The Happy Show by Stefan Sagmeister

But it won’t make me unhappy. Lately I have had a personal experience that enhanced my knowledge of what happiness, and different levels of happiness, can be like to feel. At times I don’t even know how to rate my level of happiness. In just the first few steps into the exhibit of Stefan Sagmeister’s, The Happy Show, I see a gum ball machines labeled from one to ten and the interactive installment tells you to take a gum ball from what you rate your overall happiness to be at the moment. I find this so difficult, because every person evaluates their own happiness in different ways and depending on their focus at the moment. Personally, a recent event in my life has made me more happy than I ever have been, and I saw it fitting to take a number ten gumball. When I got there, they only have one through five left, and the machine for five was broken, so my three friends and I all walked away with fours. Better than anything lower though! I really enjoyed the study and research Stefan put into the exhibit to give data and quantify different aspects of happiness, but I wonder if a simple asking a person on a scale one to ten is the only way to take these survey’s of people’s happiness.

            One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was the papers blowing on the wall with the giant phrase, “Uselessness is gorgeous”, though very difficult to read. I found it mesmerizing and so beautiful but didn’t understand what it read. Only until much later did I get to the small caption in a corner of a wall explaining the phrase, and the meaning behind it. Sagmeister had a repeatable technique to produce a moment of bliss, it was a journey without a cause essentially. Riding on a bike, scooter, longboard, and riding on a smaller street listening to music you would like but have no emotional attachment to, and ride with no destination. And he is very true, this recipe “would send shivers down my spine every time.”  I don’t know if he came up with this technique, as I’m sure myself along with many others have done this.

            I see examples from the book Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming by Ellen Lupton to be relatable to how Sagmeister defines and tries to solve a problem. This problem is that can we improve our mind to make ourselves happy. I see the idea of brainstorming from the book, the attacking a problem from many directions and bombard it with questions to seek a solution, to be Sagmeister’s largest method of solving this problem. In a few of the videos it is also apparent that he used interviewing to receive more ideas and people’s voices on happiness. In the video we get to see how they act and speak, which Lupton mentions is better opposed to a written interview only because you see the juxtaposition between some of the things that people say when interviewed and what their body language is telling you. Some seemed genuine and truthful, while others seem like they were just trying to give a simple answer.