I made my desktop cool and fun.

Okay, hear me out: some may call this project a pointless waste of time. In some ways, sure, I agree. However—can it really be called pointless if it brings me joy and elicits excitement to do the somewhat daunting or monotonous work I have to do on my laptop? A laptop could really be considered a mini office; I may as well decorate the space.

My goal here was to make an interactive sky with some organization blocks to keep my desktop tornadoes to a minimum.

First off, here's the background. I drew it in Procreate. Canvas size: 2560 x 1600px

Next, I took an old template I made sized to my laptop (and new larger canvas size), and I changed the fonts, details, and made them semi-transparent, color burned, shaded, and embossed:

I made the folder icons by pulling the standard folder asset from my mac, transferring it into Procreate, drawing the stripes modeled after the air-balloon patterns, then transferring the silhouette of the air-balloons onto the center in Photoshop. Lastly, converting them to TIFF files.

Next, I made three types of birds and a cloud asset to use when i have random folders scattered on my desktop; far more fun than a tornado. I can move them around, style them, and make them look like they are flying in the sky. So fun.

And with the goose icon, I can do things like this:

Last, and probably least, I changed my icon & widget style appearance in settings to "clear" for the desaturated icons for my applications, and I added the two widgets in the corner for productivity, of course.

So yes, creative side quest. Thanks for reading.