Design/Release Artwork Process

Release artwork is that part of Fedora artwork that changes with each new release. The most notable part is the wallpaper, but it also contains various banners for anaconda, firstboot and websites, splashes and KDM design. This page describes how this artwork is created. For an overview of the components, and how to test, see the wiki page for Theme Overview. Examples from F11 can be found at the F11 artwork page

Step 0 – Preparation Stage

Because we base our artwork on the release name we need to know it first. This is a community-wide process and the final name for next release usually gets selected early in a release cycle. As soon as we have the name we start working on artwork concepts. We strongly recommend that the concepts are abstract but tied to the release name.

Step 1 – Initial Designing

• We start working on the wallpaper based on the proposed concepts approximately one month and one week before Alpha release. It's usual to work on more than one concepts at this stage. Approximately two weeks before Alpha release, we select a few designs that we think are best, get those wallpapers into fedora and blog about them.
• During the next fourteen days we decide on the design we'll go with, improve it and make it default for Alpha release. When finished, we blog about the decision. We also prepare the Alpha release banner.

Step 2 – Finishing Design

• As soon as Alpha is released we start working on improving the wallpaper and creating the supporting graphics (anaconda banners, splashes, kdm theme, ...). We usually blog twice during the time about the wallpaper improvements. This phase should be finished about 1.5 week before Beta Freeze.
• Then we continue on improving the wallpaper and doing final packaging of the artwork until Beta Freeze. Count down banner is also made in that time.
• For Beta we also create a release banner.

Step 3 – Sleeves, Posters, Banners

After beta is released we start creating CD/DVD labels and sleeves, release banners and release party posters. These should be finished up about 1.5 week before GA.

Side work – Personalisation

For each release we select about four open licensed images targeted at these audiences:

• general audience
• women audience
• children audience

These can come both from our Wallpaper Extras project or from elsewhere.

Current Release

Detailed schedule with dates for F12 is available at its page. See the current progress at F12 Artwork