Sophistication

      What is a sopisticated design?   The dictionary defines it as "lacking natural simplicity ... complicated, elaborate."  Some people say sophistication means elegance.   The dictionary defines elegance as "tastful, refined and dignified in appearance or style".    Complication alone can't make sophistication, but it does make things interesting.  But if there is complexity and its a mess is that sophisticated?  The mess is cleaned up through refinment.  So refinement seems to be a key to sophistication too.  Something refined is clear about the different parts, the dominate elements or parts and the relationships of all the parts to one another.   So if something's complex and refined then maybe that means its sophisticated.  Complexity is pretty easy to understand, its refinement that is the issue.

    On its simplest level something refined has had all its parts analysed and addressed.   In order to do that the stylist would have to break a visual situation down into its simplest parts and enumerate all the aspects of each of those parts and their relationships to the other parts.  He'd then have to analyze those separate aspects and relationships and finally make judgements concerning adjustments to each separate issue.

Beauty

     Good or bad aesthetics is defined by the degree of beauty of an object or place.   Beauty is defined as  "a combination of qualities that give pleasure to the mind".  When addressing the aesthetics of something, what determines that degree of beauty?  At what point is it beautiful or not?  If its just personal preference then there is no common definition of beauty.  But if there is some universality to people's perception of beauty then personal preference becomes a cultural issue, not an aesthetic one.

      No matter the style, something beautiful must be interesting,and possess clarity and the perception of  wholeness or totality.   Things are interesting when there is change.   Or said the other way, if there is no change then there is only sameness and no interest.   It must be interesting in order to attract people's attention so they'll look at it.  Clarity allows the brain to decipher the constituents of a composition.   Unity comes from the relationships among the different constituents of an array.  If the parts have no relation to each other then they will not be seen as parts of a whole.  And if there is no clarity among the different parts then the mind will become frustrated  looking for that clarity.
      For there to be change there must be at least two discernible parts and because they're discernible those parts must be in some way different from each other.  The number of parts, their differences and their positions relative to each other determine the level of interest.  A few parts, closely resembling each other have less interest than a composition with many disparate parts.
      Clarity is the degree of difference among each of the parts in an array.  When the mind cannot decipher the different parts of an array it will tire of the search and move on to something it can understand.  When the elements of a composition are clear the mind will order their importance and decipher their relationships.