PCB Artwork with KiCAD (lgm2025)

At the 2014 edition of LGM in Leipzig I've shown the evolution on printed circuit board design with a special focus on fonts, which were mostly constrained by the technical capabilities of the tools available at that time. Ten years later, however, there now is a strong Free Software option for designing your own PCBs and there is a growing community of artists using PCBs as a medium for artistic expression, a lot of them actually using KiCAD for the design work. I want to showcase examples of PCBs where the properties of PCBs are used to create visually appealing hardware. I'll also...

Hyper 8 Video System (lgm2025)

[Hyper 8](https://simonrepp.com/hyper8) is a static site generator for video, developed since 2023 and first released in 2024. It uses a file-based, modular building block system for authoring video sites ranging from single videos, to playlists, to video collections of arbitrary hierarchical complexity. Sites can be created and edited using Hyper 8's graphical user interface, but also using nothing more than a terminal, file explorer and text editor (or both). Due to their static nature, Hyper 8 sites are inherently fast, maintenance-free, long-term archivable (also working offline without a server, directly off disk) and compatible with pretty much every webhost (thereby easy to publish...

Lightning Talks Thursday (lgm2025)

Five 10 minute slots for lightning talks. Sign-up on location! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/lgm25-upstream-2025/talk/1566315690/
Video:lgm2025-83681-eng-Lightning_Talks_Thursday_hd.mp4

Location Tracking App for Foreigners in Moscow

Russia is proposing a rule that all foreigners in Moscow install a tracking app on their phones.

Using a mobile application that all foreigners will have to install on their smartphones, the Russian state will receive the following information:

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. Qatar did it in 2022 around the World Cup:

“After accepting the terms of these apps, moderators will have complete control of users’ devices,” he continued. “All personal content, the ability to edit it, share it, extract it as well as data from other apps on your device is in their...

The Curious Case of Splines in FreeCAD (lgm2025)

Splines, especially in their general form as NURBS, are an extremely versatile tool in a 3D designer's kit. They allow the designer to succinctly and efficiently model objects of arbitrary shape and smoothness. For converting these designs into physical objects, FreeCAD has a vast set of tools to operate on NURBS, both as planar curves and (with addons) as surfaces. However, the complications of NURBS can also cause a good amount of confusion, especially compared to other representations of splines, which may be more familiar to the user from other applications (which may include...

Let's All Go Back To Bitmap Fonts! (lgm2025)

Scalable vector fonts have been the norm for decades, but that doesn't mean artists and hackers don't have use cases where a bitmap font fits the bill (and it doesn't mean that classic bitmap font designs deserve to be forgotten, either). This session explores two distinct scenarios where bitmap fonts have a role to play and looks at the tooling needed to convert or repackage older bitmap formats for convenient usage in modern free-software applications. The first scenario is enabling vintage computing aesthetics in graphic design: there are several paths available to transform bitmap fonts into forms usable in Inkscape, GIMP, and other...

Permacomputing: Fermenting Regenerative Aesthetics (lgm2025)

Images created with digital graphic techniques have played a central role in promoting the seemingly endless growth of a computing culture that many of us now recognize as extractive, polluting and exploitative. Beyond that, something that once promised a utopian future now feels like it has delivered a rather crappy, disappointing reality. FLOSS has undoubtedly played some role in this development, but it also holds a great potential as part of a shift in imagination to new practices and aesthetics that are more verdant, just and humane. This presentation will propose the concept of "Permacomputing" as a useful lens to consider the role...

Welcome (lgm2025)

Welcome to Nuremberg, welcome the Libre Graphics Meeting! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/lgm25-upstream-2025/talk/2682810148/
Video:lgm2025-83644-eng-Welcome_hd.mp4

RE:imagination Primer (lgm2025)

We're kicking of this years special focus -- RE:imagination -- exploring the possible futures of the Libre Graphics Meeting. ## TODO: Keynote? This may be a placeholder for a keynote, that still needs to be determined. ## Special focus – RE:imagination The Libre Graphics Meeting faced significant challenges during and after the pandemic. In [Rennes](/2024), France, 2024, the local organization team revitalized the event, and now we aim to rebuild the international community and strengthen the structures around the Libre Graphics Meeting. Join us to reconnect with old friends and forge new connections. Under the theme of **RE:imagination**, we are going to explore...

A View on the Open-Source Video Editing Landscape (lgm2025)

Whether it is stitching together some travel footage or producing high-quality film content, there are many ways people want to work with the medium "video". Their needs for video editing solutions are diverse, and so is their budget. Open-source video editing software seems great for beginners to get started at zero cost. What do you get and what do you have to give up on compared to the closed-source options? What does it even take to build software like this from scratch, technologically as well as mentally? This talk takes a brief look at the free-to-use...