Hey, I’m Philipp. I’m a GNOME Design Team member and I have been contributing to GNOME design as a volunteer for several years. I’m excited to share with you that I have joined the Sovereign Tech Agency as a fellow for GNOME Design & Community Management. Check out the other fellows in the official announcement .

Introduction

I originally started contributing to GNOME to improve the software I use myself. However, what motivates me to stay involved long-term are my political values. Our modern lives, from communication and education to political discourse, are shaped by digital tools, and I believe that it’s essential for a free and democratic society to ensure free and independent access to these technologies. To achieve this goal, end-user devices based on free and open-source software are key, and the GNOME desktop and its app ecosystem offer a powerful alternative to proprietary platforms.

In recent years, I have had the privilege of joining the exceptionally skilled and motivated GNOME community as a volunteer, and have experienced how rewarding it is to contribute to a project with such a broad societal impact. At the same time, it’s been a challenge to find a balance between my job, my contributions to GNOME, and my personal life. I’ve contributed to GNOME in my free time, in the evenings, and during vacations. This two-year fellowship is a great honor and marks a significant change in my life. It is a unique opportunity for me to devote my skills and experience entirely to a project I strongly believe in.

Activities

During my two-year fellowship, I will support GNOME maintainers and developers with design feedback and reviews, create mockups, and coordinate efforts to standardize design patterns. My other activities focus on lasting improvements through two strategic initiatives: expanding the design community to increase capacity and enhancing our design tooling to reduce overhead and simplify onboarding. The following activities may change over the course of the two-year fellowship, as I will adapt them to the needs of the community.

Community growth

I know from my own experience that it is hard to get started with GNOME design. While code contributions are often contained within the boundaries of a single app, design activities spread across multiple projects and often lack a clear entry point or primary contact. Also, not all tasks are newcomer friendly and many require cross‑project knowledge or historical context. I want to make design work more discoverable, simplify onboarding with clear contribution paths and approachable tasks, and retain contributors long term by integrating them into the community.

To attract new contributors, I will increase the visibility of design work by writing regular blog posts, giving presentations, and running workshops at conferences and hackathons. New contribution opportunities for newcomers will be created with clear instructions for independent activities such as collecting state‑of‑the‑art examples, running accessibility and user tests, and creating mockups. Design reviews will be used as mentorship opportunities, pairing regular design contributors with experienced designers for peer review and knowledge sharing. I plan to improve our team governance with clear membership criteria and focus areas, and integrate sustained contributors into the team and its processes. Finally, I want to provide grant writing support to enable contributors to sustain their contributions long-term.

Tooling improvements

User interface mockups are an important tool to communicate with developers. Outdated mockup templates, incomplete documentation, and non‑specialized software create unnecessary overhead, especially for newcomers. Therefore, I will extend and update the mockup templates for our current tool, Inkscape, and evaluate the open‑source UX design tool Penpot for managing our design system. If it proves suitable, I will build a component library to simplify mockup creation and keep assets synced with our stylesheet.

What’s next

I want to blog about my fellowship activities and design work in general, so expect regular updates here. If you’re interested in contributing to GNOME design, check out the Design Team page on the Welcome to GNOME website, familiarize yourself with the Human Interface Guidelines , and join our Matrix channel . If you’re a GNOME developer feel free to reach out to me via Matrix and involve me in design reviews.