The community voted on our inspiration for F46’s wallpaper here on Fedora discussion, the winner being Karen Uhlenbeck!
Ideas and progress are going to be documented on Forgejo here!
Thank you to everyone who voted and gave comments on the options! It’s greatly appreciated! After choosing Karen Uhlenbeck for inspiration, we had a brainstorming session to figure out different paths we could go down as a community.
Themes to Explore
1. Minimal Surfaces & Soap Bubbles
- Catenoids, helicoids, and soap film mechanics are examples of Uhlenbeck’s work in geometric analysis.
- Soft, iridescent soap films stretching over smooth wireframes, or glowing helical/spiral curves against a deep background.
2. Gauge Theory & Mathematical Physics
- Yang-Mills equations, quantum gravity, and electromagnetic field lines.
- Abstract, flowing magnetic field vectors or smooth, undulating quantum fields using deep blues and subtle metallic accents.
3. Geometric Analysis & Curved Spaces
- Harmonic maps, geodesics, and Riemann surfaces.
- Gentle topological grid lines smoothly warping over curved spaces, featuring glowing geodesic paths connecting two points.
(An interesting blogpost for anyone who’s interested with art made by code, and another interesting blogpost!)
Reminder!
These themes don’t have to be completely separate for the final wallpaper. In fact, you might start working with one theme in mind, only for another to influence your creative decisions and blend together for the final product.
Wallpaper Requirements
If you would like to share ideas and explore the themes above inspired by Uhlenbeck, please share your work in the comments on the ticket here on Forgejo! Pencil sketches, doodles, digital drawings in Inkscape, Krita, and Procreate- all programs are welcome in this idea generation phase!
The final file format will eventually be a JXL file, at minimum 4096×4096px (or if your PC can handle it, 6144 x 6144px) created in an open-source program. This square format allows us to have horizontal and vertical croppings for desktop and mobile Fedora users. The wallpaper’s composition should be the same for both day and night versions, with only the color palette and small details changing to indicate the difference between dark and light mode.
Examples of past wallpapers here.
A successful desktop wallpaper is one that hopefully will boost your mood and productivity when you look at it! Thus, keeping it simple, not too distracting, and usually with a cool color palette (with nods to Fedora blue) is important to remember.
Schedule
The F46 Wallpaper ticket can be found here on Forgejo.
The Fedora Design team meeting occurs every week on Mondays at 14:30 UTC. Oftentimes, this project will be discussed there alongside other Design related tasks. If you’re interested in joining, please join the group chat here on Matrix, as we share the link to the meeting in the minutes leading up to it.
This is a laid-back / chill but also a super-respectful, calm, encouraging, and safe environment. Aka bring your coffee. All of the Fedora Code of Conduct rules apply.
The following stages of the project and the dates they coincide with:
Sketches and Rough Draft - Sep. 1st - 28th
“Beta” Wallpaper - Sep. 29th - Nov. 16th
Reach out for Feedback from the Community - Nov. 16th - 23rd
Final Wallpaper - Nov. 24th - Dec. 18th