As a first effort in cleaning up the visual design of the podcast, I’ve created  some comic-style portraits of Dan and myself (in part inspired by the ones the TWiT Network uses) and used them in conjunction with the logo I developed some time back to create a new iteration of our cover art — which will be used from the first episode of 2009 onwards. You will notice that the font is much clearer and more readable on small screens (I had some feedback requesting this) and that there’s again some Linux command line goodness in there. It’s also a bit of an homage to Security Now, which was the podcast that got me into podcasting in the first place (the first one I listened to, so in a sense Leo and Steve started all of this). I hope you like the new artwork, please share your thoughts on it in this forum thread. This is the first of a bunch of visual changes coming to Linux Outlaws in 2009…

I recently redesigned the album art for the show. It is now sporting the newer font style I started to use for the website themes and the new Akubra logo. It is also a lot more colourful than the old one and includes a little bash humour as well.

The background is once again from a picture I took during my travels around Australia. I hope you enjoy the new look, it will be included with the feeds from the next episode onwards. Please leave feedback concerning the new artwork in the forums.

The other day, I suddenly felt like doing some design work and on a whim whipped up a wallpaper to promote the show. It’s based on our beloved Outlaw Tux and the album art of the podcast. I basically took a photo from my trip around Australia earlier this year that has a nice outback feel to it, used my GIMP-fu to create some nice colour and lighting effects and then added Tux and the captions.

If you would like to show your allegiance to our podcast on your desktop, you can download the wallpaper (in several different resolutions from 800×600 up to 1920×1200) from our new wallpaper page. I would also be very happy if you’d take a picture of the wallpaper on your computer and send it to us, that way we could build up a listener gallery or something like that. I think that would be very cool! If you want to get in touch with me to do that, just use the Contact button at the top of the page and write me a short note; you could also use our regular feedback address that I mention every week on the show.

I hope you enjoy this little freebie and share it with your friends according to the corresponding license.

Dan and I just recorded the first episode of the show earlier today — I think it went rather well. The audio quality seems to be excellent from what I’ve listened to so far and apart from some slight floundering on my part it sounds like it could actually turn out to be a listenable podcast. I plan to edit the show this week and release it as soon as we get the theme music worked out. Don’t quote me on this, however. Who knows what’ll happen during the editing process…

To sweeten the wait a bit, here’s an exclusive preview of the album art for you. I hope you like it. I sketched it myself, scanned it and redrew it by hand in Inkscape. The background is a touched-up shot of the Australian outback from my travels earlier this year.