Designers in an open source community or environment are not easy; neither for the designer, neither for those working with her/him. Open Source and Free Software communities have an alternative work and collaboration culture compared to classic working environments.

Lately, designers have taken a more and more important role in such communities, originally initiated by developers and programmers. Just think of the Firefox logo, how important it is to such a big movement and community.

However, designers are difficult beings; we often can't get over our ego, are perfectionists in unneeded ways and often, like magicians, don't want to share our materials or tricks. That's why it's often hard for a designer to work "in the open".

We can learn though how to add transparency to our workflow, and praise "sharing is caring" more than "made by me". Licenses like Creative Commons, Open Document Formats and similar. are the most powerful tools of a designer in an open source community. We are able to become better designers, and better contributors at the same time, following a few simple principles.