Desktop Wallpaper Calendars: Join in!

• By The Smashing Editorial
• March 19th, 2008
• Calendars, Downloads, Freebies
• 128 Comments

The monthly wallpaper series was first launched in early 2008, back in the time when we started searching for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Since then, we’ve had remarkable desktop wallpapers designed by various artists from all around the globe. It would be our pleasure, dear readers, for you to share your artworks with all of us and we heartily welcome you to join in the monthly wallpaper submissions here on Smashing Magazine!

How Do I Participate?

So you have some innovative ideas for a desktop wallpaper? Feel free to send them over and share your ideas with the rest of the design community. Please consider the following guidelines:

1. Choose any theme you like: typography, art, abstract, illustration, photography… almost anything really! It’s up to you, but please consider that the calendar should be in English.
2. Design a wallpaper in the following resolutions (as many as possible, minimum 5): most popular resolutions are 320×480 (iPhone), 1024×768, 1024×1024 (iPad), 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440 and 2880×1800 (please notice step 5).
3. Please design your wallpaper in two versions:
   The ones which contain a calendar for the upcoming month (eg. in March, wallpapers with April calendars will also be accepted) as well as the ones which don’t contain a calendar (so that the wallpapers remain useful even months after they’ve been released).
4. Make sure the wallpaper contains a Smashing Magazine logo (.zip, updated, 0.3 Mb) which should be clearly visible on all wallpapers. Please make sure that the logo is embedded properly and doesn’t have any importing defects. You may also place your logo on the wallpaper if you want to.
5. Download this form (.zip, with a plain text-file form.txt inside) and fill it in (it is a necessary step). You can also use a bash script for automated resizing and saving wallpapers using Ubuntu and ImageMagick.
6. Please name your files according to the format “month-year-[filename_shortcut_of_the_theme]-[calendar/nocal]-[resolution].[jpg/png]“.

   Example: if the title of your wallpaper is “Frosty Winter”, then use the filename shortcut frosty_winter, and name the wallpaper’s month as such: october-10-frosty_winter-calendar-1680x1050.jpg (with calendar) and october-10-frosty_winter-nocal-1680x1050.jpg (without calendar). Unfortunately, files with wrong file names cannot be processed.

7. Pack your wallpapers and the form.txt-file in one archive (.zip if possible). Send them via e-mail two days (at the latest!) before the end of that month to the following email address: contest@smashingmagazine.com with the subject “[Desktop Wallpaper Calendar] Month, Theme_title”.
8. All of the wallpapers featured in our magazine will be available for free download and will contain a link to the artist’s blog or portfolio!

What Do We Expect?

Please feel free to browse through our selection of desktop wallpapers to get the idea behind what is needed to get featured on Smashing Magazine. Please consider that not every wallpaper will be published as we’ll carefully analyze each work and will select only those wallpapers which have the most creative and artistic potential. In order to be featured, the wallpapers need to send a message across — not simply some sort of advertising. We are sure that you would be quite proud if you knew that a great number of people across the globe are using your desktop wallpaper on their computers!

A desktop wallpaper from one of our old collections

The wallpapers are published in the beginning of every month. Notice that we respect the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist and their work which is why we give you the full freedom to explore your creativity through your artwork. And this is also why the theme of the wallpaper isn’t anyhow influenced by us, but designed from scratch all by yourself!

Feel free to design bold, intriguing, crazy, personal, but creative, unusual and absolutely stunning wallpapers.

Smash it on, folks!
 —  The Smashing Team

(il)