Background
In 1989 Ray Oldenburg described a ‘third place’ as, “a place outside your home or work where you can relax and hang out.”
Libraries, parks, gyms, bookstores, and porches are all examples. In a post-Covid world not only have ‘third places’ slowly dwindled in number but it is increasingly hard to find places that don’t require spending a lot of money to enjoy. For those who have started working from home, their first and second places have merged into one with the home office. The internet is now its own third place. With it, we have the power to socialize, consume media, share knowledge casually, and document it formally.
This virtual third place seemed like the perfect place to host an event where like-minded individuals, passionate about Open Source and creating art could come together.
“[I came up with the idea] at Nest 2022. Ashlyn was running a user testing session, we had some other design sessions and I was thinking how cool it would be to have a virtual event focused on creative free software. I think I initially envisioned it to be a Fedora design event, but once I got interested peeps together to work on it, we decided that spreading free software love was more important than gaining contributors.” - Marie Nordin
In January 2023 the Creative Freedom Summit occurred for the first time and was the first virtual conference dedicated only to the features and benefits of Open Source creative tools. The mission included inspiring fellow artists, designers, and makers to learn how to use and get excited about Open Source creative programs.
Concept
We decided to host an art challenge where the community could design their interpretation of an Open Source super hero.
We decided that the poster should emulate old super hero comic book covers. Below on the left is the inspiration photo compared to my first sketch on the right. Details that we wanted to include were, block text, curved text, banners, graphic lines, the vertical rectangle in the top left corner, and texture.
A vintage cover of The Amazing Spiderman comic
Draft 1 -A blue sketchy draft of the Creative Freedom Summit Art Challenge Poster where a flashlight shines a circle with a question mark in it.
I documented the process for this poster within this ticket on gitlab. So I took my sketch into Inkscape and started vectorizing and laying out all the text we had so far.
I followed Emma’s how to on her blog to make the circle gradient. The next step was creating the transparent question mark shape within the circle gradient. Using the text tool I created a question mark, used object to path, and then placing the black question mark over the grouped gradient circle I was able to set an inverse mask which achieved what I wanted.
Draft 2 of the CF Summit Art Challenge now in Inkscape with a blue to purple gradient
This version is still pretty rough. I received feedback from @riecatnor:
I think this design is nice- but I also really liked the more sketchy design you showed previously.. is there a reason you went with something more "slick"? I don't want to create a bunch more work for you, but that original design had something really nice about it :)
The top left and across the top banner is sticking out to me a bit.. I think it might be the different tones of white for the rectangle and the banner coming out? maybe using the same color with a drop shadow might be nice? I also think it feels slightly imbalanced because you have the bottom banner going off the right side of the page, it feels like this one should do that on the left side somehow?
I think the "fedora/design/community-design-team/issues#1" being on its own line in the banner is also feeling a little funky. I guess its so we can increase the number of the challenge as we do them and have plenty of space,.. maybe try a right alignment?
I think we should add in a link or something for people to find out more info- that's TBD as I mentioned, but you could add in some placeholder text for a link
With this more vectory design, I think it would be nice to add in that swirly texture in some capacity - the one we used for the summit event branding
I agreed with Marie and really appreciated her insight! I fixed the banner and text issues and got to incorporating the sketchiness of my earlier version.
I found this blog post by Nick Grunge with a free open-source texture pack. Before I started editing my draft properly, I played around and experimented with the different texture packs. I would definitely encourage you to bring them into Inkscape and try them out because I had a lot of fun.
Draft 3 - The poster with a texture overlaid on it
Draft 4 - The poster with a different texture overlaid
I achieved the dark blue background by turning the imported png from normal blend mode/layer to multiply or color burn. To get the texture to inverse from dark to light, I would have to group the entire design together at the end and use another inverse mask to make the texture white instead. Once I found my favorite texture pack it was time to lock everything else in.
Draft 4 - The poster with the final texture overlaid on it in white.
Final Poster Version + Variations
The three images above are the final artwork available in different formats to use for blog posts, banners, instagram and other social media. I really enjoy how they turned out as it pushed me in certain ways with Inkscape that I hadn’t used before.
My Own Take
Just because I created the poster trying to get others to engage in the art challenge, didn’t mean my work here was done. I started my own super hero design, with a mind map to get the ideas flowing of how I could represent a super hero that gave off the values of Open Source.
I could go in a few different ways.
Self Replication - The hero could duplicate themselves with clones that were all slightly different but can contribute to the fight against proprietary software.
Alternate Reality Creation - The hero fighting against their enemy would be able to stun them with visions of a different reality, helping shine a light on what the world could be with Open Source.
Access and Occlusion - The ability to open and close any security system with the blink of an eye.
Transparency - The hero could turn invisible. This seemed like the least able to relate to the Open Source way as we still want to be out there and visible with our work. Could be used for something else though.
I decided that it might be fun to do a super hero with powers of self replication with alternate reality creation. The actual appearance of the superhero was not as important to me. An Open Source super hero could have anyone behind the mask, and would most likely work with the team of other superheroes to fight against evil so I knew there were a lot of options for what they could look like.
I went for a simple sketch version in Krita and I’d love to make another version one day with this super hero (name pending?) and her team mates showing off their powers.
The Creative Freedom Summit is organizing another art challenge during October 2023 before our second conference in January 2024 so I encourage you to stay curious and get involved! If you’ve ever wanted to practice Inkscape, Krita or Blender (and countless others) then this is the event to stay up to date with :)