Nonos Systems - Background Library

Operating System Background Library

Advisory, Creative Direction and Design

Client: Nonos Systems

Nonos Systems reached out with a special invite to join the advisory team, and to design the first background library for a world-first operating system. Nonos is a ZeroState OS, written from scratch in Rust: the session lives only in RAM, every program has to prove itself before it runs, and zero-knowledge proofs sit in the kernel. No personal computer has shipped that combination as the base layer before. Mainstream machines have spent a generation writing your life to disk. Nonos boots a clean session, does the work, and is gone when you shut down - a historical break in how a computer is allowed to behave. The brief was a system-level visual layer, meant to sit behind native apps and browser work for long sessions without competing with the work on screen.

The goal was to bring a cyberpunk influence into the library: network grids, routing structure, hardware shells, and teal used as a small signal on the Nonos mark and along an edge of light. The aim was a desktop you could leave on all day - enough atmosphere that the OS feels like a place you work in, and enough calm in the center that apps stay in charge. Network Topology is the default desktop. Field + Focus is for deep work and terminal sessions. Monolithic / Hardware is for lock, boot, and security surfaces. The library is built for privacy-first software, and for what Nonos is building toward: sovereign computing, a machine that boots clean and leaves nothing behind when you shut down.

Every background was custom handcrafted with an array of tools, including Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Cinema 4D 3D software.

Advisory / Creative Direction: Eric Jordan

Background Library Design: Eric Jordan

Default desktop. Grids, nodes, and routing structure with the Nonos mark held in the field.

Quieter surfaces for reading, coding, and long focus. Less topology, more atmosphere.

Planes and enclosures aimed at lock, boot, and security states. Hardware that reads as contained.

Alternate treatments delivered with Round 1, same palette and mark.

Full case study: ericjordan.com/portfolios/nonos-backgrounds