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Design Guidelines & Resources

A collection of design contribution guidelines and resources for the Owncast interface.

All participating designers are highly encouraged to shape and evolve these guidelines! It is a work in progress and as we have design contributors we can work to solidify the process, tools and resources.

👋 Welcome​

Owncast is a live streaming and chat server targeted to anybody who has live streaming needs. This means anybody from corporate events, government meetings, game streamers, musicians, churches, TV stations, and more.

Read the detailed product overview to learn more about the product and who it's for.

🚢 How to contribute to product design​

  1. Check out open issues here on GitHub (we label them with needs design)
  2. Feel free to open an issue on your own if you find something you would like to contribute to the project.
  3. Add your contributions to an issue and we promise we will review your contribution carefully and foster discussions

We encourage you to:​

🎭 Target audience​

Owncast is a live streaming and chat server targeted to anybody who has live streaming needs. This means anything from corporate events, government meetings, game streams, concerts, TV stations, and more.

Streamer Persona​

Knowledge: Intermediate to advanced understanding of setting up a server.

  • Individual content creator hobbyist • stream: mixed
    • video gamers • stream: public
    • Casual "hang out and chat" • stream: public
    • Community group events • stream: private
  • Organizations • stream: public/private
    • Business professionals (e.g. 24/7 TV streams)
    • Non-profits (e.g. churches)

🧑‍🎨 Product design opportunities​

Owncast is a constantly moving project with features both old and new. This allows for design contributions to be both big or small. You may not know how much time you can dedicate to the project, or if you'll be able to see something through to the end, so be honest about that. Take on projects that you'll be able to see completed.

  • So maybe start small by finding rough edges and improvements to existing features without requiring complete rewrites. As a small project, the bandwidth for rebuilding existing designs is limited, but tweaks are appreciated. This is especially great if you don't know how much time or energy you'll be able to provide the project. If you think you have a week to help, but might not be around in a month, small projects are better.
  • If you think you'll be around longer term, learn about future new features and start thinking about the design challenges of those so we can build them with your feedback and design contributions in mind. See your designs put in the world through brand new functionality!
  • Not everything has to be a feature. Think big picture. What can we start doing now to put the project in a better place six months from now, or a year?

Where to start?​

  1. You can see a collection of design materials under the "style" section of our "Storybook" here and some additional notes and resources in the Design Guidelines & Resources.
  2. Check out open issues on GitHub (we label them with needs design)
  3. Feel free to open an issue on your own if there is something else you would like to contribute to the project.
  4. Add your thoughts to an issue, and we promise we will review your thoughts carefully and foster discussions.
  5. Once discussion takes place, and all is agreed upon, design can begin in our PenPot organization. It's much like Figma, but is free and open source. Ask Gabe for edit access.

Fonts​

https://owncast.online/components/?path=%2Fdocs%2Fowncast-styles-typography--page

Body text: Inter

Display/Header text: Poppins

Colors​

https://owncast.online/components/?path=%2Fdocs%2Fowncast-styles-colors-components--page

Design Files, Screenshots, etc​

We do not currently have any design files that fully represent the state of the Owncast interface. However, going forward, it would be nice to resolve this and collaborate on designs.

We do have a PenPot organization. Please ask for access.

🎓 License

All design work is licensed under the MIT license.