aesthetics of joy

I often take brands to task for “joywashing”: advertising their products or services with a veneer of positive emotion that is either unsupported by the product itself or completely inappropriate to the product. So I was happy to see this ad from IKEA in the UK that uses aesthetics of joy and comfort in a very fitting way. Say what you will about IKEA, its products enable the transitory and the low-income to create a home, in the context of an extremely expensive category. The aesthetics of IKEA products themselves tend to be bright and cheerful, and yet the simple designs have become a mainstay of the DIY community as a substrate for creativity. We giggle at the Swedish names, smile at the clever design touches, and feel at ease about the prices. So the positioning line “happy inside” doesn’t feel like a reach to me.

There are many lovely things about this ad, (you should watch the “making of” too), and several nice uses of aesthetics of joy. I love the jumping shots, especially slowed down and sped up, and the shots among the lighting. There’s a deliberate sense of lightness throughout, both lightweight and illuminated. And it feels spontaneous because these are real cats, untrained, and you can sense their genuine curiosity as they poke through the textiles and drawers and lampshades. I have to say, it’s not unlike how I feel when I first get to IKEA (before the maze has beaten me down) — energized and curious about what I might find. It’s nice that they kept in one of the little fights, because that’s part of a happy home life too — it’s not all dancing and cuddles and naps on the sofa. Good for IKEA and Mother for not overly staging it and conducting this in an experimental way. Altogether, from how its made to how it appears in the end, it does make me feel “happy inside.”

Though assembling the furniture when you get home — that’s another story.

{via Apartment Therapy}

Virginia sent me this a couple of weeks ago with the note: “This little guy is in the Bargello in Florence and always seems like the epitome of joy.” I couldn’t agree more.

Baby fat, sweet little wings, and the upswept gesture all give him an infectious kind of aura. It is always interesting to me when sculptures manage to achieve such lightness in heavy materials like bronze and stone. But my favorite part about the statue is the way he balances on a scallop shell. It makes the proportions odd and surprising, and sets a foundation for the composition that is just a little bit magical.

These sweet rings by John Medley and his partner just make me smile. They’re like little wearable worlds —  cute microcosms that travel with you wherever you go.

Available here. (I find their profile totally joyful too!)

Weirdest thing.

The other day when my laundry came back, I opened the bag and started to put away my clothes, and there in amongst the hand towels I discovered this little guy. A hitchhiker! He was just sitting there, hanging out, as if it made all the sense in the world that he should be there. To be honest, it was kind of creepy at first. An unexplained intrusion into my mundane evening, with vaguely magical undertones.

I had to figure out how he got there. I wondered if maybe he was a gift from the laundromat, a holiday thank you for my business. But when I called to ask, the woman had no idea what I was talking about. (Not a normal query, granted: “An elf. In my laundry. Did you put it there?”) As far as I could tell, she thought I had received someone else’s garment by accident and she asked me to return it next time.

So he must have arrived by accident. I looked it him more closely. Cute gnome. He’s made out of beautiful felt and pipecleaners and wool yarn. He doesn’t look like he’s been through the laundry — so it’s not one of those situations where he got stuck in the lint filter like a sock and emerged in the next load. It’s a mystery.

What’s wonderful — and for me, joyful — about this kind of mystery is that while I know there’s a rational explanation for the gnome’s appearance, it’s hidden from me. The gnome is felt and yarn and wire — it’s made of matter and must obey the laws of physics. Wherever it came from, it had to take a tangible path to get here. Perhaps it fell out of a crafter’s purse or pocket while she was shifting her sheets from washer to dryer, adhered to the laundress’s sleeve by static cling, and made its way into my bag. But I don’t know that story — no one does — and for me the gnome’s past is a giant ellipsis. This would be a nonstarter if the item were a sock or a teddy bear. But it’s an object that takes a form with a built-in magical narrative. Gnomes, elves, fairies are the stuff of myth and lore. If anything has a plausible reason for mysterious behavior, the gnome is it. The gnome roams, as we learn in Amelie and those Travelocity commercials — it appears in places, without taking a journey to get there. Just like my gnome. In a way, it’s a silly and trivial happening. But I wanted to share it because I think it provides an interesting example of the alignment between magical narratives and magical aesthetics.

For the meantime, I’ve decided to keep him. When I was working at Landor in Sydney, my coworkers and I used to joke when we were overwhelmed that we needed a magic gnome to handle the extra work. Well, right now I have ten days until I present my research on Aesthetics of Joy for the first time, and there are lots of loose ends to tie up. I could use a magic gnome. As my mom says, sometimes things find us. And right now, my gnome just makes me feel like the mysteries of the universe are working in my favor!

*** Please bear with me if posts are sparse over the next two weeks as I complete this last leg of my masters. I will be back in force come December 14th, with lots of photos of my latest joy-inspired furniture pieces and many thoughts I’ve been saving up to post. Thanks for reading!

xx Ingrid

There’s something joyful about an odd little piece of trivia, especially when endearingly illustrated in such child-like fashion. Learn Something Every Day presents a new fact daily, and you can submit your own facts for Young to sketch up.

Aside from babies, there really is nothing cuter in a costume than a dog. Cat lovers might dispute this, but cats are so reluctant, and their claws so sharp, and they always look so put upon. Dogs are lovably malleable and unaccountably cheerful in the face of whatever ridiculous ensemble we might devise for them.

No need to elaborate on the link between cuteness and joy (I’ve written about it here). Just head over to Flickrblog to see more costumed pooches grinning and bearing it.

Happy Halloween, and have a joyful weekend!

Xx Ingrid

I dare you not to giggle while watching this short film from the People in Order series by Lenka Clayton and John Price. The film presents people in age order from 1 to 100 years old.

The drum device is pure aesthetics of joy — an exuberant bang that runs like a unifying thread through the ages. It also distinguishes them: the four and five year-olds’ delicious pleasure in generating noise is a powerful contrast with the defiant staccato of the their 96 and 100 year-old elders — pithy reverberations that seem to say, “We’re still here!” Each age has its mind, distilled into gesture and sound.

{via Mental Floss}

Last week I wrote about Microsoft’s new ads using a cute little girl and “happy” imagery to sell Windows 7. And now I’m seeing cuteness everywhere. Bunnies, puppies, cats in dresses — it’s all over the marketing world. It’s interesting to me that it’s both high and low, not just a mass market phenomenon. United Bamboo’s 2010 calendar, for example, features cats in miniature copies of dresses from the line’s latest collection. Given many of these dresses are retailing in the $600-800 range, it’s clear even the premium world thinks it has something to gain from cutevertising.

On the canine side of things, Modcloth, a vintage and indie fashion site, use their mascot Winston to promote their eyewear line to comic effect.

But not all furry things in ads are promoting expensive dresses or fancy shades. These guys just want you to make a “sweet million” with the New York Lottery:

I don’t know how long this trend will sustain itself, but it’s certainly fun while it lasts. What’s next? A Karl Lagerfeld kitten? Piglets selling cosmetics? Birds chirping out a car company jingle? Guinea pigs extolling the virtues of Viagra? Well, that one might in poor taste…

{United Bamboo + Modcloth examples via Refinery 29}

With its latest ads, Microsoft is hoping that some tooth-aching cuteness will make you forget all about the nightmare that was Vista. We might quibble with the logic, but the execution is hard to fault. Kylie’s cute, and I can’t help but giggle when that music comes on and the cat with the marshmallows flashes on the screen with the words, “snappy and responsive.”

A few weeks ago, Virginia tweeted me the question: “What is the relationship between cuteness and joy?” It’s a question I’ve been pondering for a while now. My theory on the subject is still evolving, but in short, it’s based on the fact that we have a visceral, positive reaction to children and childlike things, even those that are not related to us. This is adaptive, of course, because raising children requires sacrifices of a society, not just a parental unit, and so a natural affinity and protective instinct towards children protects the species as a whole. (Chowing down on a few of your neighbor’s hatchlings might be ok when you’re a crocodile with 70 eggs, but with us low-yield humans this kind of behavior is evolutionarily unwise, not to mention socially unpopular.) The assertion that we have an innate positive reaction to children is supported to some extent by research by Morton Kringelbach in his book The Pleasure Center, in which non-parent adults show greater activity in a region of the brain associated with emotion and reward when viewing infant faces than when viewing adult faces.

How does this translate to cuteness? Many cute things are defined by abstractions of neotenized (juvenilized) qualities: big eyes, round cheeks, proportionally large head, and prominent forehead. You would think abstractions would be less effective at evoking our emotions, but actually the reverse may be true, due to something psychologists call the peak-shift effect. Evidently the brain recognizes features made more salient through amplification and distortion even better than the real thing. This is why caricatures are so easy to recognize and so compelling. Cute things are like caricatures of children, distorted by the overemphasis of certain childlike proportions and features. Compare the big-headed Bratz dolls with Barbie, and the features of any stuffed animal with the real thing to see how this abstraction plays out. You can also see abstraction of childhood in cute movements, such as the wobbling of Weebles, which mimic an unsteady toddler. And perhaps we will also find the same to be true for sounds, as children’s voices are higher in pitch than adult voices, and have a less regular cadence.

Maybe Microsoft is hoping that by associating Windows 7 with all this cuteness, there will be a halo effect of protection and tenderness towards the operating system. I’m not sure but it could work, at least in the short term until the emotional impact of daily use takes prominence. Emotions are curiously non-directed, and though they are triggered by one object, the feelings are often transferred or ascribed to another. Microsoft is also shrewdly and not-so-subtly tapping into something else here, which is the cute photo and video forwarding meme (epitomized by sites like Cute Overload) which consumes significant bandwidth on most social media platforms. So it’s not just an innate emotional programing this type of ad appeals to, but also a cultural moment.

At the end of the ad, Microsoft promises “more happy” is to come. Very curious to see what that will look like, and whether Windows 7 actually incorporates any aesthetics of joy into the design of the software itself.

If you were out and about in Carroll Gardens yesterday, you could have been forgiven for thinking there was something mysterious afflicting the canine population of the neighborhood. But it wasn’t exactly clear who were the ones affected: the dogs or their owners.

Everywhere you went on Smith and Court Sts. you could find dozens of people carrying invisible dog leashes, pretending with great self-conviction to be walking their dogs. Dog walkers would stop and chat with each other about their dogs’ names and breeds, ages and habits. Walking past, you might overhear, as I did:

Dogwalker 1: Ugh, Buster, don’t sniff his butt!

Dogwalker 2: Oh, it’s ok. It’s what dogs do.

Just a normal dog owners’ conversation. Except there were obviously no dogs. As I passed a group, one woman wielded her leash in my direction, as if her invisible dog had come over to sniff my groceries, then grappled with the air as if trying to rein him in. I saw others break their gaits down the street as their invisible charges paused to water a tree, and one particularly zealous owner bent down with an invisible plastic bag (one hopes) to pick up an invisible poop.

It was all very ridiculous, and I couldn’t help but smile, though others seemed to be vexed by the odd behavior. I think when odd things happen, people like to know why, and the dog walkers stubbornly refused to acknowledge anything strange about their behavior even after much questioning. Rumors started to fly. One man at the farmer’s market told me it was some sort of protest against a new dog law. Another said it was to encourage adoption from shelters. But it turns out it was a good old flash mob, put on by well-known pranksters Improv Everywhere. Apparently the leashes came from Invisible Dog on Bergen, a gallery that occupies a former invisible dog leash factory.

Even being a spectator who wasn’t in on the joke, I have to say I thought it was fun. Times are tough, and we all need a little silliness in our lives. Improv Everywhere says their mission is to cause “scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” It’s interesting to think of chaos and joy together. Chaos is often associated with lack of control and unhappiness, but that lack of control can also go the other direction and bring delight. More photos and first hand accounts from dog walkers here.

The NYT had a cute piece on bento boxes in this week’s Dining section. Kyaraben, the making of cute lunch boxes for children, rises to the level of art form in Japan. I found these on the Flickr photostream of a mom who makes these weekly for her kids. I think the hungry caterpillar one is irresistible, and the pandas had me at hello. A great example of aesthetics of joy applied to food. I’d be willing to bet that the food in those boxes tastes better than it would if it were just thrown in there too.

NYT: Bento Boxes Win Lunch Fans

While I’m on the subject of animated cuteness, I was a little surprised to discover the whimsical Hermés corporate website while doing some research yesterday. I expected a typical luxury brand website — staid, self-aggrandizing, and a little up itself about its heritage, craftsmanship, prestige, etc.. What I found was something entirely different, a website that brings the brand’s story to life through charming, beautifully illustrated little vignettes.

The usual topics (history, design, inspiration, materials, craft, lifestyle) are all covered, but in surprisingly novel ways. The story of a bracelet’s design is told through an animated line drawing. The iconic scarves are shown in a grid of real people who have sent in photos of themselves wearing them. The dozens of shades of ties are shown gorgeously styled like trees in a forest. Some sketches are just silly, like the orange Hermés boxes that self-assemble into a plane, or the wallets whose zippered pouches open and start chatting with each other like mouths. Others are more serious, like the somber, read-aloud description of rolling, the method by which scarves are finished, which takes more than 6 months to master.

I was particularly moved by one sketch in particular, which likens the noises of the Hermés workshop to the sounds of an orchestra. For a designer, craft is music, and the sounds of fabrication trigger a sense of joy at the rhythmic cacophony that is creation. In the app, clicking on each instrument adds another workshop sound to the mix, until with speakers cranked you feel the bliss of being surrounded by craftspeople, each absorbed in the melody of his own making. You can turn the instruments on and off, playing around with trying to figure out how they’ve chosen which tool marrys with which instrument. It’s a small miracle to me that no self-promoting text accompanies this joyful little toy, and it gives me a wonderful new feeling of admiration for a brand I once thought of as elitist and unsoulful.

You could probably waste a lot of time on this site, which I’m sure is exactly what Hermés intended, but you’ll probably leave in a good mood. Happy exploring!

Hermés corporate site

Tania sent me this great roundup of Japanese packaging characters from the now hiatused PingMag. Most of the examples on this site are sweet and charming, though we know Japanese character obsession can cross the line from cute to creepy. To Westerners, it can seem an odd intrusion — childlike cartoons on products made for adults, and hard to parse whether this is a joyful phenomenon or something darker. Having lived in Japan for a time and experienced the culture first hand, Tania offers this perspective: “Perhaps it has something to do with re-creating moments of child like wonder, innocence, creativity and freedom in a society that is otherwise highly controlled, regimented and driven by social hierarchy-based codes of behaviour.”

Personally, I happen to like the characters for just that reason. Never mind cultural hierarchies and codes of behavior; what about the rigid conventions of packaging design? Letting the inner child out to play is much more emotionally inspiring than subjecting us to even more overstyled, staid cookie photography. I’m also enchanted by the idea that a pink rabbit could appear on packaging for “Men’s” cookies! Maybe it makes it look like all the food in the world is candy, but hey, is that really so bad?

Thanks Tania for the tip

One of the questions people ask me all the time when I explain the Aesthetics of Joy is “How do I use this?” The book covers a number of specific strategies relating to designing and marketing more joyfully, but there’s one that’s almost too obvious to write about: having a joyful attitude.

The fail whale, Twitter’s now iconic graphic that appears during unplanned, accidental downtime, is a great example of this. When most sites go down they use a stock standard “We’re having technical difficulties and are working to resolve the problem. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Nothing wrong with that, but nothing joyful about it either. Twitter’s approach, on the other hand, to use whimsical imagery to convey the idea of overloaded servers, creates a small moment of transcendence in the user. By this I mean that the ordinary pattern of behavior (anger, frustration, percussive maintenance) is suspended because the enchanting vehicle of the message takes you out of your narrow prism and makes you consider that stepping away from the computer into the sunshine for a few hours might not be such a bad idea. Fail whale is a disruption that shifts your perspective, mood, and even behavior.

Fail whale seem to fill a cultural need for joy and humanity in our dealings with the corporate world, as evidenced by the craze it inspired, including t-shirts, sculptures, tattoos, and cupcakes. It’s become an emblem of joyful failure, a true disruption of our expectations around the ways in which companies behave.

Joyful design doesn’t change the message. But it can change the way the message is received, and the way users feel about your product. And if you have to disappoint your users, a dose of joy might just be the best way to sugar-coat it.

Fail whale is designed by Yiying Lu. More info here.