Ok perhaps most of you have seen the wallpaper in many of the Mockups, Nuno haven't finished it properly just yet, but its coming (for now you can always download this version for now (it's a thumbnail so just click it).



What would be awesome is to start get a talk about wallpapers and what we want from them and perhaps get a thread going.

So what's needed? Well we can never have too many wallpapers - the base one will be Nunos BUT we should also look at other styles of wallpaper. It would be nice to have a set of them to talk about and show.

The wallpapers would preferably be using the colors from the color-kit, they should avoid all logos including Plasma or KDE. Try to instead go for a sensation, not just an exact illustration of what it is you think of it (so instead of an image of say high-tech circuits, try to think one step further). The upside with sensations is that they are more easily grasped than something exact.

Think about depth too. Now I'm one for minimalist wallpapers, trust me, but they also need to have a sensation of room within them.
Here's an example of an image that is both minimalistic but with a sensation of room within it

Not just the subject (the stuff in the image) tells the viewer that there is more going on that just the stuff there, but the lighting and the circles draws you in as well as tiny details hinted at (the frail lines of the wires, the birds etc)... But this is a tricky subject so better to sketch, miss and then edit than to hold back

What we're kinda looking for is three different categories, photos (and edited photos), illustrations and abstracts.

It's important to remember the design goals we're heading for too here: A positive vision of future and scifi. It can range from the 1960's positive dream of the future - or a sleak modern, but positivist idea of future and scifi.
This is where the tricky bit comes in - the interpretation part. When you try to illustrate something (like an idea of the future) you need to think "What does that mean to me and how do I show that emotion or sensation as an image without forcing the idea on the onlooker?"

Yes we're going all art school up in this thread (why not it can be fun too?) so think of it as if you're telling a story, but you have only ONE image to tell it and you can't be too precise.

Obviously all wallpapers have to be your work (or collaboration as long as you're all in on it) and GPL.

We also need wallpapers for the weather desktop. and animated wallpapers would also be nice to have.

jensreuterberg wrote:[…]
Obviously all wallpapers have to be your work (or collaboration as long as you're all in on it) and GPL.

So CC-style licensed pictures will not be allowed in?

kainz.a wrote:We also need wallpapers for the weather desktop. and animated wallpapers would also be nice to have.

I don't have paid attention to all the other threads around here, so forgive me for asking, but what is a "weather desktop"?

Sogatori wrote:So CC-style licensed pictures will not be allowed in?

I'm thinking CC-BY-SA and maybe CC-BY licenses should be OK as wellI. If someone knows different please share.

alake wrote:I'm thinking CC-BY-SA and maybe CC-BY licenses should be OK as wellI. If someone knows different please share.

Because two days ago I had an issue with compatibilty of those two licences - as far as I´d understood, CC-BY(-SA) - GPL compatibility is problematic and depends heavily on the exact use-case. Free Software Foundation says, CC-BY(-SA) are both incompatible with GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#ccby). On the other hand, CC will bring in the possibility of an one way compatibility from CC-BY(-SA) to GPL (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Compatibility).
I don't know what impact this may have on the specific use-case of integration of wallpapers.

Well this is one of those "I have no idea what works or not" areas I'll try to get someone in to write up specs for licensing - for now can we leave it to "Please only use your own material" - so no revamping other peoples photos or using other resources than those you KNOW is ok?

jensreuterberg wrote:Well this is one of those "I have no idea what works or not" areas I'll try to get someone in to write up specs for licensing - for now can we leave it to "Please only use your own material" - so no revamping other peoples photos or using other resources than those you KNOW is ok?

Sounds reasonable.

donK23 wrote:

alake wrote:I'm thinking CC-BY-SA and maybe CC-BY licenses should be OK as wellI. If someone knows different please share.

Because two days ago I had an issue with compatibilty of those two licences - as far as I´d understood, CC-BY(-SA) - GPL compatibility is problematic and depends heavily on the exact use-case. Free Software Foundation says, CC-BY(-SA) are both incompatible with GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#ccby). On the other hand, CC will bring in the possibility of an one way compatibility from CC-BY(-SA) to GPL (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Compatibility).
I don't know what impact this may have on the specific use-case of integration of wallpapers.

The more you know! Thanks for linking this information.

For licensing questions, please contact the kde-licensing@kde.org mailing list - they'll be able to clarify what license the artwork should be under to ensure it is suitable to be shipped alongside and/or part of Plasma Next.

What size do you want these? I started with the Inkscape 1600x1200 preset, and then only later realized just how non-widescreen it was. But it's SVG, so I can provide source and other sizes.

http://imgur.com/HEGh1Cn

Not sure if this is explicitly "positivist" enough, but it is made exclusively from the official colors and simple geometry. Title is Midnight Voyage. I'm not totally happy with it at the moment, but I'm open to suggestions... I just really wanted to make a wallpaper for the people who like dark wallpapers.

philiphorger wrote:What size do you want these? I started with the Inkscape 1600x1200 preset, and then only later realized just how non-widescreen it was. But it's SVG, so I can provide source and other sizes.

http://imgur.com/HEGh1Cn

Not sure if this is explicitly "positivist" enough, but it is made exclusively from the official colors and simple geometry. Title is Midnight Voyage. I'm not totally happy with it at the moment, but I'm open to suggestions... I just really wanted to make a wallpaper for the people who like dark wallpapers.

Not bad! You got an idea made it happen which takes you several steps ahead of me! XD
But I think it's a bit too flat right now. Maybe you could add some details, or a horizon to it? Oh, and the smaller peak of the mountain is flat.

I did this in blender but, I can't think of a single thing to look good for the background.

It uses all of the colors with the exception of the whites and greys.

/// Warning 7680x4320 ///
http://i.imgur.com/xulyCGk.png

This has a white background the orginal has a transparent background.

Ok So this is the deal everyone - we have gotten a clearence to get some fancy prices to three lucky people. That means that we have to set up a competition!

The categories are still:

Photos
Illustration
Abstracts

We will set up a a group of people from future community organizers/VDG and then start throwing a competition out there. This thing will keep going for a month starting Maj 1st and ending June 1st with the three winners in every category getting his or her wallpaper included into Plasma AND the awesome book "Design Elements - a graphical style manual" (which is an awesome books on design and design work).
There is a caveat though - there is a barrier to cross - essentially you can't win by being "only admission in class" it has to be distro-level good too.

In the days to come I'll post more about it here plus try to find more prizes for the winners and go more into how the winners will be decided.

jensreuterberg wrote:Ok So this is the deal everyone - we have gotten a clearence to get some fancy prices to three lucky people. That means that we have to set up a competition!

The categories are still:

Photos
Illustration
Abstracts

We will set up a a group of people from future community organizers/VDG and then start throwing a competition out there. This thing will keep going for a month starting Maj 1st and ending June 1st with the three winners in every category getting his or her wallpaper included into Plasma AND the awesome book "Design Elements - a graphical style manual" (which is an awesome books on design and design work).
There is a caveat though - there is a barrier to cross - essentially you can't win by being "only admission in class" it has to be distro-level good too.

In the days to come I'll post more about it here plus try to find more prizes for the winners and go more into how the winners will be decided.

Jens,

where will we collect these images? I know that Ubuntu uses Flickr for people to submit their wallpapers. How will we handle this?
With this being said, it looks sounds like a really cool idea! I can't wait to see what kind of wallpapers we'll get out of this.

Well I thought... here tbh Since for now its mostly to show people the wallpapers. Or we could use a Deviantart thing? Actually you know, I wanna share some wallpapers too and I can't be in the competition (not only because I would obviously cheat but because I already have the book) so I'll slap together a Deviantart group for us all to use. If you guys think its ok?

Hmm, I'm not sure if the forum would be a good way to handle it, depending on the amount of submissions we could easily loose some wallpapers.

A deviantart (or similar) group sound good enough. Even though I'm sure we'll hear some complaints about it Alternatively we could also just use an e-mail address for the submissions, store the submissions in some shared online repository e.g. gdrive till the submission window closes and the group starts to sort the submissions. We then can present them for vote.

Oh that reminds me: What service will we use for voting? Depending on how many candidates there are the list/voting ballot could get rather huge pretty quickly. Maybe there's a service were people are not presented with a list, but can rate each individual candidate and the candidate with the highest rating wins?