Hasta La Ideas

How do you feel after listening to a Stefan Sagmeister lecture? Whether you mean to or not, you probably feel… happy. Sagmeister is a plainspoken powerhouse of graphic design and a walking wealth of lifestyle koans. His Design Week Portland talk, presented by Portland’s AIGA, touched on the internal and external frameworks that impact our positive emotions. To illustrate his ideas about designing happiness he veered between beautiful shots of his interactive installations and often smutty infographics unpacking what “happiness” really is and how to get it.

Using the casual, personally-oriented storytelling familiar in most of his public talks on the subject, this keynote also got technical. Through personal anecdotes and work highlights, we got a guided tour through the research and findings he came to while struggling to make his movie on happiness a reality. Up first: definitions and limitations of happiness. Surprisingly, it turns out that self-reporting is pretty accurate. Do you think of yourself as happy? If asked, how would you describe your life satisfaction? From the sound of it, most of our public answers would check out when tested against our MRI readings. So that’s cool.

The three factors that he believes influence happiness most are our activities, life conditions, and genetics. Specifically, the more non-repetitive activities, the more supportive your social environment, the better. Genetics, as a factor you can’t impact, he doesn’t “care for.” Moreover, the material conditions of our lives only matter up to a point—money matters up to “middle class” and then stops having an appreciable impact as you get richer than $85K/year. People, perhaps unsurprisingly, find success relative: Most people would prefer to make less money overall but more than their neighbors when opposed to making more money overall but less than their neighbors. Telling. It’s also why you get a little depressed seeing everyone else doing so damn well on Facebook.

Sagmeister’s own notorious work cycle, which is loosely structured around taking a long sabbatical every six years, incorporates diversity of activity and socializing into his life, which in turn helps bring diversity and social thinking into his work. Even those of us without our own internationally renowned agencies can apply those ideas. The value of seeing new things, talking to new people, and pushing your own boundaries are obvious—as he put it: “Seek discomfort.”

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