In October 2015, SitePoint's very own Bruno Skvorc launched Sourcehunt PHP, a valuable initiative aiming to help (mostly niche) open source projects grow by attracting more contributors. In true open source fashion, it greatly reflects our love for open source here at SitePoint.
With the PHP channel being the first channel to get the Sourcehunt treatment, the Design channel was eager to catch up too. While you may not often hear "Design" and "Open Source" in the same sentence, I have seen too many great open source projects fail due to a lack of good design. Often it's very simple fixes to UX, UI or even branding that make the difference.
However, contributing to an open source project, can be greatly rewarding. Sure, you might not get paid directly, to do get: -designer street cred ("oh yeah.. I worked on that..") -the experience of working with others talented people in a decentralized way -and, of course, it looks very impressive on your resume
And that's not to mention the simple joy of just making cool stuff - a concept I probably don't need to convince you of, since you are likely already a designer and are reading this post.
For Sourcehunt Design, the Open Source Design group has been a great help with promoting open design principles and open source projects in need of a sprinkling of good design. Thanks to them, I was able to compile this small collection of projects to contribute to, with more to come in the coming months.
So, to recap:
We will be going through some open source projects which are in need of a helping design hand. However contributing as a designer is sometimes not as straightforward as with code, so I will try to explain how you can contribute on a case by case basis.
In case GitHub scares you a little (it's ok, we've all been there), relax! We will be solely focusing on GitHub Issues, which is the ticketing system GitHub offers. Check out the GitHub guides in case you are stuck.
Let's get started!
PhotoFlow
PhotoFlow aims to provide a fully non-destructive photo retouching experience with a complete workflow including RAW image development. It has an ambitious feature list which it wishes to fulfill once version 1.0 is shipped. Concretely:
- Fully non-destructive, layer-based photo editing workflow with real-time preview of the final image
- Support for 8-bits and 16-bits integer as well as 32-bits and 64-bits floating point precision, selectable at runtime and on a per-image basis
- Allows to load and edit images of arbitrary size, thanks to the underlying rendering engine based on the VIPS library
- Fully color managed workflow: user-defined input, work, and output profiles, soft-proofing and similar
- Support for layer grouping and layer masks
- Support for common photo editing tools: levels, curves, brightness-contrast control, blurring, sharpening, cropping, resizing, colorspace conversions, etc. implemented in the form of image layers
The project is currently looking for a UX/UI Designer to improve upon its graphical interface and help with the general look and feel of the program. It's a pretty straightforward task, so check out the listing on Open Source Design and start an issue in the GitHub repo.
OpenFarm
OpenFarm is a free and open database for farming and gardening knowledge. It aims to provide a platform for expert and beginner farmers and gardeners to share their knowledge in the form of Growing Guides that describe how to grow a crop based on specific environmental conditions and growing practices. Compatibility scoring between Users and Guides allows high quality and relevant information to be discovered quickly.
This is not one of the run-of-the-mill open source projects you stumble upon, which makes it all the more interesting. It's also worth noting that all data stored in OpenFarm's database is Public Domain, which is a great contribution to the commons.
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Currently, the guys at OpenFarm are looking for an illustrator to create their personalized mascot. Head over to the issue on GitHub if you want to give it a try.
If icon design is more 'your thing', OpenFarm also need some help with the development of their drag and drop farm designer/manager tool - specifically a selection of plant icons. You can find the related issue on GitHub in case you can take it on.
These are only 2 specific jobs currently most prioritized, but feel free to browse around and contribute to the project with other changes and additions. The OpenFarmers will surely appreciate it!
Thunderbird Conversations
Thunderbird Conversations is a Thunderbird extension which, as the name implies, enables a conversation view in the Thunderbird email client by Mozilla. Notable features include:
- a regular conversation view that fetches messages from all folders, and behaves similarly to Gmail's
- a quick reply feature, with autocomplete, that allows you to reply to a thread in a snap,
- quoted parts are collapsed,
- keyboard shortcuts,
- and a few other bonus features.
Conversations is actually one of the most downloaded Thunderbird add-ons with more than 60,000 daily users. As the major open source client out there, Thunderbird enjoys great popularity also.
Continue reading %Are You a Talented Designer? Sourcehunt Needs You!%
by Elio Qoshi via SitePoint
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