Thinking about Beauty
Why is Beauty so compelling?
As designers we think about beauty every day and every day we
try to make our work as beautiful as possible. But why is beauty
so important?
Here's an excerpt from Beauty and the Beast (of Advertising)
by Barry Vacker of Southern Methodist University
“For the normal adult, ideals arise as the
end product of numerous choices made
over time in answer to the question of
what is best for one’s life. Choices are
potentialities and they are real. If one
seeks to further one’s life, one chooses
the best among the available potentialities
known to one in a given context. From
having to choose throughout one’s life
the best among the potentialities, one
develops a conception of the best or
the ‘ideal’ potentiality for one’s life which
serves as a standard for choosing what is
best to actualize in living one’s life. ”