Two Myths About Aesthetics

One is a general bias, and the other is specific to businesses and organizations.

Hello Aesthetics People!

Recently, I was told two things. First, someone said that aesthetics is the least of our concerns, implying that it is unimportant. Once we fix all the other problems, we can make time to care about aesthetics. Second, specific to the business context, someone said that businesses are already and obviously considering aesthetics for their spaces, products, and other things. Moreover, they went on, hospitals, offices, bus and railway stations, and products are all carefully considered in terms of aesthetics. While there are always outliers and counterexamples, both of these attitudes are flawed assumptions.

Myth #1: Only after fixing everything else can we care about aesthetics

Marjan van Aubel, a Dutch designer, began her TED Talk by describing hiking in the Austrian mountains and coming upon a remote hut and noticing that it had solar panels on its roof. While the idea of the solar panels was excellent, she marveled that the ugliness of the panels diminished this idyllic hut’s beauty. She claims that her mission is to make beautiful solar panels so they are not eyesores and attract more people to use them. Alternative energy is a practical issue to combat the global problems of pollution, energy, and climate change. And this accomplished designer firmly believes that aesthetics needs to be a core component.

There is a genuine sense that to get people to change their habits, we must make the alternative attractive. Boltgroup, a design agency in Charlotte, NC, argues that we should consider aesthetics in the earliest stages of new product design, implying that many designers don’t do this. Trying to tack on aesthetics at the end of a process is usually met with awkward results. This fundamental principle of including aesthetics in the beginning applies to a broad scope of processes and products.

Thinking about aesthetics only after we solve other problems might have made sense if aesthetic experience was only something “nice” to have. But it is an essential component of a flourishing human life. Could we survive without beauty? Technically, we could survive with only food, water, and shelter. That doesn’t sound like a good life that anyone would desire, except in the most basic sense that life is better than death.

People report turning to beauty for hope, inspiration, and mental well-being even when struggles or worse overtake them. Studies in hospitals show that patients with beautiful views of nature heal quicker. Art and aesthetics in offices help employee productivity and retention. Far from being something to think about later, aesthetics encourages us to push through our difficulties. And in practical contexts, like climate change, aesthetics helps motivate changes in our behaviors.

Myth #2: Businesses already consider aesthetics in what they do

There are businesses, organizations, and sectors that exemplify some or many of the core components of a beautiful business. However, this does not mean that all businesses consider aesthetics in their work. When I speak to people in business, much of what we discuss about aesthetics resonates with them. Many readily admit the lack of aesthetic considerations.

Take hospitals, for example. The entrances are more likely to be equipped with decent aesthetics. An inviting (and photographable!) entryway is good, but waiting rooms, especially in the ER, are not always aesthetic places, which I’ve experienced recently. Before someone’s surgery, the waiting room involved a dull room with a TV blasting the latest information about the war. This was not conducive to easing stress.

Public spaces can be wonderful, but their beauty often depends on their neighborhood or zip code. Political satirist PJ O-Rourke said, “Note the mental image evoked by the very word public: public school, public park, public health, public housing. To call something public is to define it as dirty, insufficient, and hazardous.” Public transit often proves his point. Especially in the US, many subway and bus stations are not attractive, or at least do not exhibit positive aesthetic features. Perhaps if we want more people to take public transportation, we should make it function well and also more attractive.

People assume that businesses use aesthetics for marketing, product, and office design. But this is only sometimes the case. A colleague who had a lengthy career in product design confirmed that aesthetic considerations are less influential in this context than we might assume. Conversations I’ve had with numerous people in business contexts have further shown that these ideas correspond with their experiences of years of working in offices, even if they have had some positive aesthetic encounters along the way.

Admittedly, asking whether a business is beautiful sounds a bit strange. I’m not sure we will ever make this question part of regular conversations. Its novelty is part of its effectiveness. When we ask typical questions, we often get typical answers. Here’s an example: “How are you?” “Good.” What if you ask someone, “What beautiful things did you experience today?” A question like this is not as common and, therefore, is likely to give the person pause. And they will probably not reply with a pat answer.

There’s another reason to ask whether a business is beautiful. It provides a different framework for thinking about a business’s success, effectiveness, and community. Analyzing different aspects and practices of a business through the lens of beauty offers a way to assess a business without typical ways of thinking. Essentially, we might be asking what it would take for this business to be beautiful, which helps us think about it in terms of a goal. Of course, the word “beautiful” stands in for other words, like elegant, proportional, radiant, comfortable, and so on. Businesses need every advantage they can use, so adding an aesthetic dimension to their self-assessments can be a practical move.

Conclusion

I’ve been working on a book called Is Your Business Beautiful? While most people I have spoken with about this topic have supported the main ideas and have lamented the state of many businesses, the above myths continue to thrive. While this is a short post, I hope I’ve at least provided reasons to revisit your assumptions about the importance of aesthetics.

A recent development is the trend that consumers desire a more immersive shopping experience. They will pay higher prices to go beyond a simple transactional relationship with a company. Aesthetic experience is an integral aspect of meeting this increasing demand. It’s implied that they want a positive experience, not just any experience. While we might not have a precise metric, as profit margins provide, asking whether your business is beautiful adds to the excellent assessment work that you are already doing.

Relevant ARL Articles

Aesthetic Experience: A Basic Reason for Action

Aesthetics as Necessary for Prison Reform

The Beautiful Business

ARL News

My colleague, Bella Zhang, and I created a new course, “Aesthetic Paths to Flourishing.” It will be held in two online sessions (Nov 3 and 17). Registration is now open.

Digital Fashion: Theory, Practice, Implications, edited by Michael R. Spicher, Sara Emilia Bernat, and Doris Domoszlai-Lantner, is available for purchase!

If you’re in Boston, I’ll be giving a talk about digital fashion on September 18 at 1pm at Massart. Here’s a link for more information.

Please be sure to look for events about the digital fashion book in the coming months.