Friday, September 21, 2007

Discussing the subtleties of beauty with Fabio.


I met a man named Fabio the other night, and in this case he was a neatly dressed, friendly Italian graphic designer living in New York City. When he asked what I did, and I told him that I write about beauty, he nodded politely, paused and confessed his difficulties with that word.

Fabio's boss often says his work is beautiful, and that makes Fabio cringe. Not because the man abuses the word making it mean less each time, but because for this designer, the word smacks of inconsequential, meritless surface fluff--nothing he wants his work to embody.

I countered that there is more to beauty than its surface and that in terms of design, beauty can refer to the excellence of form and function working together as in nature where everything looks the way it does because it must.

He hadn't considered that aspect of beauty before, and appreciated my perspective.

Terrific.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Real beauty lies in the words of those you have quoted on your website.

Blindness offers a true sense of beauty because you can only "see" what you hear, smell, touch or feel spiritually, making most things memorable and "beautiful" for thier true essence.

Anonymous said...

takeda murai shimura chi kare