Is it ugly, or is it careless?

Thoughts on Stefan Sagmeister's essay in "I Love It. What Is It?"

I had the privilege of getting my paws on an advanced copy of I Love It. What Is It? for an article at Dieline. It’s an anthology of essays and think pieces about design, and my editor asked if I’d be interested in covering the book and hooked me up with the publisher, Phaidon Press. I’m always down to read for work (it’s about as close as I can get to getting paid to read, a dream), so I dug into my copy.

My piece that covers I Love It. What Is It? as a whole is here on Dieline, but for this newsletter I wanted to discuss one of the essays in the book: “Why Beauty Matters” by Stefan Sagmeister.

I found it a little irritating how much I liked this essay because my feelings towards Sagmeister as a person are a little 😒. Someone can be the greatest designer in the world, but when they’re getting naked for promo pics with their business partner who is 20+ years their junior (and then again with all of the colleagues at a design firm—that’s a very NSFW link btw), I’m going to question power dynamics. It all feels a bit shock value for the sake of shock value, too…but joke’s on me because here I am talking about it!

So—Sagmeister explains that there is a saying that has been accepted as a universal truth, but he actually believes it to be false. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. “If that were true, the desire to make something beautiful would make no sense, because everybody would have a different opinion about it.”

He goes on: “The opposite of beauty is not ugly; it is carelessness. The vast majority of all ugliness has not been created to be ugly but exists because someone did not care. Strip malls, highway exits, and discount furniture stores are all ugly by happenstance. I actually do enjoy things that have been created to be ugly with intention.”

I love this perspective. It reminds me a bit of when I’m revising a draft and giving every word care and consideration—it becomes beautiful in its own way in time. I encounter this, too, when I sit down to edit photos—they improve so much and become extraordinary when I spend time figuring out how to best crop them or how to adjust the lighting.

Not everyone will think everything is beautiful—this would be impossible—but at least no one will think it is careless.

This kind of thinking can also give a little bit of freedom to make ugly things, or to at least not worry so much during the process when what we have is not quite yet what we’d envisioned. It’s like comparing a second draft to a completed novel, a rough sketch to a painting on display in a museum. One is not ugly and the other beautiful, and one is not bad and the other good; one may have simply been given a bit more attention. Keep going. And rather than aim for beauty, aim for care—perhaps the beauty will follow.

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- Theresa