Journal 5

Stefan Segmeister is a famous designer that I personally think is one of the most complex and intellectual designers today. In his TED talk "Happy Design" he spoke of the different perceptions of happiness. He showed a happy scale [comfort, contentment, joy, delight, bliss] then happiness in four parts as in an exhibition [Arcadia, Nirvana, Desire, Harmony]. In this last explanation of happiness through the exhibition he concluded that the pieces displayed to represent each of these words were all the visualization of happiness. It was not being shown or making the viewer happy. Designers can and should evoke happiness with their designs and concepts. Stefan personally found things that were out of context, unexpected or unique made him happy. A point that I learned and was inspired by was his references to his diary/journal entries. He keeps his creative juices flowing and often references them for other work.

In his article "How Good is Good" he raises questions of the notion of "good" in the eye of design and in the world. He strives to create significant things instead of "cool things". He made three equations :

Good design+bad cause=bad

Bad design+good cause=good

Good design+Good cause=good

He asks, what do we do and for whom are we doing it? He said that Design can...

unify

help us remember

simplify our lives

make someone feel better

make the world a safer place

help rally behind a cause

inform and teach

raise money

make us more tolerant

I would ask Sagmeister how he wrestles with all this thoughts, How does he decide which idea is his best, what makes it the best? what is a failed design? Does he feel limited? what does he learn every time he takes a year off?

He is so popular because...Sagmeister studied graphic design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He later received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. He began his design career at the age of 15 at "Alphorn", an Austrian Youth magazine, which is named after the traditional Alpine musical instrument.^{[2] In 1991, he moved to Hong Kong to work the Leo Burnett's Hong Kong Design Group. In 1993, he returned to New York to work Tibor Kalman's M&Co design firm. His tenure there was short lived, as Kalman soon decided to retire from the design business to edit Colors magazine for the Benetton Group in Rome. Stefan Sagmeister proceeded to form the New York based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed branding, graphics, and packaging for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner. Sagmeister Inc. has employed designers including Martin Woodtli, and Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker, who later formed Karlssonwilker. Stefan Sagmeister is a long-standing artistic collaborator with musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed. He is the author of the design monograph "Made You Look" which was published by Booth-Clibborn editions. (WIKI)}

The other TED talk I watched was by J.J. Abrams. He is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, composer, and founder of Bad Robot Productions. An Emmy and Golden Globe-winner, he is known as the creator or co-creator of the television series Felicity,Alias, Lost, and Fringe, and as a director of films including Mission: Impossible III and the 2009 feature Star Trek.

He made an interesting speech on Mystery. That people are drawn to the sense of potential and that mystery is more important than knowledge. His idea behind the mystery box is that there is one everywhere, we are intrigued by it. It could be how to fill a page with text or image, how to solve a problem etc. He is so passionate about film because he thinks of the theater as the biggest mystery box. One point he made said "No community is best served when only the elite have control". This is such a statement because with technology these days he made the comment that anyone can make things look almost just as good if not better than the professionals. Nothing is stopping us from doing what we want ex. making a movie, the equipment is all there.

These talks and reading were inspirational and make design feel more important than just the project we are working on. It can do so much more, but first we need to learn.