plasma, panels, colours

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 07 November 2008, Nuno Pinheiro wrote:
> A Friday 07 November 2008 02:39:40, Aaron J. Seigo escreveu:
> > black, however, can be sexy. when it's used as a highlight, as an anchor
> > or on a feature piece. but as the everything colour ... not really. there
> > are specific situations where that *can* work, a working desktop is
> > really not one of them.
>
> In the design book "color harmony" by Tina Sutton and Bride M.Whelam
> "Graphic
> The color combination of black and white, is clasical and dramatic at the
> same time- think newspaper headlines, piano keys and tuxedoes, in
> decoration black and white tiles add a touch of elegance to an hallyay,
> while in fashion nothing is more cosmopolitan than basic black with
> perls"....

a desktop is not formal wear like a tuxedo or a little black dress that you 
wear out at night to dinner. it's something you take with you and use to work 
with every day. we're not making a screenshot to look cool in GQ magazine, 
we're making something for people to use.

and in this, dressing it up in ALL BLACK, ALL THE TIME does not say "oh look, 
this is an elegant and snappy dresser" it says "this is depressing and doesn't 
belong with the lightness of the rest of the desktop".

maybe you're trying to make a tuxedo, but in the context the panel lives in 
and what it is used for, what we have is a sad goth kid.

> I see a cultural thing, here in portugal the most sold car color is Black,
> virtualy all car dashboards are black.

car exteriors are a different use case for colour, and i actually included 
pictures of dashboards from luxury cars below that show how black is used with  
not-black in tasteful and sophisticated ways.

> the psicology of color is somthing that interests me alot... and basacly we
> can use only 3/4 colors :) white black grey and blue.... or anything that
> is unotaceble as a color....

i agree; but this is not really relevant to the discussion because i'm not 
asking for pink or something here.

> > * contrast, so as to be able to see the elements! one can also phrase
> > this as "less subtlety".
> >
> > as it is, i really, really like the black buttons of the taskbar and
> > systray and pager and what not. and they look really, really nice when
> > there is enough contrast to be able to actualy notice them.
>
> arron we can give a hint of color with the icons and make a smoth
> transition using a gloss look on the bg like in base.png, but if we paint
> the bg of the panell with a difrent color other than black or white it will
> clash with the overal theming....

ok, let's pretend i agree with you. try something *not black*.

> working with black is prety simple, use alot of it contrast with mainly
> white then but a small precentage of bright strong colors to live it up...

yeah, i get that it's simple. i too can splash black on black and use white 
text and be done. i'm not after simple, though. and neither should you. we 
should be going for things that look good and which are well received by 
people who will use it.

what i've gently been trying to communicate is that the current black-on-black 
is FAILING at the "well received" bit.

> > i base all this one two things: human psychology on the one hand (which
> > is pure theory, though well understood and "proven") and market feedback.
> >
> > thankfully, i do not think it requires a full redo of the theme, it just
> > requires a non-black-block as the panel background.
>
> think somthing like base.png 
> http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/test/base.png does that without major
> clash agaist the remaing of the style.

that doesn't actualy address the issue does it? you can keep throwing more 
black panels at me and i'll just keep saying the same thing back.

> it uses alot of transparency so its mostly color rich depending on your
> wallpapper

as was already noted, we can't actually rely on translucency.

> > in nearly all of those cars, the dashes use black in very significant
> > ways. but the entire dash is not black.
>
> the most comon color in top of the line cars is black.

so you really looked at all those pictures and your conclusion was "oh look, 
it's all black"? take off your blinders. there's black in there; it's even used 
extensively. but it's not used as black-on-black-on-black-with-some-more-
black-for-good-measure.

> > i also understand, and accept, that there will be people who love an
> > all-black approach. i hope that others can understand that our current
> > default is not working out at the moment, if only because our downstreams
> > are rejecting it outright (and replacing it with horrific results).
>
> Well if it was just this i would agrea with you... but from what  I have
> seen (not much) its horrific, brobably you arron will notece mostly the
> pannel, but its all over they chage mostly everything so they can brand
> themselfs a bit, example ,,, mandriva uses an mostly all black wallpaper
> with some rather tacky decorations, then a qt theme that is somthing that
> looks like keramic for gtk, in shades of palle corporative mandriva blue.
> then coisethey madea a mish mash of color they use aya couse "its fits the
> windeco" result, uter mess.

yes, we agree on this. but their results are not relevant. the issue is that 
they are avoiding the black-on-black. the fact that they then replace it with 
something truly horrific only reflects even more poorly on us.

> again i think base.pn can do that.... base png as only one major flaw...
> "its vistish" not that vista invented this look its been around for
> aeons...

i honestly don't think that's the problem.

but if we do want to talk vista, it's pretty funny that we'd even want to take 
on a style there that would remind people of the most maligned OS released so 
far in this century.

so .. where to go from here. you can continue to stick to your idea that 
black-on-black is just fine if you wish. you can also humour me and come up 
with a background that isn't a deathly pall of black beneath black. or we can 
agree to disagree, and i'll get someone else to come up with a panel 
background that both works and which lifts the charcoal veil.

shipping 4.2 with another black-on-black panel isn't something i'm content 
with.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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