FreedomsNet 2.0 actually began as a responce to a very simple but very annoying problem: I had recieved several requests to do a color variation of our original theme. That would have been a very simple undertaking, except that the templete I had to work with had an achilles heel: the ripple effect that made the logo destinctive was literally impossible to re-create (I had recently reinstalled my OS, which meant that the settings I'd originally used on the ripple filter had been deleted). At any rate, this problem bugged me to no end. To solve it, though, I would have to wait for yet another problem to crop up...

The next stage in the chain of 2.0's history came a few months later. Invision Power Board V2.0 had begun development, and it had been revealed very early on that skins designed for 1.3 would be incompatible with 2.0. In responce, a project was created, at that time known simply by its codename: Cairo. Cairo's purpose was to create a skin for 2.0 by the time a version deemed stable enough for use on the main board released. I began design work on Cairo quickly. My first design was certainly unique but also both too close to the original version skin and in general ugly



Although I was initially excited with the results after running it by some people my enthusiasm dimmed. Finally I went to one of my most trusted advisors, a very experienced graphics designer by the name of Grant. He gave me a few words of simple advice, and from them I began to redesign...



This variation established the basic layout, but admitedly wasn't groundbreaking in any other sense. After running it by a few people the general concensus was that it was nice but not nice enough. I then lined it up next to the original logo and found the biggest problem with this version strikingly clear: it lacked any real filter work. Basicly it was just too bland, too basic. So I began to incorporate elements from the original skin back into the Cairo design...



My third attempt, dubbed generation C, was the first version that I felt actually worked. It reinserted some of the theming elements that had made the original logo work, but still was distinctively different. For a long time I believed that this version would be the last one, the one to be placed on a skin and developed once IPB 2.0 RC1 (the first version sceduled to have its skinning engine finalized) released. But one bored night I happened to be toying with some fonts I'd picked up recently, and one of them redefined the project



Version C2, as I called it then, was done more as a joke than anything else. I hadn't expected it to amaze anyone, but as I showed it around I began to realize that this one was actually the best I'd done. And thus, when RC1 did come out (on July 7), this version served as the basis of the entire design.

I then began to design other elements. The section headers (which required code edits on almost every single skin templete), the buttons, and a new color scheme had to be created and applied to what had been the IPB 2.0 default theme. All this work took around 2 days on and off of work to complete. Afterward I upgraded the main board to 2.0 RC1 and applied the theme. And what you see now is the result: FreedomsNet V2.0


UPDATE: The 3 variants of the cairo skin are now complete. While Matrix was pretty much designed after C2 both Red and Green were based on variants I created during the B phase and then revamped for C2