aesthetics of joy

Today I was interviewed about “joywashing” by Virginia Prescott live on New Hampshire Public Radio‘s Word of Mouth, a show about trends and culture. The interview was great fun — I love talking about joy in its many forms, and especially its rise in popular culture.

You can hear the segment online here after 3pm today. And here are links to the ads from French’s, VW, Clorox, Trident, and BMW discussed.

Previous joywashing posts on this blog include one on Clorox and one on Trident, in case anyone’s looking for a more in-depth discussion of the phenomenon.

One point I didn’t have time to make in the interview that I want to add. . . Unlike greenwashing, joywashing doesn’t present a dangerous threat. I meant what I said when I indicated that an abundance of joy in marketing probably is a good thing, and certainly won’t hurt anyone. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every brand. Not all products should be marketed as joyful products. And this glut of good vibes will definitely make it harder for any one brand to stand out.

Marketers run a very real danger of poisoning the well by jumping on the joy-wagon without backing up their advertising claims with product design or service gestures. Like any major cultural shift, the rising tide of optimism has the potential to be an opportunity or a threat. For those marketers that realize people are looking not just for sugar-coated messages but for uplifting products and services and experiences throughout their lives, the joy wave presents a good opportunity to leave a deep and powerful impression on their customers. Or it could be a fast-track to being perceived as inauthentic. It’s all in what you make of it.

Thank you to NHPR and Word of Mouth for inviting me on to share these thoughts with their listeners. Have a joyful afternoon!

This joyful Friday continues with this wonderful item from Inhabitat on DIY pools made from recycled dumpsters. You would never know that those glorious sparkling blue boxes used to hold demo’d drywall and rebars. I wonder if I can convince Lila and BD to put one of these in the garden downstairs. Maybe if it were circular…

Via Inhabitat

Thank you to my friend Ben for these amazing rainbow pictures over the Sydney harbor (or, I should say, harbour!). Rainbows have a way of making the whole earth seem enchanted and surreal. I especially love how the light in the pic above makes everything under the rainbow seem brighter, like the world under the rainbow is charmed.

I’ve been writing more than a little about the notion of the absurd as a route to joy lately, and as far as absurd flowers go, the allium pretty much takes the cake. Poofy, sparkly orbs, disproportionately large yet still light and airy atop impossibly tall, straight stems — the allium looks like something that would grow on a newly discovered planet. Its family heritage is no less comical: the cheery allium is actually a variant of the onion, presenting a globe above ground while its cousin hides one below.

The allium is one flower that never fails to make me smile. But of course there are many joyful flowers. Poppies, with their irrational exuberance — bright, fragile, and abundant. Peonies, which are perhaps more stately, but lavish with their fragrance and the endless layers of petals that unfurl implausibly from those tight, hard buds. Lilacs, which appear in an intoxicating fog of scent, offering a pure glut of sensation for only a few weeks. Tulips, too, with their early spring color and their way of opening themselves so wide as to practically turn inside out, offering all before going bare for another year.

The whole idea of the flower is joyful. It is an alluring spectacle, an unfurling of vibrant energy, both excessive and necessary. Color, pattern, scent, texture, intricacy of design — in the flower, nature spared no aesthetic expense. Surely she could have evolved other (more efficient) ways for plants to reproduce, but how lucky we are that flowers evolved to be the dominant means!

This is a great find by my friend Maggie. Two-thousand LED paving stones have been set in amongst the cobbles on the Place du Molard in Geneva. What a magical place!

These lit pavers disrupt our expectations in so many subtle ways. We are so used to light coming from above that lights from below seem to upend the world in a beautiful way. We also expect solidity and density from the stones under our feet, not translucency. And every day, there is the renewed joy of dusk — watching certain stones defy the graying landscape and come to life.

Not so appropriate for the urban jungle, perhaps, but I still find these joyful axes completely irresistible. Amazing how the cheeriness of the handle strips out all the violence of the blade. Also, a good example for me of how the aesthetics of joy know no age or gender, as I could see these in the hands of a young woman or slung over the shoulder of my dear old grandpa. Makes you want to get your hands dirty, and whistle while you work!

Axes from the Best Made Co. Via Daily Candy.

5/14: How does the Met keep their sculptures so shiny?

3/6: Rainbow sightings and joy in the natural vs. built environment

3/1: Hidden color

2/20: What is joy?

2/13: The joy of intangible color

2/11: Defining joy: some early thoughts

2/11: Joy and expectation

2/10: Plutchik’s emotional taxonomy

2/10: Aesthetics of Joy

After 5 months working on the research and theory behind Aesthetics of Joy, it’s become clear that there’s so much to say on the topic that the project needs its own home. So welcome to the new site for Aesthetics of Joy.

The book is well underway, and over the weeks and months to come I’ll be sharing some of the key insights that underpin the book’s argument, as well as excerpts from interviews and commentary on joy sightings in the worlds of design, marketing, media, and popular culture.

For a fuller introduction to the project, check out this summary. If you have thoughts on joy you want to share, email me.