I've always loved art deco design, for the angular shapes and the sharp contrasts, but most of all for the colors. They seem unique to me in any art movement of the 20th century. Last time I did this whole thing, I just started with a hazy vagueness (which turned out ok, surprisingly!), but this time I started with a famous painting by Tamara de Lempicka called "Young Girl with Gloves." From there I had to work backwards towards something that would actually make a usable interface. Ain't that just always the way.
After resisting the temptation to make another dark, "inverse" theme (it's always there with me, especially in the middle of the night), I went with a fairly neutral palette, the base color having perhaps a half-hint of green, but mainly a medium-light grey, highlighted with gold and black.
Now, a word about "gold." I always thought it was a color. I was surprised and possibly enlightened to discover that... it's not. Red and green and blue are colors, they happen all on their own and stand firm in any light, but something like "gold" is so dependent on the colors near to it, and perhaps even the shapes and context it's put into, that it can't be called a color anymore than you can call "puke" a color. Gold is an emotion, and at its very best it's an event. If that sounds obvious, well, it does to me too, now that I see it. Ain't that just always the way.
Aaaanyway. The icons are very different than the ones in the last theme I put out, even though they're based on the same basic stuff. The folders (very dominant in any desktop's color scheme) are a lipstick shade of rose, and many of the basic colors of other icons have been changed, enhanced, or the icons completely redrawn and reworked.
Before you install any of this, make sure you have the latest gnome themes:
Do that first, and the "themes" package should drag and drop nicely. The icons should install just as easily, the wallpaper as always is at your discretion, and the login theme (labelled "Deco-gdm-login.tar.gz") should be extracted and moved by the root user to /usr/share/gdm/themes.
And then (I have found no way to make this one-step, unfortunately), you have to go to System > Administration > Login Window, choose the "Local" tab, then choose the theme that you just plopped into the "/usr/share/gdm/themes" folder. The theme ought to show up immediately, even without restarting or logging out. (If it doesn't show up, try restarting or logging out. Heh.) Make sure you also choose "Themed" and "Selected Only" from the two dropdown menus at the top of the window, respectively. The process is not as pretty as it should be, I know. But if it was, it would be called Apple and it wouldn't be free. It also wouldn't be this customizable, so it's kind of a wash.
Anyway, here you go.
 Screenshot 1 |
 Screenshot 2 |
 Sample: Icons |