Stefan Sagmeister, New York based Creative Director and Graphic Designer, has influenced the culture of design over the past decade.
"The Happy Show" is his first museum show in the United States, thematically focused on happiness. Centered around the designer’s ten-year exploration, this exhibition presents typographic investigations of a series of maxims, or rules to live by, originally culled from Sagmeister’s diary, manifested in a variety of imaginative and interactive forms.

"The Happy Show" offers visitors the experience of walking into the designer’s mind as he attempts to increase his happiness via mediation, cognitive therapy, and mood-altering pharmaceuticals.

“I am usually rather bored with definitions,” Sagmeister says. “Happiness, however, is just such a big subject that it might be worth a try to pin it down.”

To contextualize the maxims that appear throughout the exhibition, Sagmeister has gathered the social data of Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Steven Pinker, psychologist Jonathan Haidt, anthropologist Donald Symons, and several prominent historians. A 12-minute segment of the Happy Film, a feature length exploration of whether it is possible to train the mind the way we train the body, will also be on view.

After Philadelphia, "The Happy Show" is now in Toronto, until March 3, 2013.

Location:
Design Exchange
243 Bay Street
Toronto
http://www.dx.org