Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

02

Nov

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These words were raised high on a billboard sign on the top of the New York graphic design studio of Stefan Sagmeister. I decided this quote is a good starting point for my 4 to 6 boards typography work continuation of the argument “Healthy vs Fast food”. As I stated before one of the main reasons people are being so cynical with the idea of changing their diet habits is complains and excuses.

Here’s Segmaister’s opinion on complains taken from the book Things I have learned in my life so far – strangely laid-out book with graphical work done by his studio, as he states “a design book put together for non-designers”. Personally as a more utilitarian designer (with information and user design background) I find most of his works ambiguous…just the opposite of what he is stating, but back to the topic some of his ideas are very straight and provocative. Example is the billboard mentioned above. His opinion on complains:

“..the act of complaining itself has never made me feel better or seemed to solve the given problem, I have stopped.
THERE IS MUCH COMPLAINING going on in Europe, with the most prolific complainers living in Vienna, where you can experience hausfrauen complaining on stoops, students complaining in cafes, talk show host complaining on TV, everybody complaining everywhere at any time about anything.”

Although I can’t agree with the fact of his works being non-ambiguous, I can’t disagree with this quote being truth. One of the first steps in being successful is being very critical with yourself and accept your flaws. That apply completely for the fact people complaining about not having enough time or money or something else to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Here’s more about Segmeister’s work and a snapshot from the book itself:

“THE BILLBOARD commissioned for Lisbon by the Portuguese beer brand Super Bock consist of twenty large sheets of regular newsprint paper. We took advantage of the fact that newsprint yellows significantly in the sun and built gigantic cardboard stencils for the 10 x 16.5 foot (3 x 8 meter) billboard on the roof of our studio in New York. After the newsprint was exposed to the sunlight for a full week, we removed the stencils…

WE ROLLED THE EXPOSED NEWSPRINT up and shipped it to Lisbon, where it was put in a very sunny spot in front of the Centro Cultural de Belem. Withing a week the typography (and all the complaining) slowly faded away.”

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