"the happy show" not really..... as they had mentioned in the beginning of the film "THIS FILM WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY."
This film is a documentary of Stefan Sagmeister, a graphic designer based in New York. in this film, he wants to delve into the topic of "Happiness". His research process was definitely wild and interesting. Before he started his project, he had talked to many psychologists and from there he made a plan. He drew out a concept map. he had Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist to be his advisor for this project. Jonathan had suggested 3 methods he could use.
the 3 methods were
meditation,
cognitive therapy,
and drugs.
He spent about 3 months on each method to see what would happen, if it would affect his happiness. This is the timeline:
It made me go "wow" a little when i saw the timeline because he's spending a whole year on this experiment for the project. it takes a lot of commitment and it's such a huge thing to do. i think it was also smart to reach out to a professional for advice.
As we all know, happiness is an emotional state, it's intangible so. Stefan decided to use a scale of 1-10 to measure his happiness every day. He even used water and glass to represent the scale so we could visualise it.
He loves to use typography as his main idea. i love the way he uses unconventional things to create those typography works.
This project is one of my favourites out of all the ones he showed in the film:
the outcome, which is "The Happy Show" was a huge exhibition. I've definitely seen pictures online of this very exhibition. It made me wish I could've went because I know I would've enjoyed it. I love that every part of the exhibition was inspired and taken from his own experience and we could see that because he documented his journey on this film. I loved that he focused on using just 3 colours: yellow, black and white. yellow because it's the universal colour of happiness right?
This is my favourite from what I've seen from the film! Interactive exhibitions are my favourite.
I think how this relates to our modules is the way the research process works? To go deep into the topic of a subject; a subject that I'm intrigued to learn about and makes me think.
Also, to figure out what methods I should use to research that topic. Instead of one approach, I could try multiple approaches like Stefan did. Because Stefan did this project with multiple experimentations, he had experiences he never thought he'd have and he met people he never thought he'd met. Stefan is a very open and honest person and he's not afraid to experiment. That's what makes his works original and clever.
It makes me wonder what kind of outcome I would achieve as well, in terms of the project and also my life. (if I could step out of my comfort zone a lil more)
notes i made whilst watching the film
Sagmeister Inc. & ICA. (n.d.). Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Show. Retrieved from https://thehappyshow.tumblr.com/
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