Half of the battle in graphic design is working smarter, not harder. I've done some tutorials for Gimp which push that tool to its limits, but too many folks focus on Gimp and forget that we have a whole arsenal of power graphics tools on the Linux desktop. Here is one image which would have been a pain to do in Gimp, but a snap in Inkscape.

The whole design was done for 100% with free software. The biggest part consists of custom software in Python, of course within the SPE editor. For the visual power I used PIL and pyCairo. From time to time also Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch helped quite a bit. All the developing and processing was done on GNU/Linux machines which were running Ubuntu/Debian.

Red Hat graphic designers are no strangers to the pains of proprietary formats. Over the years, many have lost photographs, archived projects, and important portfolio work when formats have been changed. They’ve been forced to upgrade before they’re ready, too.

Stani - member of the Dutch Ubuntu community - won a design competition for the new 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'. This design will be realized and will be a legal coin within the Netherlands. What is very special, is that he made the design soley with free software! Isn't that cool?

The design team's a group of fourteen people who comprise a mix of different disciplines: visual / graphics designers, interaction designers, and technical people. "The majority of us come from consultancies and agencies," Ivanka explained. "I was at a user experience consultancy called Flow Interactive, and I used to be a programmer, so I came into user-centered design.

The users of Ubuntu have a big range of software to choose and install, but it's hard to choose what software is the best for your needs. This list hopes to help to choose the right software, and here follows what I think is the best Ubuntu software for designers and developers.

The new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme "Light". We've developed a comprehensive set of visual guidelines and treatments that reflect that style, and are updating key assets like the logo accordingly. The new theme takes effect in 10.04 LTS and will define our look and feel for several years.

I think I said on a forum somewhere that the only thing I can draw is breath, but with Inkscape and some patience you will be pleasantly surprised at the results you can achieve. So far I have only scratched the surface of what this fantastic, free application can do.

Once again the Defective by Design have sprung into action to denounce another product from Apple, and once again nobody really cares. Defective by Design is a marketing campaign sponsored by the Free Software Foundation. While the FSF does plenty of good work, DBD is increasingly out of touch with the majority of users.