Sagmeister and Walsh are 2 American designers who became famous all over the world thanks to their creative ideas and their non-standard implementations. In their works, designers do not strive for 100% practicality, as all designers are now taught: everything is on a grid, alignment, no more than 2 colors, and that’s all …

Sagmeister and Walsh are trying to come up with a truly beautiful solution to the problem: yes, it may not always be practical and therefore an annual report that could fit into 20 pages will take 50, but it will be an incredible 50 pages!

What is this book about

On the pages of the book “Sagmeister and Walsh: On Beauty” you will find many tests, examples and proofs that it is impossible to unambiguously interpret beauty in design. On the contrary, in each case, the beauty is different:
– it could be a design solution to a problem
– a picture that accurately conveys the emotions of people on it
– super-clear and intuitive app interface
– and much more

The authors of the book did not pass by the historical facts: on the pages of the second chapter, you can trace how the attitude towards beauty changed and what was considered truly beautiful in painting, architecture and creativity from the time of Ancient Greece to our XXI century.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”

Or “there’s no friend in taste or color” – all designers and non-designers tirelessly keep repeating this phrase as a solution to all misunderstandings, especially when the customer sends edits for the 100th time and asks to make the logo bigger and move it 0.5px to the right.

But Sagmeister and Walsh, relying on their polls and studies, are trying to prove that there are only the most unfortunate combinations of shapes and colors, which lead to the fact that someone considers something ugly. In all other cases, using correctly combined colors and shapes that solve the task at hand is a recipe for a successful project.

Who is this book for

I would definitely recommend the book “Sagmeister and Walsh: On Beauty” to all designers: it is not so important in which direction you work, because beauty is important everywhere, because everything that designers do is done for people. And people love beauty.

I also strongly advise graphic designers who often work with annual reports, periodicals and magazines to study the book: the book is very cool, you can find many ideas for future projects.

Buy “Sagmeister & Walsh: On Beauty”

You can buy the book on the MYTH website or in the Labyrinth at a price of 3,000 rubles.