unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Vish for reminding folks of the importance of respect when
providing feedback. As Ubuntu grows, it's necessary for calm heads to
constantly remind newer folks of the core values of the project,
otherwise we'll lose the gravity that holds our galaxy together, so to
speak. The Code of Conduct is important, so when you see people stepping
out of it, please everyone help them cool down and we'll all be more
effective as a community as a result of your taking the trouble to do so.

That said, I think the feedback on the wallpaper is representative of
real concerns about it. Otto, the lead visual designer for our desktop
work in the Canonical design team, blogged about where he wants to go
with it at http://design.canonical.com/2010/09/ubuntu-default-wallpaper/
where he also invites folks who are keen to help pursue the underlying
idea. As a result of the feedback (even though some of it was, ahem,
undiplomatic ;-)) we'll revamp the wallpaper (and yes, it's a failure on
our part to have to do that post-UIF).

To summarise the idea: we want to make the desktop have a unique style,
but be personal to every different PC. In essence, the wallpaper for the
Lucid->12.04 series is a symphony of light and light-related effects,
and we want to make it so every day, each of those lights and effects
moves just a little bit for each user, in a different direction. So, at
release time, all the wallpapers look the same, but over the course of a
month or so they all end up being different. For each release, we'd vary
the "elements" a little, i.e. the number and relative strength of lights
/ flares / blurs.

We didn't get to implement that this cycle. I thought we could do it
with a Python-GIMP script that ran nightly. We need to use something
like Gegl for high-quality effects. Alas, we then dropped the GIMP from
the CD, so we'll need to figure a plan B :-)

Mark

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