What is beauty?
This thesis examines the duality and interdependence of beauty and
ugliness—two concepts that are often viewed in isolation but can be seen
as inherently connected. It proposes that beauty cannot be fully under-
stood or appreciated without the presence of its opposite. Through visual and material experimentation, the work questions the foundations of aesthetic judgments and explores how labels are assigned based on cultural, geographical, and personal contexts. By engaging with the physical processes of destruction
and repair, the thesis investigates how visual and material alterations can shift our perception of what is considered aesthetically valuable or meaningful.
This study is not limited to superficial notions of beauty, but rather explores it
as a layered, contextual, and evolving phenomenon.
My interest in this subject stems from a persistent internal questioning about the roots of aesthetic categorization—what makes something beautiful,
and why does something else get deemed ugly?
This line of thought is less about appearances and more about the mental frameworks that humans
use to assign value. The idea that beauty often exists
in contrast to what is seen as flawed, broken, or incomplete led me to explore how these concepts are formed, experienced, and communicated.
I wanted to better understand how people make
sense of the world around them, and how such sense-making often leads to rigid binaries that overlook complexity and contradiction.
The methods of practice used in this thesis involve
an ongoing process of physical experimentation
and visual documentation. Materials such as paper, ceramic, and fabric are intentionally broken, torn,
or damaged—acts that mimic natural decay or destruction but that are carried out with intent. These altered materials are then either left in their fractured state or repaired using stitching, glueing, layering,
and other reconstruction techniques.
Each stage of the transformation is documented, scanned, and digitally manipulated to reveal
new aesthetic qualities. These visual forms are then used to create typographic structures and layouts
that incorporate the tension between order and chaos, form and fracture. The process itself becomes a metaphor for the thesis’s theme: that beauty is often formed through contradiction, and that destruction can be a generative, rather than reductive, force.
This body of work holds relevance within the field
of design because it challenges dominant narra-
tives around perfection, functionality, and polish.
In a visual culture that often celebrates clean,
flawless outcomes, the thesis pushes back by valuing irregularity, incompleteness, and contradiction.
It contributes to ongoing conversations in graphic design and visual communication about meaning-making, perception, and emotional resonance.
By highlighting the aesthetic potential in what is typically discarded, broken, or overlooked, it encourages both designers and viewers to shift their gaze—to see beauty not as a fixed or universal standard, but as something fluid, subjective, and deeply influenced by context. This approach
has the potential to not only expand our visual vocabulary but also inspire a more empathetic, thoughtful engagement with materials, forms, and ideas in design.
Beauty and ugliness, together, form a concept shaped by perception and individual understanding, layers of interpretation that are built through one’s cultural background, geographical location, and personal life experiences. These layers create impressions that guide a person’s judgments and decisions throughout life. This layered ideology is what I have brought into book form: a tactile and visual object composed of pages with varying textures, colors, and sizes. The book itself becomes a metaphor for the complexity of perception, a representation of how judgments are never singular or fixed, but built through accumulations of influence. My work explores how the concepts of beauty and ugliness are not rooted in any absolute truth but are instead figments of the human mind. Every attempt to categorize thoughts, objects, or events stems not from inherent logic but from subjective experience. These conceptual layers, constantly filtered and altered through different stages of life, reflect the overlapping and evolving ideas within the human brain. Through material, form, and narrative, the book invites the reader to experience this continual re-evaluation, offering an embodied understanding of perception as fragmented, fluid, and deeply personal.
My book brings out the realness of the project in a way that I don’t think any other medium can show right now. It presents the idea through its pages, textures, and form in a very practical and direct way. While I do have an installation piece that acts as a model to represent my thesis, I feel that the book completes the whole story I am trying to tell. It adds more meaning and helps explain the concept better to the viewer. The book allows people to connect with the idea through something they can hold, see, and flip through, making the layered thoughts and perceptions I talk about feel more real and easier to understand.
The content inside the book has been placed using a newly formed grid structure, developed from the experimental objects used during the thesis study–tissues, plate, newspaper, shirt, magazine. Physical patterns that appeared in or on these objects during and after the experiments were carefully observed and then extracted. These patterns were used as a guide to build the layout of the book, helping to shape how the content sits on each page. This process connects the visual structure of the book directly to the research, making the form and content work together to reflect the overall concept.
