Plasma Themes Contest

The KDE Plasma team is inviting everyone to participate in a contest to create Plasma themes from which a select few will be chosen to be included as a part of the upcoming KDE 4.1 release. This is a great opportunity to contribute to a very visible component of the KDE project, the Plasma desktop.

A great feature of Plasma is the ability to theme components of the desktop using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs). This means there is no need for you to know C++ or any other programming language to create a great looking theme.

You only need to know how to use one of many graphics tools (e.g. Krita, Inkscape, The GIMP, Karbon, etc.) and that is all. Depending on your prowess with such tools, you can create great looking plasma themes in as little as an hour.

You can find a quick guide to creating Plasma themes in the Creating a Plasma Theme in 7 Easy Steps Techbase article.

Rules:

  1. Submit your work in the Plasma Themes section of KDE-Look.org website. Put a notice '(for theme contest)' in the title of the theme.
  2. Submissions will be accepted as a tar.gz file of the theme folder.
  3. Submission deadline is 9th April, 2008 18:00 UTC. Themes submitted after the deadline will not be considered for this release.
  4. Winners will be announced by 18th April, 2008.
  5. All artwork must be original or otherwise meet the requirements for distribution as part of a GPL licensed project. Preferred license is LGPL.

Guidelines:

  1. Consistency. All theme parts should fit nicely with each other.
  2. Completeness. Although Plasma automatically loads required images from the default theme when they are not present in the active theme, it is suggested that you include SVGs for all theme elements.
  3. Uniqueness. The unique always stand out in the crowd; so should your theme.

Have fun! The Plasma Team.

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Comments

by Andrew Lake (ja... (not verified)

Just a clarification: Heron is made by magaden. No reason to have Heron associated with rif-raf like me. :)

by Ivan Čukić (not verified)

Huh, my apologies to magaden.

My bad, I knew I liked two of your themes, and blindly thought that the second is Heron... :)

by Grósz Dániel (not verified)

I think it is OK to have judges to decide as long as they judge not only by personal taste and accept that other people might have different taste, and select different styles that match every people's taste as far as possible. This didn't happen at the wallpaper contest when the judges selected similar photos which are, in my opinion, not suitable for being a wallpaper.

by kristjan_ (not verified)

why not let kde-look.org votes (or number of downloads?) be "another member of the jury" if you don't like handful of people giving ratings.
I myself am more worried that there won't be enough submission.

I hope so much to at last find some theme that is intersting for people aged more than 20. In all theme sets for any software, I am so bored to only find black&fire styles, or cheesy fantasy stuff. Please also submit some art for grown ups ok ?

by JRT (not verified)

When I helped judge the SVG background contest, there was a problem. The KDE SVG rendering software wouldn't render many of them including, IIRC, some of the winners so I had to use Squiggle to judge them.

This problem shouldn't occur with Plasma themes. Please add to the rules that cool effects (including filters) that won't render with the current KDELibs shouldn't be used.

by koki (not verified)

I am just wondering... There are not so many KDE 4(.1) themes around (there are only few of them on kde-look.org). Is it difficult to create themes for KDE 4 or maybe majority of KDE users still use KDE 3?

by Anon (not verified)

KDE4 has been around for a little over 2 months; KDE3 has been around for almost *6 years* :)