You are a man of my own heart! :)
Beautiful is the core ideal of "venustatis" - I just went for "interesting"
because beautiful has become so... depricated in English usage (or modern/
western usage). Almost like a pejorative. In practice beauty contains
"interesting" as well so thats why I went for that as a go-between.
A sort of city planning idea where beauty is the thing that drives people to
want to explore something - a slight bend in a road so you can't see down it.
An inexplicable park placed between houses to entice you.
For me, and to Vitruvius, beauty was the thing in any design that gave the
user pleasure and need to be near it. A object or construct needed to be
stable and durable, then it needed to be usable by a human, designed by human
metrics - but then it also needed to be pleasurable to be near ("pleasurable"
has a completely different context now so I didn't use that - don't want us
blocked in security-filters on search engines :) )
I would more than happily change it to "we design to be beautiful" I just
worry that it sounds negative? But if you and others think that would be
better - I would LOVE to change it to "beautiful"
Oh also here is the phabricator task https://phabricator.kde.org/T2070
/Jens
----------------
PS: And although I know this is a plasma-devel list I would love to discuss
the concept of crafts-vs-arts in regards to your definition of beauty as
"lacking function" (or functionalism/brutalism) - perhaps that is for another
time?
On Friday, 9 June 2017 11.10.11 CEST Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Jens Reuterberg - 09.06.17, 09:40:
> > We build to be durable, we create to be usable, we design to be
> > interesting.
> […]
>
> > Reasoning behind the vision:
> […]
>
> > Finally its the poetic vitruvian line at the end: Firmitas, Utilitas,
> > Venustatis. That something is "well built" or "durable", that something is
> > "usable" (from a users perspective easy to use) and finally "beautiful" or
> > interesting to use - inspiring usage. Build/Create/Design is intended not
> > as work roles ("designer" etc) but something we all do ("designing the
> > system" for example).
>
> I´d like to see the word beautiful in the vision or a word that more clearly
> indicates that beauty is part of the vision.
>
> Why? Cause I believe utility is not everything. If something is just useful,
> but not beautiful, I believe something is missing. As… in the other way
> around as well an application is just beautiful, but basically unuseable.
>
> You have it in "design to be interesting"… but for me "interesting" just
> does not mean beautiful. I am not completely sure whether "beautiful" would
> be the right word. What came to my mind was also:
>
> "we design to be engaging."
>
> But that might also miss an important aspect.
>
> For me beauty has two aspects:
>
> 1. One is beauty without function. In nature, if left alone, or carefully
> cared for, all that lives tends to create beauty. It doesn´t seem to do so
> to reach a certain goal, at least not solely, but it (also) seems to be the
> pure joy of expressing itself – of course you can call this a goal as well
> – to me.
>
> 2. Beauty that engages. In the terms of a work environment this would be
> beauty that actually makes it a joy to work with the environment.
>
> Of course these are overlapping each other.
>
> I definately see roam for the second aspect in Plasma, but also… for the
> first one.
>
> Thanks,
