I wokeup this morning to an email from Chuck Anderson the designer of the beautiful Windows 7 default wallpaper, about a piece on Gizmodo where he’d shared with them the process he went through to create the default Windows 7 wallpaper, which will surely become a design classic. Chuck is only 24, but already has done more in his career than many other designers.
In just over four months, Chuck developed the wallpaper concepts starting from hand drawn sketches below into the finished articles we all love today. In the images below you can see how the iconic Windows 7 images evolved over time. In the interview Chuck had some very positive things to say about the Microsoft design team he worked with:
“The desktop was obviously heavily influenced by the look of the login screen. Microsoft had made the decision to make the Windows logo the centerpiece of the default desktop. But you always worry about the classic complaint you hear from designers about clients: ‘Make the logo bigger!’ In response to this first desktop experiment, Microsoft told me straight up, ‘That’s too big. Tone it down.’ Awesome. I agreed.”
It’s a shame that the images that Chuck was allowed to show to Gizmodo are so small as some of the discarded designs look quite stunning and would have made good Windows 7 wallpapers. To read more about the design process then head on over to Gizmodo, for more details of their interview with Chuck.
Update: I’ve added an extra gallery of some of Chuck’s amazing work from his website which includes a Google Chrome theme.
More: Gizmodo
