aesthetics of joy

This looks like a delicious dessert for a spring day. Maybe something to eat when you’re wandering around Wuppertal…

And maybe if you were carrying…

On such a colorful day, you might run into someone like this:

And then if you got tired, you’d come home and take a seat:

My files are full of these joyful, colorful images that have caught my eye at one point or another. I save them up in folders with names like spirals and candy and things that look like ice cream. Then I forget what I put in them, and sometimes when I go in and open them up they are like little presents. This is the contents of my rainbows folder, now emptied out so I can start gathering anew!

Top to bottom: Rainbow jello, via DailyCandy; Holsteiner stairs in Wuppertal, by Horst Gläsker; Bolsaco by SuTurno; Photo by Paul Smith, posted on his (maddeningly non-permalinked) blog 13 August 09; Paper-wood stool by Drill Design.

ps: I love how Paul Smith describes his photo, above. He says, “this man is also a shop,” which is such a lovely window into his view of retailing. If you’ve ever walked through one of his whimsical, eclectic shops, you can immediately see the connection to this image, and the notion that selling is secondary to the pleasure of being among (and creating) arrangements of delightful things.

Morgan Blair’s Diamond Collection. Like a pile of technicolor paper airplanes….

{via mandr}

There’s something so delightful to me about this midcentury child’s table and stools set with its colorful wedge-patterned laminate surfaces. I think the splayed tripod legs look kind of anthropomorphic, like an unsteady toddler, which adds a sense of a cuteness to the appeal.

{via Dwell}

These variegated poufs of carnations are like a gorgeous brand of cheerleaders’ pom-poms. I love how this arrangement makes a prosaic blossom seem so luxurious. They’re so tactile too — you can just imagine how the cool, feathery petals would feel on your hands.

{flowers by BORNAY}

Wonderful project by Rachel Berger. Every day for 100 days she chose a color swatch at random from a bag, and wrote a short piece (like a prose haiku) inspired by it. I love how it exposes all the random connections that color and language form in our tangled brains. There are the aesthetics of joy in the world, but then there are also the aesthetics of joy inside us — embedded in the network in our neurons, the experiences of our cells, the sensations still living on our fingertips, and the pattern of thrills that has shaken our bones. Sometimes it can be hard to access them, but then a chance encounter with a color, aroma, or evocative sound can bring them right back to the surface of the now.

{via DesignObserver}

I’m taking a holiday from the blog this long weekend to focus on last-minute details for the thesis. Happy Thanksgiving, and see you Monday!

xx Ingrid

Yesterday “Stripes!” and today “Fela!”  This might be the week of exclamation point titles. They’re the most joyful punctuation, and with all the work and so little sleep, I’m getting a little punchy. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write about those bushmen whose name has the ! at the beginning, the !Kung, and then finish the week out with some Lichtenstein paintings!

Please, don’t mind me. Sleep deprivation makes me giddy. (!)

But back to the order of the day, which is a short note about Fela! the musical, a biopic about the legendary founder of the Afrobeat genre of music Fela Kuti, which has just moved to the Eugene O’Neill from Off-Broadway. My friend Maggie scored free tickets to the Saturday night preview show and I just could not stay at home with the laptop with that on offer. It would not have been the joyful thing to do.

I arrived flustered and let’s just be honest, more than a little cranky. I left light as a feather. What happened in between? Music, of course — Fela’s soul-stirring, body-shaking sounds, brought to life by Antibalas, a Brooklyn Afrobeat band, charismatic lead Sahr Ngaujah and the sensational Lillias White. Dancing — not just by men who seem born in motion and women whose bodies seem to be all hips and no spine, but by you too, every last gangly uncoordinated one of you. And the color and energy of costumes that are positively kinetic in their vibrancy.

I couldn’t help but dig up a little history. This video shows Fela in concert — his songs were known to run 20 minutes or longer — so you can get a feel for the music and the joyous performance style if you aren’t familiar with it.

On the revolutionary music blog Revolucion, No you can find lots more about Kuti’s music, as well as these great images of his “queens,” the women who were his dancers and also his wives. These really give you a sense of the gorgeous energy that inspired Marina Draghici’s wonderful costumes and sets.

The translation from history to real life is so vivid, so immersive, that you can’t help but feel that you’re in a completely different world for a few hours. You’re certainly a long way from Broadway!

Read the NYT review: Making Music Mightier Than the Sword
See images of the sets and costumes from the show
Get tickets here

I love how the stripes feel like they’re coming to life in these colorful tape installations by artist Rebecca Ward.

{via @design_sponge}

I’ve been saving up these color wheels for just such a gray fall day as this one. I present my thesis just 3 weeks from tomorrow, and while daylight is short the workdays are definitely getting long. Of course, it does help that the work I’m doing is so upbeat and colorful. Just looking at happy images has powerful unconscious effects on mood, creativity, and energy. These color wheels are like a shot of caffeine to the arm — the perfect late-mid-week boost!

Above, {via}

These thread and quilt color wheels are by my favorite fabric-and-yarn store combo, Purl. They sell fabric bundles to help you recreate the quilt above.

Above, lilfishstudios

Above, Andy Gilmore, who I first wrote about here.

Don’t have a source on the two above — apologies. If this is you, let me know.

And finally, the toy I’d most like to see under the tree if I were four years old (and if Pottery Barn hadn’t discontinued it):

If I had a set of these cheerful chopsticks from DWR Tools For Living, my takeout bill would be steep! Though I guess I could offset the cost with noodle dinners, as these would make even dollar-store ramen into a joyful experience.

So it’s finally Friday. For real this time. (You’ll have to forgive me — one month out from finishing a masters thesis tends to make all the days look the same!)

These ebullient ethnic print looks from Tina Kalivas’s latest collection really fit my Friday mood, though. All the cutting, folding, and layering transforms the vibrant prints with an effervescent new energy. It’s as if all the tiers and pleats create a third dimension to the patterns, translating their graphics into form, animating them with texture and life. The whole effect is festive, but in a very “celebrate everyday” sort of way.

I hope you’re celebrating something this weekend, aesthetically or otherwise. Happy Friday!

{via Refinery 29}

Well, I was going to leave you for the next few days* but then I saw these and I couldn’t wait to put them up. For these Penguin Classics, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, I might actually think about violating my multivariate color-coding system.

What is it about gorgeous objects that makes me all synesthetic? I literally want to eat these. I guess, in the end, all aesthetics comes back to survival, food being a big part of that. Whatever the reason, I think these are just delicious.

Also, one the more joyful interviews I’ve read in awhile features Bickford-Smith on the Penguin blog. The image-text format really made me smile.

{via Daily Candy, available on amazon}

*Wow, it’s evidence of the long week I’ve had that I spent this whole morning convinced it was Friday. But, no, it’s still a day away. So there will be at least one new post here tomorrow. Apologies if I confused anybody! xx Ingrid

Just a little Friday eye candy. Have a great weekend, and see you next week!

Color Me In by Héctor Sos.

I could get lost in the vibrant color of Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square series of paintings. Right now I’m designing a set of stools each with three different-colored legs, and thinking about using these squares as palettes for inspiration.

If you love them too much to content yourself with a print, Hermés created a series of scarves based on these evocative squares. (I can’t link directly, but look for the photo of Albers over his squares.) The names of the scarves below are Formal Garden, Allegro, and of course, Joy.

I love the form and craftsmanship of these tops by KleinReid for Herman Miller in homage to Charles and Ray Eames; the proportions are sweet and they seem like they have a nice weight to them. But they have the appearance of toys that are meant to be looked at, rather than played with. I wish they had a pop of color, maybe just a couple of thin stripes running around the latitude, like piping on a garment. It would make them more approachable, more like toys and less like executive desk ornaments.

(Compare with the color-dipped axe handles from the Best Made Co. — an axe is not a toy, but I have to say that these make slinging wood look like more fun than spinning it.)

On the other hand, these quirky KleinReid vessels are incredibly haptic. I can almost feel the slightly irregular, muted, glazed surfaces in my mind, and imagine looping a finger through the perfectly-scaled openings to carry one home. The drippy edge where the glaze meets the foot is imperfect, but the imperfection is tantalizing. They have a similar gestural quality to the tops, but the exaggerated proportions, color, and tactile surfaces make them seem more toylike to me.

It’s remarkable that utilitarian objects and decorative objects could have more playful attributes than an object designed to be played with. But then, at $199 a set, perhaps the tops aren’t really meant to be played with at all, and the design is a fitting balance for an object whose relevance is more symbolic than functional.

Tops can be purchased here, when they’re back in stock. Axes here. Vessels here.

Riaz has these great photos of Pakistani cargo trucks on his site. He says:

What’s amazing about this is that these are just regular cargo trucks. The truck drivers put in this much effort into almost every single vehicle you see.

In Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, there is a tendency towards embellishment of buses and the like, but I have never seen anything like this! They may strike a Western eye as a little gaudy, but you can’t deny there is so much love in these designs. I’m especially struck by the contrast between the plain attire of the drivers and their over-the-top vehicles. I wonder if this somehow became a sanctioned form of self-expression, and so, in the face of sumptuary convention, all creative energy gets channeled here.

See the full set here: Truckistani

Last week I had a post on DeepGlamour about the glamour of glass. As a complement, I was thinking about doing a piece here that explored glass’s joyful side. Glass finds glamour mostly in the context of architecture, formed in cold sleek panes. Joy requires it to be liberated from two dimensions, let loose, tinged with bright hues, and blown to the edge of implausibility. I immediately thought of Dale Chihuly and his prolific body of vibrant glassworks.

There is so much joy in Chihuly’s candy-colored glass balloons, the coral reef-like swimming pool floor (I would have fingertips like raisins before you could get me out of that), the organic sculptures mimicking a tropical flower pistil or the frilled maw of a giant clam, and the floats that bob like dinosaur eggs among the lily pads at the various botanical gardens where he showcases his work. But while I was poking around his site, I found something that to me was even better, and that totally changed the direction of this post.

I found drawings. And these drawings, done with equal parts love and haste, made my heart race right out of my chest.

These drawings, studies on the road to art, are for me more joyful than the sculptures they prefigure. Unconfined by the persnickety requirements of a brittle, fragile medium, they are pure expressions of Chihuly’s relentless exuberance. They reveal the desire that motivates the transformation of glass from amorphous liquid to novel form.

It’s heat and human effort that mold the glass, but more than that, it is the creative energy that bleeds off these pages. After the accident that cost him his left eye in 1976 (and a subsequent surfing accident that left him physically unable to hold the glassblowing pipe), Chihuly stepped back and assumed more of a directorial role in his process. These drawings, therefore, are the most direct connection between his eye, his brain, and his hands. For a designer, this is likewise true, as we are usually the initiator, and not the ultimate maker, of our work. While we need drawings or instructions that communicate our technical intentions to a fabricator, there’s no substitute for an expression of brute emotive force that will stir something inside the maker as well.

See more of Chihuly’s drawings here.

Wrapping up the post-game fashion week joyfinding, it’s time to let the inner child out. The Barbie-loving, Bubble-Yum chewing, magenta tutu-wearing little girl inside of me danced around the apartment when she saw these light, confected pinks, and then ran off to eat pashmak for breakfast.

The cotton candy vibe extended weirdly even to the hair at some shows, where technicolor riffs on afros (almost none of them black) sweetly framed the traditional model death-stares. Vuitton took the cake for volume, but it was Rei Kawakubo’s stiff, fuzzy ponytails that managed the fine balance between kawaii and cool, and really captured the irrepressible joy of spring.

L to R, Top: Paul Smith, Lanvin, Carlos Miele. Bottom: Luella, Louis Vuitton (I almost wrote Vuitoon – Freudian slip?), and Commes des Garcons. There were candy colors (not just pinks) at tons of other shows — Giles, V+R, etc. Also, Tavi made a rainbow of Lanvin dresses that is worth a peek.

I’m lying low this weekend to work on the book (the rainclouds above have thoroughly endorsed this plan) so you may see a few atypical weekend posts. Happy Friday!

When my studiomate Hayyim brought copies of these incredible 18th century color charts to the studio yesterday, I couldn’t wait to find and share them. They come from a book (which is online in its entirety) on the development of color technologies in Europe in the 18th century. The charts show the emergence of the color wheels most artists and designers are familiar with, and some more novel approaches, such as triangles and pyramids, that reveal a generation of thinkers’ joyful struggle to make sense of our chromatic world in the wake of Newton’s theory of color.

I hope the color brightens up your weekend. See you next week!

xx Ingrid

Addendum: In the original post, I linked but did not cite the source of these wonderful charts. Please see the following reference for more information on this fascinating topic:

Sarah Lowengard, The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Gutenberg-e Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). www.gutenberg-e.org/lowengard

I love the spontaneity and texture of these paintings layered over photographs by Gerhard Richter. I h0pe they brighten your Friday and that you have a lovely, joyful weekend!

Xx Ingrid

The other night I was at Green Depot for the Inhabitat NYC launch and I couldn’t resist the gorgeous wall of paint swatches. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m crazy about color and those walls of color chips have an almost hypnotic effect on me. I couldn’t resist taking a strip of bright yellow with me to think about what I’d paint with it. Well lo and behold the next day I’m on the subway and I reach for Alice in Wonderland (which I’m rereading for something like the 25th time) and the yellow strip has slipped itself into the pages just like a bookmark. Happy accident!

Ok, I know this isn’t even really a project, but you could make it one if you felt so inclined, by adding a ribbon or other decoration at the top, or pasting two back-to-back for a double-sided version. Either way, it’s nice joyful little thing you can make with very little effort at all, and for free, to boot.