Skip to main content
  1. Blog
  2. Article

Canonical
on 16 July 2010

This week in design – 16th July 2010


On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 mission set off for the Moon. Just over 40 years later and we celebrate a similarly momentous moment with our first “This week in design” post!

We thought it would be good to share an overview of the bits and pieces we’ve been working on each week, so let’s dive in!

Guidelines
We’ve been sharing our work on the new identity for Ubuntu for some time now. In case you’ve missed it you can grab assets and guidance on their use from this very design blog! Visit the toolkits section for all the goodies and if you have any questions or concerns just drop us a note or ping a member of the design team in #ayatana on freenode.

Research
Charline is putting the finishing touches to some Rythmbox research we conducted with members of the public. This will be published next week on the blog.

Maverick Meerkat
The designers on the team working on the desktop have been preparing to head to Prague for the distro sprint next week. This mid point in the development cycle sprint is a key point for us to get together with the developers and make sure that Maverick is looking great.

Community
We’ve also been working with the community on some updates to their sites and Mike Basinger who leads the forums team has been working with us this week on the rebrand of the Ubuntu forums. More on that as it starts to go live!

Font
By now if you’re an Ubuntu member you probably have the Ubuntu beta font installed. If you don’t, well why the bloomin’ heck not?! 🙂 Don’t forget that you can submit feedback via fonttest.design.canonical.com and can have a look at the bugs people are already logging on launchpad. Come join the conversation.

Big thanks should go to Paul Sladen who’s helping us to triage the bugs that come in from community testers.

Related posts


Kola Ojoodide
26 June 2026

Challenges designers face in open source (and how to fix them)

Design open source

Open source powers up to 90% of modern software, yet many projects lack usability. Canonical’s Design team surveyed 115 cross-functional professionals to uncover the 4 core challenges UI/UX designers face when contributing, and how maintainers can solve them. ...


Nina Rojc
16 June 2026

Template: Streamlining open source design contributions

Design Ubuntu tech blog

As designers working at Canonical, we’re always thinking about open source. We believe that encouraging more designers to contribute to open source  benefits everyone, from the project maintainers to the end users themselves.   In the 2025 edition of FOSSBackstage conference, we presented our research findings on  why designers don’t get ...


Miguel Divo
22 May 2026

Decoding design: How design and engineering thrive together in open source

Design Ubuntu tech blog

Open source thrives on engineering-driven processes. Fast feedback loops, terminal tools, Git workflows: they’re the lifeblood of how we build software in the open. But for software to truly excel, we need to create user experiences that empower people to use them. I wanted to bring this conversation into the spotlight as part of Canonica ...