I’ve been checking out the Mac OSX theming scene for a while; there’s something appealing about customizing the look and feel of your computer, but it has some caveats: it’s generallly a bit difficult to develop, and it isn’t technically supported by the operating system.

When MacThemes.net announced a contest to create User Interface theme mockups (no technical expertise required), I decided to give it a go: MacThemes.net | Contest: Pencil Neck (you can go there and vote now!).

UPDATE:

So I didn’t win, but the winners (for the most part) were pretty cool. I still want to see my theme actualized…

It seems like very theme out there is some variation on high-tech or slick and shiny widgets, which is all well and good, but none of them look any better than OSX already does, in my opinion. So I decided to go in the opposite direction with something a little hand-drawn, water-colory.

I’m not sure how it’s going over with the general audience, but the panel of judges seems pretty complementary. What’s interesting is that many of the judges are high school and college students (I suspect that’s a lot of the theme community), which makes me feel old.

Anyway, the six winners of the contest get theme software, money (for the top 3), and most importantly, get to have their mockup realized into an actual working GUI for Mac OSX. That’s all I really want…

So I hope you’ll vote for mine — 5 stars means you think it deserves to win.