"Design Freely" makes more sense, tbh. Inkscape is more of a design program than a drawing program. Inkscape's drawing capabilities are lacking compared to most other open source graphics projects I can think of, like: GIMP Krita MyPaint etc.

Of course, I always thought "Illustrator" was a bad name for the proprietary vector program by Adobe. One was more likely to design in it than do much drawing/illustration for the lack of "drawing" tools.

There has been some debate about what "drawing" is in the context of image creation, but to me and many other graphics people I know "drawing" in the context of design refers mainly to freehand-drawing with tools that simulate real-world drawing utensils.

That's not to say you can't "draw" in it, I do often, but for the slogan, I think "design" covers many more of the tools that make Inkscape a powerful program.

Ask the average user what drawing program they use, they will say "Photoshop", "Painter X", or "Sketchbook". Some will point out that you can draw using brush simulation shapes in Illustrator, which is correct. I'd like to see more of these come to Inkscape, but to me "Draw Freely" is underselling Inkscape's capabilities, and highlighting an area that it's not particularly good at (yet).

My 2p -C

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 5:02 AM, Mihaela <mihaela.jurkovic@...400...> wrote:

On 20.11.2016 03:39, Sylvain Chiron wrote:

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Le 20/11/2016 à 03:18, Mihaela a écrit :

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"Design freely."?

Arrghh……… It’s ‘Draw Freely.’ (yes, with two capital letters). Design is a cool job too, sure.

I can't believe I wrote it wrong lol. I was mucking about the store and multitasking, and there's a lot of "Design" in the interface there, and it was 3am for me so please forgive my sin %)

Mihaela

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"Draw Freely" is also a part of our registered trademark, so changing it is unlikely at this stage.

Fair enough. Though you'll hear me say this again when it comes up in the future. ;)

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Of course, I always thought "Illustrator" was a bad name for the proprietary vector program by Adobe. One was more likely to design in it than do much drawing/illustration for the lack of "drawing" tools.

I would have thought the entrants to the contest would have given quite a lot of good examples of how drawing in inkscape is possible.

To my eyes, more design went into the entries than drawing. Esp. the winners. :) In fact, I didn't see many that looked like freehand drawings using those tools in Inkscape.

You might be right that the tools aren't The Best™ but I wouldn't say that means it's not possible to draw or that inkscape shouldn't aim for making drawing easier.

That's not what I said, though. :) I'm saying that Inkscape is lacking in freehand drawing tools that simulate real-world drawing mediums... Drawing is just one part of design though. You could look at it like: Inkscape is way more than *just* a drawing program. This is typically how I see it, and definitely how I use it. I've drawn things in Inkscape, but it's not the strong-point of Inkscape as it stands.

I honestly think Inkscape is a great Inker. Take a sketch from gimp or a scan and draw around the lines with clean shapes.

I guess you could say that's drawing... but it sounds like a bit of a stretch. The drawing was done in GIMP... so why is Inkscape "Draw Freely"? :)

Brilliant. So "Ink Freely"? Then there's all the other things you can do with Inkscape, hundreds of ways it's useful in workflows.

My point exactly. Design covers everything from drawing, to composition, to typesetting, to layout of raster graphics like photos, etc, etc. This is why it seems more of a design program than a drawing program to me.

So overall, I wouldn't say Inkscape is just a design tool. Some would claim it's not The Best™ design tool just as much anyway.

I would not say it's just a design tool either. I'd say it's one of the *best* and *most flexible* design tools available in FLOSS. But I probably would not say it's one of the best drawing tools in FLOSS. That may change in the future, but as it stands, I still think drawing (freehand) is one of the least developed features of Inkscape.

My 50p / 2¢

That's inflation for you! ;)

-C

Best Regards, Martin Owens

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My point exactly. Design covers everything from drawing, to composition, to typesetting, to layout of raster graphics like photos, etc, etc. This is why it seems more of a design program than a drawing program to me.

Super broad definition of design and super thin definition of draw. 😉

Not really. When one takes a degree in Graphic Design, for example, one utilises a myriad of tools and many disciplines to achieve the end result. That's why it's a degree and not just a class. :)

Conversely, one can take a drawing class, but no one I know of offers a degree in drawing. :)

When I think of design, I think of "intentional, introspective, calculated creation of structure". Am I designing code or am I writing code? One is more expectant that the result /will/ do something exactly and the other is experimental, more 'freehand' as if I'm not exactly sure, but maybe if I do this it'll work.

Okay... though I still maintain that we should shoot for saying the best of what Inkscape does rather than limiting it to something without intention, or introspective. Drawing does have sort of a crayons and pencils sound to it. I guess it depends on the audience. A design tool has more innate trust for professional use than a drawing tool, by virtue of design as the entire tool set rather than one function of the set.

Sure, I guess drawing sounds more friendly and easy-going. Design will always have more of a professional sound to it because of exactly the "intentional, introspective, calculated creation of structure" thing you mentioned.

I guess it's playtime vs. professional work time. There is some overlap, and certainly some argument for both. It's mainly who our target market is, and what they would expect of a drawing program vs. a design program.

-C

That's pretty much where I see drawing. The visual version of writing. When you ink, you may not know for sure why a line that's shaped like that works as a nose. So I can't claim to have designed the nose shape, I just don't know enough about nose shapes to explain the outcome.

But I can draw the nose shape, maybe even iterate over it, until some unknown internal process says "yep, that looks like a nose" and I can move on to those funny ear shapes next.

Inkscape is very good as iteration and re-use. But that's not what the core of design is to me. (and I might be wrong)

Best Regards, Martin Owens