Ubuntu Wiki

Xubuntu Natty Wallpaper

• Community: Xubuntu / Saleel Velankar

• Posted: 17 Nov 2010

• Due: 10 Mar 2011

• Assigned: Artwork Team

• Packages affected: Xubuntu (Natty)

• Comment:

Introduction

Xubuntu is a Ubuntu derivative which leverages the XFCE desktop for speed and grace. It is not focused on any particular user group or case.

Emphasising low resource use led to misunderstandings in the past, where people thought Xubuntu would only be useful on old hardware. An outcome of using fewer resources should be better performance and making high performance part of the message will avoid this misunderstanding.

Inspiration

We want to express high performance. But not performance by brute force, no big machines, but rather by making the most of what you get, by being small and light. Associations:

• Cheetah
• Swallow
• Antelope
• Sailing
• Dart
• Ultra-light planes and gliders
• Marathon runners

• Cars like the Ariel Atom

Some of these could be abstracted to shapes and colors.

Palette

The Xubuntu palette has been completely blue in the past, but should not remain that way. Because a monotone color scheme as such sends a message of uniformity, stableness and eventually even shyness and indecision. It does not speak of energy, movement, diversity ...

The wallpaper will have to go well with the panels, windows and icons (as far as they appear on the desktop). Its use of color has to support the impression of lightness and performance, without becoming a distraction in day-to-day use. Aside of this, there is no predefined, required palette for the wallpaper.

Constraints

• The desired dimensions of the successful candidate should be 2560 x 1600 pixels. See Background Guidelines for additional information.

  • Flickr restricts the image format for free accounts to 1024 x 640 For the purposes of submissions this is acceptable.

• The successful design will be accepted in the Portable Network Graphics ( "png" ) and/or Scalable Vector Graphics ( "svg" ) format.
• The desired design must go well with the colors used in the interface.

• Submissions must adhere to the Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 license.

• Attribution must be declared if the submission is based on another design.
• No logo and no text. Such elements attract too much attention. Constantly reminding the user of the name of the distribution does not communicate confidence.

Workflow

• The mailing list will be used to facilitate design discussions.

• Post submissions to the Xubuntu Natty Wallpaper Flickr group.

• The successful candidate will be chosen by members of the Xubuntu community.

Evaluation

Xubuntu background context images (panels, icons and windows on transparent background) in several resolutions: xubuntu_natty_alpha2_context_resolutions.tar.bz2

Tools to crop/resize wallpapers and to combine them with background context images: Backtestground