Anagha Deshmukh
beyond 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 understood 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 narratives 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.