In “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), the Romantic poet John Keats wrote the famous lines: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Yet in today’s environment, one standard of beauty is no more the truth than is one standard of ugliness. It is possible that the most convention-busting graphic design by students and alumni of Cranbrook, CalArts and Rhode Island School of Design, among other hothouses where theoretical constructs are used to justify what the untutored eye might deem ugly, could become the foundation for new standards based on contemporary sensibilities. Certainly, these approaches have attracted many followers throughout the design world.

“Where does beauty begin and where does it end?” wrote John Cage in Silence (1961). “Where it ends is where the artist begins.” So in order to stretch the perimeters of art and design to any serious extent it becomes necessary to suspend popular notions of beauty so that alternative aesthetic standards can be explored.