I have always wanted to create a dynamic wallpaper to this effect, but the challenge in such an endeavour was creating multiple versions of a design that all looked stunning. My work was done, and once again, I paused to savour the feeling of having completed another project.īut then another thought interrupted this second moment, this time wondering, 'what would it take to create multiple versions change throughout the course of day?' For years, Apple has been doing this: macOS Mojave had 16 shots of their dynamic wallpaper, while macOS Catalina & Big Sur each had 8. And a while later, I sat back in my chair, sized up what I had created, and felt content with having created a night version of the Bliss wallpaper that would perfectly complement the original. With the Bliss wallpaper completed, I sat back to savour the feeling of having completed another project only to be interrupted by the thought: 'people are going to want a dark mode.' So back to the drawing board I went.

Sharp, flowing lines dissolve into subtle gradients that unite the legacy & colour palette of the original Bliss wallpaper with the gradients and minimalist aesthetic used to showcase macOS Big Sur & Monterey. The final result is an interpretation of Bliss for the Mac that I am very proud of. At times the work was a careful choreography, slowly manipulating the mesh to find a precise blend, whereas, at other times, it was me wildly swinging around the anchor points in a desperate attempt to find something. To accomplish this, I booted up Sketch and got to work inside of the Mesh Gradient plugin, selecting colours and contours respectful to the original Bliss photograph. What I wanted to do in this project was create a wallpaper for the Mac inspired by O'Rear's Bliss photograph in the minimalist styles of the macOS Big Sur/Monterey wallpapers.

Microsoft's command of the marketplace in the early 2000s and the success of Windows XP helped propel Bliss to becoming the most viewed photograph on earth. The wallpaper features a gently rolling sunlit hill on a background of soft & small puffy clouds against a vivid blue sky. Shot by Charles O'Rear in 1996 in Sonoma Country, California, Microsoft later purchased the rights to the image in 2000, which used the image as Windows XP's default wallpaper when the operating system launched in 2001. Bliss is probably the world's most recognized photograph, seen by billions of people across hundreds of millions of devices.

Desktop backgrounds for mac