aesthetics of joy

In this week’s New York magazine, Justin Davidson has a review of the new Eero Saarinen show at the Museum of the City of New York (a wonderful place, so if you’ve never had the opportunity to visit, this might be a good chance). The title of Davidson’s review is “Joy Constructed,” so of course this caught my eye and started me thinking that perhaps Saarinen might represent a counterpoint to the hard-edged, rationalist, emotionally-muted modernism represented by the Bauhaus and the International Style — a truly joyful modernist.

Looking at the swooping railings, ceilings, staircases, and arches in the spread above (from New York magazine), I can’t help but feel uplifted. But why? I’ve previously suggested that curves and round forms have a primal appeal because they are connected with safety. As children we are naturally drawn to objects with non-threatening surfaces, and the more broad and neutral the curve, the more safe and approachable an object is. (No one’s going to cut themselves on a beach ball.)

As it turns out, there’s science to support this idea. In a 2007 study published in the journal Neuropsychologia, researchers demonstrated that angular objects and shapes are perceived as significantly more threatening by the emotional brain. Showing curved and angular variants of the same object (a watch, a pitcher, a candle) and abstract patterns to a group of volunteers resulted in markedly different activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved in threat and fear reactions and responds far more quickly than the conscious brain. Angular objects create much more activity in this part of the brain than curved objects. This makes sense in the context of survival within a primitive world — sharp angles are rare in nature, and usually do signal danger, or at least something we should be alert to: teeth, claws, cliff edges, and so on.

Human nature is a funny thing. You can build upon it, channel it, develop it to its greatest potential, but you can’t fight it. I look at the rigid rectilinear solids of modernist construction and I think of them as an attempt to put human nature in a box. To suppress these innate responses. But the unconscious elements within us react whether or not we want them to — they are uncontainable. In thinking of Saarinen, along with Zeisel and Aalto and other modernists who embraced the curve, I see a modernism that runs along the contours of our natural inclinations, an aesthetic that is conducive to joy.

Joy isn’t rational, and it seems fitting that Saarinen would say of his water tower design for GM (below) that it “is a departure from the completely rational.” It’s an unexpected admission for a modernist, and yet a fitting one for a designer who, in Davidson’s words, was spurred on by,  “the dogged pursuit of joy.”

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

Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” With all the advances in the technologies becoming readily available to designers these days, it feels to me like I’m constantly surrounded by magic, constantly feeling amazed at what is possible in the world.

The chair above, called the Murakami chair by American designer Rochus Jacob, generates electricity by using a nano-dynamo in the rocker, which it then uses to power its own light. This harnessing of invisible energy feels so impossibly magical that it gives me a little burst of joy.

The fireplace below, designed by Camillo Vanacore, is intended to provide a safe and portable fire for heating purposes. The glass starts out opaque and turns transparent as the flames heat up, which does not seem like a necessary feature, but certainly adds to the magical feeling. But the real magic, for me, is enclosing fire in a glass, capturing its volatility and power in an inert vessel, kind of like the thrill of having a butterfly in a net, without the sad quality of restraining a living thing.

When I look at these designs, I think of Clarke’s words and it strikes me that the meaning of magic is always changing. There was a time when switching on a lightbulb was magic, when firing up a car’s ignition was magic, when seeing an IM ping on your screen was like a flash from the ether — incomprehensibly magic. Now these events are as routine as can be. As technology shifts, and as designers integrate that technology into our lives, the limits of possibility are pushed outward. Magic hovers along that line.

More interesting than the fact that the concept of magic is shifting is how it is shifting. For a long time energy was transferred into work by strictly manual means — every unit of work done had an immediate and understandable impetus. (Similarly, every unit of food consumed or clothing acquired contained for the user a knowable and comprehensible set of inputs and forces that led to its creation.) The magic of technology slowly took away our understanding of these things. It moved sources of energy far away from the work they delivered — from the proximity of the muscles to the distance of the coal-fired electric plant. (Same with food, clothing, and everything else we consume.) There was magic in work that could be done without an immediate proximate cause.

Now, technology is finding magic in immediacy again. It’s the Murakami chair that really drives this point home for me. We’re so used to power coming mysteriously through holes in the wall that we don’t even question it, and yet power that comes from the intuitive rocking motion of our own bodies feels impossibly wonderful. All of these new power sources being explored — the dirt battery or the battery that runs on sugar — have a similarly magical quality, and yet they relate to the things in our world that are the most mundane and elemental: movement, light, earth, fire. Simple pleasures that for all their lack of pretense have a little mystery hiding within.

{via PSFK: chair and fire}

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.

A simple way to make a mundane object more joyful is to transform it using aesthetic elements of an object you already know is joyful. Designer Wieki Somers’s Merry-go-round coatrack takes a garden variety museum cloakroom and uses the form, scale, and movement attributes of a popular playground toy to transform it into a delightful spectacle.

The coatrack was installed in 2008 in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.

{via Core77, where you can see a film of the piece in action}

The lure of the new is a looming constant in industrialized society. Shiny and fresh, novelties constantly beckon: giant glossy plasma screens, sweet-smelling candles, cute kitchen utensils, sexy shoes, and the next must-have gadget of the moment.

Against this relentless parade of newer and better, it’s occasionally nice to take a moment to appreciate the objects and stories of old. Ancient Industries catalogs an array of traditional arts, crafts, and designs into the simple categories “living” and “extinct,” reminding us of treasures we’ve lost and ones that we should appreciate while they still linger.

Perusing the blog is like a joyful history lesson told through beautiful and beloved objects, like those above. Some have cultural meaning, others just have personal meaning for the writers. See more here.

How fun are these? Landor Sydney’s invitations for AGDA fold up into paper planes!

It’s a great example of how design can create permission to play. The design is still a flat sheet of paper, but the little lines indicating the folds invite you to transform it into something else.

A friend sent me this link to a company selling these strange, multicolored “happy roses.” They’re presumably made by dye absorption, which you may have tried in a lower school science experiment with a couple of carnations and a few drops of blue food dye. (If you’re so inclined, directions are here.) The company says,

The Happy Rose is unique due to its rich and exuberant colour combination and the special colouring technique that lies hidden behind this. One look at this cheerful rose and you will feel happy.

Is it happy? Or just tacky?

On the one hand, bright color is associated with joy, so perhaps it’s as simple as: more color = more joy. And the “coloring process” is certainly magical, illuminating a normally hidden aspect of plant construction. But at the same time there’s something unappealing about the artifice of it.

Aesthetics of joy has an odd tension here. The brightest colors are rare in nature, so when we find them, they’re often in synthetic materials like paints and plastics. But joy also embraces the aesthetics of unfettered nature: the exuberant wildness and wonderful mystery of nature’s accidental creative process. Sometimes our interventions in nature produce great joy. I’m thinking of Samuel Francois’s charming tree art or Carol Hummel’s whimsical knits. You could also look at earthwork, like Jim Denevan’s sand paintings or Maya Lin’s Wave Field, as this type of joyful intervention.

I wonder if it has something to do with proportion. All of the artists I just mentioned seem to work with a great reverence for nature. Nature is their canvas and regardless of the scale of their efforts, it is the dominant element in their compositions. If anything, their work serves to call our attention to nature’s beauty, not to mask it. These “happy roses” walk the line for me. Some of those colors are deliciously intense, but I think their frenetic application obscures the natural form of the flower too much. I lose the beauty of the circular gesture and the bouquet becomes a collection of random ruffles.

All of this is an attempt to parse rationally what is a reflexive, visceral response for me. I vote eyesore. What do you think?

Thank you @_MattMorris for the link and inspiration for this post

Toys suck. Well, not all toys, but many of the new ones. You play with them once and then you’ve figured it out, and there’s no more pleasure to be had from the experience. Designer Dror Benshetrit says of experiences like this, “Toys with quick and linear paths to gratification have less longevity,” and I think he’s spot on. Ironically, the simpler a toy is, the less simple the experience. If you watch a child play with a stick or a ball or a cardboard box, you see the hours of enjoyment that come from manipulating these very basic forms in a variety of ways. Because of their simplicity, they don’t indicate an outcome. Instead, they provide points of departure for many different kinds of play. In imaginative play, they become props for an array of fantasies. In physical play, they become obstacles or building blocks. In social play, they are transformed by the interplay of ideas and decisions made by a group.

It occurs to me that this idea of non-linear play experiences connects back to my earlier post on circles and roundness as an aesthetic of play. If you think about it, the ability to come back to a toy repeatedly and continue to get value out of the experience is a cyclical process, and cycles are just a temporal version of a circle. So good play involves not just circles in form, space, and movement, but also time.

Simplicity gets sabotaged by the greedy designer. Says Harry Allen,

I worry that in our desire to sell toys to children, we do too much of the work for them. Toy designers have all the fun and leave little to the child’s imagination. One quickly tires of overly designed toys, but one never tires of one’s own ideas.

It’s an interesting notion: that toy designers are naturally those who like to play, and sometimes get overzealous in that process, keeping too much of the fun for themselves and overdefining the experience. To me, Puzzibits are a perfect example of that excessive design. I was excited when I first saw them because I love all kinds of building toys — Legos, blocks, and my absolute favorite, Tinkertoys. I loved the idea of Puzzibits because their rubbery material means that they’re flexible, an exciting twist that opens up the possibility of creating organic forms. But the reality just doesn’t meet the promise.

The flatness of the pieces means that they lend themselves most readily to 2D creations, which is fine, but not as exciting as the 3D forms. This is a problem of affordances. Affordance is a design-y word for the possibilities that are designed into an object or space; they are the ways in which form dictates function. Doorknobs and handles present a really good example of affordances that Donald Norman uses in his book The Design of Everyday Things. A round doorknob affords turning. A vertical handle affords pulling. A long horizontal bar affords pushing. You know if you’ve ever tried to pull a “push” door how frustrating it can be when the affordances of the design don’t match the intended action. In designing utilitarian objects, the goal is usually to constrain the affordances so that it’s clear how the object is to be used. A door that needs a sign that says “Pull” means that the form is not doing the work it should to make it clear how it’s supposed to be opened. “Pull” is effectively a one-word instruction manual for a door, an object so simple it should never need one.

With toys, the goal is the opposite: affordances should be as broad as possible. The more ways a toy can be manipulated, the more possibilities it engenders. Too few affordances, and the usage becomes linear and finite, which is what happens with Puzzibits. The rigidity of the attachment points means the pieces have to be connected in a coplanar way. That simple choice of connector design makes it very easy to achieve 2D compositions and very difficult to create 3D ones. The designers solve that problem with a manual. If a manual is undesirable in a functional item, it’s positively deadly in a toy. Manuals are not fun. Using them consists of following directions, and directions are nearly always linear in nature, prescribing an outcome. In this case, the manual shows constructions like animals or vehicles that can be built (prescribed outcomes). But even when the suggested outcomes are inspiring, the creation of those things requires such a dull, one foot in front of the other process that it’s like putting together IKEA furniture. On the other hand, free play with the toy is so constricted by the narrow affordances that it’s impossible to make any satisfying new discoveries.

This idea of new discoveries is so essential to what play’s all about. It’s about opening ourselves up to the unexpected, and that can only happen when the ending isn’t written into the form of the toy. Simpler forms lend themselves better to complex possibilities because less of their story is already written, leaving more for the players to create themselves. We know classic toys have a deep resonance that continues into adulthood. It also continues for generation after generation of children who discover the same pleasure that their parents and grandparents felt at interacting with these simple objects. It’s not nostalgia that embeds these toys into our psyches, but rather this aesthetic of simplicity that allows us to infuse them with personal meaning.

It’s a good principle, not just for toy design, but for emotional design of all kinds. Leaving room for the customization, interaction, and play by designing in an open-ended way allows users to write their own stories around their objects and relate in deeper, more personal ways. When it comes to aesthetics of joy, in some cases, less is definitely more.

Image: Ivan M

I’m working on another aesthetics of play post to cap off the week (the one about interaction and affordances that I promised earlier) but it’s taking a little long to get fully baked, so in the meantime, check out this amazing set of interviews with prominent designers about their favorite childhood toys.

The snippets are short and feature Michael Bierut talking about matchbox cars, Rob Walker waxing poetic about balloons, Harry Allen reminiscing about Play-Doh, Chris Hacker musing about Lincoln Logs, and many others. It’s hard not to be moved or just inspired to play when reading these evocative stories about the relationships kids have with their playthings, and how these relationships have helped them evolve into the adults they have become.

via ID magazine

I thought I’d posted these before, but it seems not. I love this simple, irresistible rethinking of the crayon. Available at Romp.

My dad says that when I was a kid and I wanted him to play with me I used to say “Plaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” in this little voice, all drawn out long and laden with a kind of affable insistence. It was code for, “Doesn’t this look like a lot more fun than that big stack of dictation over there?”

When I see these Charley Harper memory cards, that inner child pipes up again with her invitation, except this time it’s aimed at me. It’s really hard to focus on work when someone makes games this beautiful.

Available here, and very reasonably. A nice gift for the children (and inner children) in your world.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more thoughts on the aesthetics of play. In the meantime, today I’m posting a few of the toys my inner child is currently coveting.

Hidden magnets make these blocks a magical remix of the old wooden ones, allowing creations that wouldn’t have even been fathomable before.

Huesito blocks from Tegu. Get them here.

Where do I begin with describing the joy of Polaroids? There’s the magic of the technology, which unlike many high-tech innovations manages to be enchanting long past the point of newness. There’s the delight of instant gratification coupled with a delicious (almost torturous) anticipation. And then there’s the experience itself, the sheer pleasure of the image emerging, first a ghostly impression, then full color, out of a sort of muddy brown nothingness.

Digital cameras bring joy too, of course. Our first encounters with that technology were certainly magical, though its proliferation has made them less so. You can relive that initial joy and remind yourself how wondrous digital photography is by traveling to the most remote places with a digital camera. In 2006, my then-boyfriend and I were admiring a donkey in rural Kyrgyzstan when its owner came along and invited me to give it whirl. The man joined me in a photo and I’ll never forget how his eyes lit up at seeing the photo displayed on that tiny screen. We rarely have the opportunity to feel that way anymore, but digital photography still has its joys — they just come from other attributes. For example, the scale of digital technology is such that we can carry it with us everywhere, so we never miss a joyful moment. And because we can take zillions of shots for free, without even thinking about it, digital photography lends itself to more spontaneous, unexpected results.

But Polaroid has a few joyful features that the weensy camera in my iPhone can’t hope to match. First, the Polaroid is a real thing, an artifact. The Polaroid spits out a real picture (and does so with that exciting ejector noise). The picture is a real, tangible thing. It has weight and texture, smell and sheen. It interacts with light, reflecting it off its glossy surface. It interacts with the hands, showing fingerprints and odd effects if you touch the surface during the developing process. A digital photo feels ethereal; it’s an image, but not a picture. It engages just our vision, while a Polaroid engages all our senses. (Well, except taste. I hope.)

The Polaroid does the instant gratification of digital one better by incorporating a tiny interval, a delay that allows our anticipation to build. Studies have shown that interruptions or delays preceding a desired event make the event more pleasurable when it occurs. So while that wait for the image to come through tries our patience, it actually makes for a more joyful rush when the image actually appears.

The interval suggests another joyful feature of Polaroid, to me the most important one. Polaroid is not just a product, but a process. This is essential to the notion of joy. People don’t derive joy from products; they derive joy from experiences. A product is static. It can only create joy through its contribution to an experience — the experience of using it (hula hoop), wearing it (pair of shoes), doing something fun with it (golf clubs), interacting with others through it (phone), contemplating it (art), and so on. Objects that suggest or prescribe an experience are more likely to be joyful than others. But objects can also incorporate experience into their very essence, their matter, and this is transcendent. Polaroid is one of those rare products that embodies an experience. Every Polaroid picture is a unique show, a one-act play of light and color whose action unfolds silently in front of the user. That process reflects the experience you just had when you took the photo, when the moment crystallized in front of you as photo-worthy, when the players assumed just the right poses, when you depressed the shutter and made it permanent. The image emerges, a transformed vision of 3-5 minutes ago, as the most beautiful kind of déjà vu.

Which is all to say that I’m very pleased about the renaissance of the Polaroid that seems to be happening these days. Urban Outfitters is now selling Polaroid film, and I just founded these gorgeous Polaroid notecards (above) on the always charming Jars of Cute (available at Fred Flare). To me it’s less a manifestation of retro nostalgia than a craving for tangible, joyful experiences, something I think we all can use a little more of in our lives.

This rug by designer Angela Adams is joyful, but not exactly cheap. ($18,000? I can hear my grandfather asking, “Does it fly?”) Alas, we might have to content ourselves instead with some stationery or a nice tote.

via The Moment

ps: I just noticed this is my 100th post! A small but happy milestone to celebrate…

I don’t know if some animated characters can make reading emails and making calls into a “Joyful Adventure,” but LG Australia certainly hopes so. The website for their GM730 smartphone features games in which personified apps get together to catch flying emails and do “playful multitasking,” whatever that is.

Looking at the graphic above, it’s clear they’re trying to harness elements of joyful aesthetics: the tiny claymation cupcake village, friendly color palette, cutesy language, and glimmering phone. It’s a Childhood aesthetic, designed to trigger playfulness and nostalgia. But the whole thing is just a gloss on what’s presented as an otherwise ordinary smartphone. The characters, with charmingly original names like “Dialing,” “Contact,” and “Office,” do nothing to highlight unusual features of the phone. They’re just the standard apps, often the ones you wished worked better. Seriously, Dialing? Is that even a feature?

The TV ad takes the Childhood aesthetic a step further, with puppets whose style clearly references The Muppets and a brightly-colored set that echoes Sesame Street. Another device from Sesame Street used in the ad is the intermingling of puppets and people. It all combines into an aesthetic designed to stimulate our nostalgia and bring a halo of joy to the phone. The ad ends with the line “Joy. Now in a smartphone.” spoken by a V.O. with a laugh in her voice and spelled out in a friendly, rounded typeface.

But despite the frenzy of action in the ad, nothing suggests this is any different than any other smartphone. Why will this phone, in particular, make me so happy? Answer the question, and it’s a legitimate claim. But until the emotional claim is backed up with benefits, this represents another great example of the increasingly common, increasingly global advertising phenomenon of joywashing.

Thanks Ben, for the great tip.

I would like to drive around in a car called the “Utopian Turtletop,” wouldn’t you?

That was just one of many names that emerged from a brief but joyful collaboration between the writer Marianne Moore and the Ford Motor Company in 1955. Ford approached Moore for help with naming “a rather important new series of cars” and though the names she suggested were all passed over, they still delight. Wouldn’t a “Pastelogram” be nicer to drive than a Focus? Doesn’t a “Fabergé” sound cushier than a Fusion? Ok, to be fair, perhaps the delicacy implied by that last one  doesn’t bolster the crash test rating claims, but surely all of them are better than “Edsel,” the name eventually chosen by the Ford execs.

I love the idea that poetry can lend levity to product naming. Naming in the automotive industry has become beyond bland. In the past few years or so we’ve moved away from the dull, corporate neologisms like Altima and Innova towards peppy party words like Jazz, Beat, and Fiesta that are just begging for exclamation points. They might be more upbeat, but they’re still pretty mundane. Collaboration with people who are used to using language in more joyful and flexible ways would take product manufacturers out of their comfort zone — and that could be a wonderful thing.

NYT: Poetry in Motion via @deepglamour
Image: Old Car and Truck Ads

This calendar works like magic, drawing just the right amount of ink each day to fill out the date. Each month is colored to fit the seasons.

Ink Calendar by Oscar Diaz via New York Magazine

Vanessa has a nice post on for the love of bikes about these beautiful colored tires. The stripes on the side walls blur together when in motion to create a “speed-blend” effect. What a wonderful example of joyful design! As a rider you wouldn’t even get to see them in action, but you would get to see the delighted reactions of people around you.

Via for the love of bikes (more photos there)

It’s magic month in the world of Aesthetics of Joy. I’m currently working on the chapter about magic and joy, which is all about the transcendence of natural law and human limits. One of the greatest constraints we face as humans is gravity, so it’s no surprise that a lot of joyful things happen to defy it. Unable to fly naturally ourselves, we derive a lot of joy from assisted flight (planes, hanggliders, hot air balloons) and from surrogates (kites, bubbles, birds).

The magic of kites lies partly in this defiance of gravity, but also in the way it plays with another human limit: visibility. As our dominant sense, vision is something we trust without question, but human vision actually operates within a pretty narrow range. We have trouble seeing anything smaller than 1/20th of a millimeter with the naked eye. So even though we know that air is not actually “empty” but rather filled with invisible particles that are constantly being moved around by wind and convection currents, we can’t see these in action. There is, then, a magic in anything that manages to make these invisible forces visible.

The unpredictable dance of a kite reveals these hidden forces in a beautiful, joyful way. And the design of kites, while deeply functional, is also geared towards aesthetically enhancing this emotional experience. Kite designers design for the wind, for the spectacle created by the kite’s movements, adding loose tails or wings that magnify the gyrations of the form. Color, usually bright and saturated, is used to draw maximum attention. And though there is poetry in a simple diamond kite, kite designers are going ever bigger and more intricate in their quest to provide a joyful spectacle.

These features are clearly in evidence among the kites exhibited last night at the FlyNY kite auction. Founded by a trio of architects, FlyNY is a kite-making competition and kite-flying festival aimed at bridging the gap between the design community and everyday New Yorkers, and bringing joy through the pleasure of kite-flying. The non-profit held their inaugural festival earlier this month in Riverside park, and hundreds of families showed up to make simple paper kites, while the more hardcore brought their own finely crafted designs. Yesterday, the kites were exhibited and auctioned off at the Knoll showroom to benefit Architecture for Humanity.

I’ll be interviewing FlyNY founder Victoria Walsh next week, so look for more kite thoughts then! You can see images from the kites and the festival here.