Beauty is an antidote to discord.

I believe beauty can transform the ugliness around us and inspire our souls. It has the power to capture us emotionally, overtaking logic in a nanosecond. It can lift our spirits, surprise us, calm and heal us. It’s intrinsic value is immense.

Over the past decade, I’ve noticed a change in the design zeitgeist. After decades of adhering to narrow aesthetic standards defined by minimalism, especially in graphic design, an explosion of beauty is expanding our definition of “good” design. The idea that one single, International Design style could be appropriate to all applications with global appeal was preposterous and arrogant.

Following WWII, midcentury design injected an optimism that lightened things up in furniture and interior design while humor inched into advertising. But as companies grew and diversified, corporate standards increasingly dismissed ornamentation as unnecessary or indulgent and led a streamlined conformity that dominated much of the graphic design world. Beauty was a disregarded, archaic ideal.

Thankfully, there’s been an explosion of diverse styles that balance the neutrality of the past. Personality is not only allowed, its embraced as differentiator. Openness is an antidote to conformity, and expansion is an antidote to boredom.

Don’t get me wrong — the cool intellectualism of the Bauhaus, succinctly summed up by Mies Vander Rohe as “less is more” will always be relevant. There’s a timelessness to mid-20th century design. I embrace the grace of a Barcelona chair, the balance of Helvetica and the simplicity of Philip Johnson’s Glass house. AND I also appreciate the lyricism of William Morris’ Pimpernel wallpaper, the streamlined glamour of the Chrysler Building and the extravagance of Justina Blakeney’s Jungalow interiors.

In a world that seems to be brimming with stress, anxiety, and tension, creating beauty used to feel like an act of rebellion. Now it just feels like freedom.