Wallpaper Competition Announcement

The six finalist have been selected

The quantity and quality of the submissions for this competition has been astounding! Congratulations and many thanks to you all and every one of you.

Although every image is special for us, we had to select 6, and here they are.

Again thanks for participating.


Calling All Artists!

Plasma 6 release day is getting closer… and we still have no wallpaper to use! But we’re going to change that with your help and this contest! We are calling on all artists to submit their original wallpaper designs and compete for the chance to win a brand-new laptop (see below). The contest will be open for three months, starting now!

The Contest

The winning entry will be used as the default wallpaper for KDE Plasma 6.0. Learn more about Plasma.

The deadline is 23:59 UTC, 14th of November!

Theme

Wallpaper entries should somehow suggest the following themes:

  • Trustworthy (i.e. reliable, stable, dependable)
  • “A reflection of me” (i.e. personalized, familiar, comfortable, “fits like a glove”)
  • Personal growth (i.e. independence, level mindedness, critical thinking)

You should not feel constrained by the themes. Quite the contrary: The goal is for them to inspire your design and maybe help evoke these feelings/thoughts in the viewer, but you should take the abstract nature of the ideas as a way to freely express your creativity in your design.

Style

  • KDE Plasma 6 is a whole new Plasma! Be bold with your design, and don’t feel like you have to adhere to the visual style of Plasma 5 wallpapers. A unique style is fine, even more so if it can start a design trend for the following Plasma 6 versions!
  • Lean on the abstract. Representational and literal elements should be used sparingly.
  • We’d recommend avoiding text elements in your wallpaper, such as “Plasma” or even “6”. However, this is not a strict rule: if it works with your style, then it works!
  • Similarly, we would recommend avoiding logos overlaid on top of the wallpaper; if you do decide to include a logo, it should integrate with the design and not be used for quick identification.

Rules

  • The wallpaper must be original, created specifically for this contest, and released under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license. Therefore no submissions using AI art will be accepted.
  • The minimum required size for wallpapers is 3840x2160, though 5120x2880 is preferred. Vertical wallpapers should be at least 1080x2280.
  • You are allowed to submit up to 3 wallpapers. Entries can be made in public at in this Discuss category, but you can also submit them in private to niccolo.venerandi@kde.org
  • Each submission should include the following:
    • The wallpaper
    • The name of the wallpaper
    • A dark mode version of the wallpaper (not mandatory, but recommended)
    • A vertical version of the wallpaper (not mandatory, but recommended)
  • If asked, you should be able to provide the source files used to create the wallpaper in a non-proprietary format, like an Inkscape-compatible SVG, .blend, .kra, .xcf, etc.
  • Any submission containing racist, sexist, demeaning, or any other inappropriate content will be removed and disqualified immediately.

Selection process

Judges for the competition will be selected from the KDE Visual Design Group and other esteemed community members. Wallpapers will be judged based on artistic merit, originality, and adherence to the design themes mentioned earlier. At the end of the submission period, six finalists will be selected for a second round.

Artists who make it to this stage will receive a small prize (e.g. a KDE t-shirt!) and actionable feedback from the judges. The artists will be able to upload different variations addressing the feedback. This stage will take between one and three weeks. At the end of it, a winner will be selected and announced. The winner will get a Framework Laptop 13!

While there will only be one winning selection, other submissions may be included as optional wallpapers in Plasma 6, or used in future releases. The judges’ decision is final.

The Prize

The winner of the contest will receive a Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition, featuring a 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1340P. This laptop has a modular design and can easily be wholly disassembled and rebuilt, allowing you to replace any part or upgrade key components anytime.

The Framework Laptop 13 also features an Expansion Card system that lets you choose exactly the ports you want and where you want them; there are four available slots and a great variety of cards: USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, MicroSD, Ethernet, Audio, ultra-fast storage, and more.

Of course, compatibility was tested with the most popular Linux distributions and Framework offers many step-by-step setup guides for them.

24 Likes

What does the timeline for this look like? I’m excited to see everyone’s work and maybe throw my hat into the ring as well :slight_smile:

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Niccoló has added the deadline since then, just replying in case you didn’t get an email about the edit

Is there any chance Plasma 6 will support animated wallpapers? Can a submission be a .mkv file or maybe a .qml file? (I promise I will not kill the power consumption :wink: )

Plasma already supports animated wallpapers in the GIF and AVIF formats, but not any actual movie file formats.

QML wallpapers would require writing a new wallpaper plugin around them. The Haenau and Hunyango plugins that are included in the kdeplasma-addons package are two such examples.

For this contest, I think we’re looking for static images, though. Animated images definitely have a detrimental effect on power consumption and battery life.

Is CC-BY-SA-4.0 required, or can it be released under a more permissive CC0?
Can it be stated that the work shall also be available under CC0 after the first of January 2024?

I don’t want to speak for others, but I’m pretty sure we can live with CC0 just fine. Basically we need a license that lets us use, mix and distribute your work if we need to, and lets others do the same.

Let’s see what other think, okay?

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CC0 would make it undistributable in Micronesia, which has a non-copyright intellectual property regime which is purely based on automatically enforced, inalienable ownership of intellectual works and contract law.

What makes you think so? Are we talking about the Federated States of Micronesia?

Could you please elaborate further on this matter? There are other open-source desktop projects which distribute CC0 content that may not be aware of this.

To ensure optimal display on a variety of monitors, would it be possible to submit the wallpapers in a 32:9 (10240px by 2880px) aspect ratio for the competition?

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Yes, the Federated States of Micronesia.

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Any specifications on Image formats? PNGs?

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Still haven’t elaborated on this and after having read the full CC0 legal code, the notion that CC0-licensed media would be illegal in the Federated States of Micronesia seems rather far-fetched.

Disclaimer: I am not a legal expert or lawyer.

Section 3 (Public License Fallback) covers jurisdictions that do not allow public domain, relinquishment of copyright, or any other parts of the CC0 license. In particular:

Should any part of the License for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, such partial invalidity or ineffectiveness shall not invalidate the remainder of the License, and in such case Affirmer hereby affirms that he or she will not (i) exercise any of his or her remaining Copyright and Related Rights in the Work or (ii) assert any associated claims and causes of action with respect to the Work, in either case contrary to Affirmer’s express Statement of Purpose.

(read: All Rights Reserved as fallback)

Additionally, the Federated States of Micronesia became a signatory to the Berne Convention. This means that before even going all the way to the fallback of All Rights Reserved, CC0 would be legal in that jurisdiction to enough of an extent to serve its intended purpose.

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Is submitting wallpapers really that into legality things?

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my wallpaper is now licensed as “if you want to use this for commercial purposes, you must duel me in Quake 3 Arena and win.”

(not really, but also, if someone genuinely did that, they would have my upmost respect)

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I have a question. One can submit a dark mode and light mode version, and different sizes, but what about the same wallpaper but with different color variants? is this allowed? do they count as one submission or different submisions?

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Our license policy on all things shipped in KDE including Plasma can be found at Policies/Licensing Policy - KDE Community Wiki

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The Quake 3 Arena Public License (Q3APL) is now my favorite license

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I’m planning to submit a wallpaper made in Blender and GIMP. It says no AI is allowed, and I assume that must mean generative AI like stable diffusion, and not for example blender’s included AI denoiser?

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