It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these design update posts. There’s plenty going on in GNOME design at the moment though, so I thought it would be a good idea to write about what’s being worked on. Here’s what we’ve been up to recently.

Perhaps the biggest and most exciting design venture right now is Jon and Jimmac’s ongoing application design work. We all know about Documents and Contacts, which had initial releases in 3.2. Now other new application designs are being produced, including Music, Photos, Chat, Transfers, Weather, Web, Mail, Calendar, Videos, Clock, Maps and Notes. These application designs are looking pretty awesome, and we’re already had developers stepping up to work on them. You can check them out them out on the wiki.

We’re also looking to refresh the design of many of our utility applications at the moment. Vinicius did a really nice design for one of these recently – the GNOME dictionary. I really like the simplicity of this…

Jimmac has also been looking at making it easy to use different kinds of authentication with GNOME 3, and has designed a new GNOME Credentials application as well as some updates to Seahorse.

And Jon has been looking at how to respond to technical problems when they happen, as well as designs for a new problem reporting application, called Oops. Jimmac’s been on hand to help with the visuals there. Cue cute graphics:

Hylke’s been helping out in a few different places, mostly around system settings. He did a very nice redesign of the zoom options the other day. These are going to be added to the Universal Access settings panel for next release.

Jimmac (gosh that man works hard!) has also made some great updates to Cantarell, GNOME’s default font, including new characters and improved hinting.

Another part of System Settings that has been getting attention is the network panel, where Lapo has been valiantly pushing on with an epic redesign.

Finally, I’ve been working on a number of system settings panels, including Power and Region and Language, and I’ve been untangling some of our text input methods. I’ve also been developing the Contacts designs to fit in with our other application designs.

As you can see, there’s lots going on in GNOME design at the moment. These are exciting times – we’re filling in large blanks in the GNOME 3 picture and we’re pulling things together to work as a whole. If you want to follow what’s happening, just subscribe the the relevant wiki pages or watch our Github repositories. Or stay tuned – there are more updates to come.