That’s right!!! We are officially ready to start brainstorming for Fedora 36 Wallpaper ideas because our candidate with a K last name has been chosen (drum roll please) and it’s Deepika Kurup! Ideas and progress are going to be documented on Design issue 789. If you want to help us brainstorm an approach, join us at 1830 UTC Wednesday in #fedora-design on Matrix.

Who is Deepika Kurup?

Deepika Kurup is an inventor, scientist, and clean water advocate.

Kurup’s initial idea that won her the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist in 2012 is based on using a photocatalytic compound for water purification. In 2015 she developed a permeable photocatalytic composite using sand, TiO2, Portland cement, and silver nitrate.

This photocatalytic permeable composite showed a 98% reduction in total coliform bacteria immediately after filtration. Exposure of the filtered water to sunlight with a photocatalytic composite disc resulted in 100% inactivation of total coliform bacteria.

Paths we could go down

We may want a landscape that emphasizes the sun and water like Fedora Linux 34. Or we could symbolize bacteria in a way with the water in a gradient effect going from dirty to clean. These were some initial ideas. A few voters also commented that this is globally meaningful, and exploring the element of water and the inventor presents a new generation.

Thank you to everyone who voted and gave comments on the candidates! We greatly appreciate it!

We needed to brainstorm to figure out different paths we could go down together. So we met on Wednesday, November 3rd at the regular Design Team meeting.

1. Nature/Water Cycle

Some ideas were a physical landscape where land and water meet. One person brought up that we could leave an easter egg of trees from previous wallpapers. Marie also brought up the idea of dew droplets. Especially since Kurup’s invention involves hollow glass microspheres, so the droplets could represent both water and the shape of the microspheres.

2. Transparency/Reflection

Water’s transparency was brought up as a visual element to play around with. Transparency is also key in Fedora’s OpenSource process.

Either one or more reflective orbs as the end result of the filtered process reflecting the world around us and the clean ending.

3. Filter/Purification

Mo brought up how water gets filtered so it’s easy to digest, the same way Fedora Linux is which results in it being the better “purified” desktop. We discussed particles and elements being filtered out potentially in a gradient abstractly or concrete representation.

We talked about how this invention and the ability to filter particles out of the water, mirrors our necessity to filter air when it comes to COVID-19, and how it offers hope.

Next steps:

Going forward, we encourage you to pursue whichever avenue you’re most interested in and work on some thumbnail sketches (they are supposed to get the creative juices flowing with ideas, not overly-detailed) to figure out some potential compositions.

😀 Please have fun with this and don’t feel restricted by any of the topics discussed above! We welcome any other ideas.

And one last reminder that the ticket issue is #789 on pagure!!

Next meeting: Wednesday, 17 November at 1830 UTC