The contractor may retain copyright and will be credited on our license page.
Deliverables
Vector graphics are preferred as they will make the work easier to reuse and adapt in the future. Raster graphics might be considered if well justified.
Source documents compatible with Free Software tools will be provided as deliverables:
The contractor may work with non-Free Software tools until delivery. Only the source documents in the final delivery must be compatible with Free Software tools.
For example, in the case of vector graphics deliverables, the contractor may work with Adobe Illustrator but must deliver working documents in SVG format with all the objects and features compatible with the open SVG standard.
Budget
Billable hours paid up to 2 500€, including meetings.
Design considerations
Brand guidelines
See the brand attributes in our mission and values.
Tone
When using Tails, people trade off bits of convenience for some extra security. They might have very little time, be under stress, or physical threats.
We take the safety of our users very seriously and we speak to them in a confident and reassuring way without being lighthearted or frivolous.
Our style inspires trust but doesn't sound distant. Even though we address serious issues, we are always empathetic and encouraging.
To be accessible to our diverse and global audience, we value clarity and sincerity above all. We provide state-of-the-art tools without over-promising or sounding elitist.
Visual style
Tails doesn't have a visual style guide yet and the work on this contract will be some of the first professional visual design work done for Tails.
The contractor will have to propose a visual style that matches our brand guidelines and tone without being able to refer to more detailed visual guidelines.
The visual style proposed by the contractor must be easily adoptable and reusable for future work.
Color scheme
The illustrations must be compatible with our brand colors:
#56347c
#53b351
Inspiration
- Our personas: how we think our target audience looks like
- Boot menu animation: other visuals on our website
- DuckDuckGo App and About: outdoors to illustrate privacy and empowerment
- TunnelBear: explain a product using a nature-related theme
- Google Doogle with bears: encouraging
- Intercom: sketchy but serious
Design concept
Metaphor: Tails as a tent
| Property of Tails | Property of tents and hiking in the outdoors |
|---|---|
| Portable | Tents are portable and can be used anywhere. |
| Avoid surveillance | Tents gives you a private space in a public environment. |
| Amnesia | When you set up your tent, it always starts empty, from a clean state. When you tear it down, it is empty. |
| Persistence | You can store your personal stuff in your backpack and unpack it in your tent. |
| Anonymity | Nobody know who you are when you are in your tent. Many tents look alike, making you anonymous. |
| Leave no trace | When you pack up your tent, you leave no trace. |
| Toolbox | You carry all you need in your backpack. Tails is like a Swiss Army knife |
| Avoid censorship | When walking in the outdoors, you can go anywhere, without censorship. |
| Avoid tracking | When walking in the outdoors, you leave no trace. |
| No virus | Tents protect you from nuisances: mosquitoes, rain, wind, etc. |
| No ads | When going in the outdoors, you leave pollution and noise behind. |
Images from workshop
These are images that Tails community members drew at a visual identity workshop. We've included them here to show how the Tails community thinks about the tent metaphor – they’re not meant to be exactly copied.
How to apply
Send an email to accounting@tails.net.
Include as much of the following information as you want. All items are optional:
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CV
Feel free to share anything about your identity that will help us constructively consider your application. Legal name, gender, or photo are optional.
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Cover letter
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Explain us why you would like to work at Tails. We are particularly curious why online privacy is important to you.
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Links to other contributions to free software, GitHub, or GitLab accounts
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Links to your personal website, portfolio, or sample work
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Your stories about participating in groups that value transparency, autonomy, and horizontal decision-making. What is/has been your role in such groups?
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References