So... this is an "icon".

It's for, a KDE application made by a great friend of mine, Sebas. You might have seen him in. on a video about some thing turning 30 🙂

I spent several days working on this thing. I lost count somewhere after 30 hours. It's a fish covered in disco mirrors, wearing sunglasses and headphones when sebas the app name was seebass and it was an app for DJ's ..... Obviously it was going to be this. It had to be done 😀

And I keep wondering... what is it worth?

Is it worth something because I spent more than 30 hours drawing, tweaking, fixing, and obsessing over tiny details? Is it worth something because it looks cool? Or is it just a silly fish, and all that time was my own problem?

We make a lot of software and art in open source. We give things away, we share them, we let other people use them and build on them. That's one of the things I love about it. But sometimes I wonder if we confuse free with worthless. If something costs nothing, does that mean it has no value? Or can the fact that someone chose to make it, and chose to give it away, be part of what makes it valuable?

I'm not sure there is a universal answer. I don't think value works that way.

Right now, AI tools are still pretty useless for producing the kind of SVG icon I wanted here. You can't even get something that looks vaguely right. So the amount of work behind this image is fairly obvious to me.

But that won't necessarily stay true. Maybe soon they be able to generate thousands of icons with AI.
Using denoising tools and other techniques you probably already can), and then curate them into a complete set. They might not even be SVGs. They might look OK. They might be consistent, useful, and take a fraction of the time.

Would that set have value? heehhh... some??

Would it have the same value as this fish?

Well... that depends on what you value.

If you just need an icon that looks "good", perhaps the answer is yes.

But for me, there is something else here. I know what went into this image. I know how long I spent getting things right, how many little decisions went into it, and how much of myself I put into something that, in the grand scheme of things, is completely unnecessary.

Or... no. Let me rephrase that. It's completely necessary. Maybe even mandatory, if we want what we make to mean something to someone, rather than becoming just another mindless exercise in mass production and sameness!!!!!.

This matters to me.

I think about my friend Kevin Ottens when I think about this. He has often described his work in terms of craftsmanship, even using the idea of haute couture ;). There is a particular kind of work where the effort isn't just a way to get to the result. The effort is part of the result. The choices, the skill, the time spent getting things right. The things that could have been done more quickly, but weren't.

I never actually asked Kevin if he meant it in quite the same way, but that's how it felt to me. Some work carries a sense of the person who made it. You can feel the difference, even if you can't explain exactly where it comes from.

And no, I don't think everything needs this kind of treatment. There are some things were there is no intrinsic great value say a code mockup for example just to test an idea were it can make sense,

But when we decide that something deserves more, when we spend that extra time because we care about the result, I don't want us to lose the ability to recognise that as a kind of value in itself. And I have the suspition it will be the key differentiation factor in the near future

The machine-made thing is necessarily worse at least the afctual result. The human effort magically makes everything good. We've all seen enough terrible handmade things to know that well lest not spend time on that.. . 🙂

It's because I don't want the effort to become invisible just because it can be avoided.

If we want people to feel some connection to the things we make, we need to leave room for that kind of care. To make things that carry a little of the person behind them. Things that talk to you in the same way art does. (And I don't think my designs are any sort of art form, but... well, perhaps that's not really the point.)

Maybe that has no measurable value. Maybe it won't show up in a spreadsheet, or in a comparison of how many icons can be produced per hour.

I'm OK with that.

Anyway, if you want to see me ramble a little more about creativity, design, and the effort we put into the things we make, reminder KDAB have published a video featuring yours truly and we also put a great deal of effort in it. and you know the deal 😉 views numbers sets the value ;( ...