Steven Heller and Ugliness

i recommended eye magazine to you all, partially because of its wonderful writing on design. the following is the conclusion of an article called 'the cult of the ugly', by steven heller. originally published in eye #9, vol. 3, 1993. heller quotes a number of writers himself, which i've used to preface his own conclusion.
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“Ask a toad what is beauty… He will answer that it is a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat mouth, a yellow belly and a brown back.”
(Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1794).

“The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.”
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, 1860)

“Where does beauty begin and where does it end?... Where it ends is where the artist begins.”
(John Cage, Silence, 1961).

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
(John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1819)

“Rarely has beauty been an end in itself,”
(Paul Rand, Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art)

“Ugliness is valid, even refreshing, when it is key to an indigenous language representing alternative ideas and cultures. The problem with the cult of ugly graphic design emanating from the major design academies and their alumni is that it has so quickly become a style that appeals to anyone without the intelligence, discipline or good sense to make something more interesting out of it. While the proponents are following their various muses, their followers are misusing their signature designs and typography as style without substance. Ugliness as a tool, a weapon, even as a code is not a problem when it is a result of form following function. But ugliness as its own virtue – or as a knee-jerk reaction to the status quo – diminishes all design.”
(Steven Heller, The Cult of the Ugly, 1993)