Hello guys, as I start off with week 5 of my internship, I decided to reveal a bit more about my work with Fedora as an Outreachy intern.
I've been asked by peers multiple times what company I work with. Most people give me a confused look when I tell them about the Fedora project, so I go with Red Hat.
What is the fedora Linux / fedora project?
Fedora Linux is a Linux distribution(distro) developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of open-source technologies. Fedora is the upstream source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
A part of the open-source Fedora project is Fedora Design, it's a formal group that is in charge of all the design requests ranging from website design to iconography to wallpapers, etc.
Element chat channels serve as one of the most important communication modes for the Fedora team as members can easily join their matrix channel and directly get more information on the projects to focus on, meetings held, etc.
Problem: Almost all the Fedora matrix channels have the same Fedora icon which makes it hard for new contributors to tell the difference between channels easily.
What is my role here?
To solve this problem my mentor worked hard to come up with guidelines and a color code system to be used to design icons that can easily make it distinguishable for new contributors joining the Fedora community. Each chatroom should be unique to one another yet still signify which group/space they belong to.
I was given the task of designing these icons.
What's my process?
My process involves multiple steps:
I Start off by researching the group - their role in the community, everyday tasks, any special symbolism used, etc.
Then marks the ideating process where I create a mind map of possible keywords that describe their style preferences etc then I create an inspiration or mood board where I search around for icons for similar themes and take note of what they have been using
Next, I start penning down anything and everything that comes to my mind, the quality is not what I target, I target quantity while following the insights from the last step.
After the initial Sketching, I take in an initial round of feedback either from the client i.e. the group members or my mentor. The most favorable designs are then pushed off for vectorization where to start coming to life.
The vectorization process is by far the most interesting part. I start with Inkscape (the design software) and vectorizing the sketches. These vectors go through another round of feedback and tweaks until they one is finalized and accepted.
These steps may feel daunting at the first glance, but the tasks are very interesting and there will never be a time when you're bored of it as you get new projects to work on every day. Also the amazing support of the community and mentors makes everything incredibly enjoyable.
If you'd like to contribute to similar projects you may consider joining in the Fedora gitlab community :
https://gitlab.com/fedora/design/team/
This project gave me the opportunity to learn interesting concepts of iconography and open source design tools like Inkscape which I never had a chance of learning in university. It's been a really interesting journey with Fedora so far and I hope to design and contribute more to the community even in the future.
Till then, Happy designing 😊 and stay tuned for next week's post.