A Question of Aesthetics – What Is Beauty and How Does it Feel?
Designer Richard Seymour works on products with soul — from a curvy, swoopy iron to a swift and sleek city motorcycle. Seymourpowell is regarded as one of the world’s leading product and innovation design consultancies, with clients who include Ford, Virgin Galactic, Tefal, Casio, Nokia, Guinness, Samsung and Unilever. Seymour is also consultant global creative director of design to Unilever’s Dove, Axe/Lynx and Vaseline brands.
So, it can be said that Seymour approaches the concept of beauty, or an analysis of current day thinking on the subject of aesthetics, comes from the perspective of product design; at the same time various people would say, a gifted field of endeavor, one of the driving forces behind capitalism and therefore a veiled and corrupt form of seduction, and something that we either intentionally or subconciously persuades us many times a day. I watch a lot of the TED talks as so many people do because of the inspired and revealing comments from the chosen speakers. Seymour knows his field, and he does a good job putting into perspective how the context of an image, a motorcycle, or any object or person affects our emotional reaction to “beauty.” Many other perspectives in the field of aesthetics to explore; but this is a good entry point, and while the academic perspective can be quite dense, Seymour explores it an a humorous and interesting way. (Re-published under a Creative Commons license.)
