So, I work for a rather large and well-off publisher in Belgrade, where I live. We do magazines, and newspapers, just like every other newspaper publisher in the city. Am I happy with it? Yeah, sure. Why not.

But for me, all that is nothing. I don’t even think of it as of a professional challenge. I sit, do my job, get paid. I don’t do a bad job, don’t get me wrong. I always squeeze out more than 90% of my skills in the office. But I enjoy nothing more than contributing my skills to open-source projects.Such jobs give me the most satisfaction, and the fact that it doesn’t pay, and you don’t get hindered by requests from paying customer, gives me the high I so crave when I’m designing.

I think it was two weeks ago now (or was it more?), that the Arch Linux community started to work on So, I work for a rather large and well-off publisher in Belgrade, where I live. We do magazines, and newspapers, just like every other newspaper publisher in the city. Am I happy with it? Yeah, sure. Why not.

But for me, all that is nothing. I don’t even think of it as of a professional challenge. I sit, do my job, get paid. I don’t do a bad job, don’t get me wrong. I always squeeze out more than 90% of my skills in the office. But I enjoy nothing more than contributing my skills to open-source projects.

Such jobs give me the most satisfaction, and the fact that it doesn’t pay, and you don’t get hindered by requests from paying customer, gives me the high I so crave when I’m designing.

I think it was two weeks ago now (or was it more?), that the Arch Linux community started to work on changing its graphical identity. A guy that calls himself thayer.w started a thread presenting his latest creation. The concept that is now removed was an arrow stuck on an 'A'. It was very nice graphically, but somehow it didn’t look 'Arch' to me, so I created a modified version of the current Arch Linux logo and posted it. That split the crowd right down the middle, with people suggesting this or that, liking thayer.w’s work, or mine better, etc, etc. And as it usually happens in such a situation, very positive momentum was created.

The enthusiasm was quite something, and soon developers announced the logo contest, for community members to contribute their artwork. We all got down to work.

As much as I enjoy working, I enjoy sharing the effort with community members even more. Some people from the professional Marketing and PR backgrounds may actually be quite disgusted by the sort of colorful, pirate-like approach in open-source community, but the joy and enthusiasm that usually vibrates in such times is extraordinary. Of course, I would never go as far as letting someone edit my work, but peer review and all that. I is amazingly refreshing after spending some time in a company setting. The thread was soon filled with comments and feedback from community members, an occasional flame war, and a few serious incidents. However, overall the energy was good.

The community is coming up with some fantastic artwork, and the excitement is still high. I’m sure developers will have a very tough time choosing the winner. :)

Although the efforts are strictly volunteer, I bet many companies would love to get their hands on some of the skillful artists that posted in there. It's an amazing thing, this whole open-source movement...