WHY BEAUTY MATTERS
"IT HAS BECOME CLEAR TO US THAT BEAUTY CAN NO LONGER BE DEVELOPED OUT OF FUNCTION ALONE; INSTEAD, THE DEMAND FOR BEAUTY HAS TO BE SET ON HE SAME LEVEL AS A FUNCTIONAL DEMAND, SINCE IT IS A FUNCTION TOO."
- MAX BILL
I have seen Stefan Sagmeister speak on two occasions: the first time he was speaking at Central Michigan university on Happiness, and the most recent, he spoke at West Michigan Design Week on Beauty. If you know me, you probably know I hold beauty in high regard, so it was nice to hear a renowned designer speak on the subject.
Design, for many, has become a sterile, problem-solving, task-based creature. We use terms like user- or human-centered, and we focus on aesthetic or style. As we have entered a digital age where function precedes (or determines) form more often than not, it's easy for us to forget that beauty itself is intrinsically human. So, we can't very well be human-centric, yet disregard beauty, right?
If you missed or haven't yet seen Sagmeister speak on beauty, I have broken it down here to look at some of the key points he makes...
1. SOMETIMES THE BENEFITS OF BEAUTY OUTWEIGH THE BENEFITS OF "FUNCTIONS"
The example Stefan uses here is the example of a peacock. Now, this example can probably be applied to any number of beautifully colored birds, but this example came with a photo of a panda killing a peacock so it was pretty graphic (I won't post it here but if you google it I am sure you will find it). This is a good example because it shows that even evolutionary beauty is, at times, more important than the function of being hidden. For peacocks, the importance of the beauty used to attract a mate outweighs the importance of staying hidden from potential predators.
2. WE TEND TO (SOMEWHAT) AGREE ON WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL
Now this example was much more interesting, and hilarious, to experience in person, but here is the gist. After seeing a series of basic shapes and raising our hands (all 400 of us) to decide which was "most beautiful", it was easy to conclude that, while we didn't all agree perfectly, we could definitely agree on which was LEAST beautiful. We did the same thing again, this time with basic colors, and got very similar results. Here is the outcome of our votes:
3. BEAUTY CAN CHANGE YOUR MOOD!
I think we can all somewhat agree on this one, but I will share Sagmeister's example because it's simply great. He basically showed some photos of two major train stations in NYC. Then, he showed us some tweets from those same stations. Here are some links to those tweets... there is a pretty clear difference in mood:
Tweets about Grand Central | Tweets about Penn Station
BONUS: an episode from my personal favorite podcast 99% Invisible, entitled Penn Station Sucks
4. WHEN WE LOSE OUR MIND, WE CAN STILL RECOGNIZE BEAUTY
Another way that we see a universal recognition of beauty is through things like asking Alzheimers patients to decide what they find beautiful. In a study that can be found in the US Library of Medicine it was found that people with Alzheimers would "express their preference on 16 works of art during programmed visits to an art gallery. A week later, they expressed a preference rate on reproductions of the same works presented in the gallery. The patients were consistent in assigning preference ratings, and the consistency was independent of the ability to recognize the works on which the preference rate had been given in an explicit memory task". This means that although some of these people could not remember their own family members, they COULD decide what they find most beautiful.
All this to be said, Sagmeister taught a lot on several other aspects of beauty (including how the Bauhaus movement affected things...) and if you can sift through any of my notes from the evening I will leave them here. This was a great, thought-provoking talk, so if you're ever in the position to go see Stefan Sagmeister speak I would definitely suggest it. Let this be a good reminder of the importance of beauty in design, and thanks so much for reading my thoughts on it!
As always, let me know if this was interesting (or terrible) and if you have any suggestions of what you would like to see here on the Rose Color Blog!
BEAUTY - THE COMBINATION OF SHAPE, FORM, COLOR, COMPOSITION, MATERIAL AND STRUCTURE TO PLEASE THE AESTHETIC SENSES, ESPECIALLY SIGHT & HEARING.