With a new decennium comes a new take on most things in life. Innovations, breakthroughs and flat-out amazing discoveries within the beauty industry take women’s and men’s looks to a whole new level. Let’s kick-start this new decade by looking even better through some simple enhancements …

Ever heard of the expression ‘you are what you eat’? Well, with all the functional foods flooding our supermarket counters, we’ll have to change that saying to ‘you look like your last meal’ in the near future. Drinks, yoghurts and dairy products have long been stuffed with smart ingredients, but now even candy, jams and other products traditionally perceived as unhealthy are getting the good-for-you treatment. Having your cake, and eating it too. Literally. Tamar Kasriel, a trend spotter at the Henley Centre, explains:
“The personal-care arena draws on and feeds the food arena. Green tea is now big in food, but it was in perfume and cosmetics the year before. Collagen-filled marshmallows are coming in from Japan. People buy these things thinking ‘I might as well if it’s not going to do me any harm’. All the big companies that we work with are looking at this area very carefully. They’d be mad not to.”

Meanwhile, make-up is going through a transformation from merely being product that make you ‘look good’ to also include functional properties. Make-up brands are embracing the power of antioxidants in eye shadow, lipstick, foundation, and even mascara and eyeliner. In addition to protecting the skin from environmental damage, many antioxidant make-up products also contain anti-aging and wrinkle-reversing properties, as well.

Cosmeceuticals, beauty products that hover on the border between cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, are not news but keep breaking new ground. Originally introduced into prestige skin care products, cosmeceuticals will increasingly cross over into other areas such as make-up and hair care as both upstream prestige and mass manufacturers alike develop new multifunctional products containing various functional ingredients. The latest buzzwords in this segment are anti-ageing ingredients such as hydroxyl acids, retinol and vitamins.

Another amalgamate between medicine and beauty are places such as Life Medicine Resort and Tamina Therme – resorts where spas and medical procedures are available in stunning architectural environments. On a smaller scale, salons and spas are beginning to employ a dermatologist or plastic surgeon to spend a day or more each week on the premises, advising clients and offering procedures such as collagen implants and Botox. These procedures are also going down in ages … new research reveals that 13–19-year-olds in the US are increasingly checking out options at cosmetic clinics and surgeries.
Beauty junkies on a limited budget opt for the cheaper DIY-treatments that are now available for purchase at your local beautician. Hair removal, extreme exfoliation, laser line reversal and even at-home light therapy for hyperpigmentation all are becoming more and more mainstream, and savvy beauty companies are jumping on board. From prestige to mass, the trend for do-it-yourself-at-home beauty is only just beginning to reach its full potential as a building block to spa services.

Every boy and girl wants to feel special and unique, and this seems to be the driving force behind the need for customization. ’Personally branded’ treatments and products are becoming the norm, with consumers expecting the ultimate personal service.

Paris based brand Absolution offers a unique concept of skincare customization as each product can be adapted to the skin’s moods by adding a drop of one of their highly concentrated boosters. Meanwhile, Lip Balm Labz lets consumers become ’mixologist’ by designing their own lip balm.

With all these options at hand, it is increasingly harder for the consumer to make the right choices when selecting new beauty products. There has been a need to ’try before you buy’, which a handful of the cosmetic brands have been smart enough to pick up on. Tryvertising lets you try out the products before buying, in a set of different ways.

For USD 10 per month or USD 110 per year, Brooklyn-based Birchbox sends subscribers an attractive pink box filled with four to five handpicked luxe beauty samples each month.

Shisheido’s Digital Cosmetic Mirror, installed at a Tokyo department store, and L’Oréal’s digital mirrors in the UK lets customers snap a digital self-portrait using the mirror’s camera. They can then scan a product’s barcode to see it ‘applied’ to their self-portrait, using the system’s touch screen interface to select different colors or get recommendations for shades or products that match their skin tone or eye color.

There are few commitments in life as irrevocable as getting a tattoo, yet typically there’s no way to try them on before taking the plunge. Enter TatMash, a site that lets users see what a real tattoo would look like on them before they really get it done. Not a bad idea, right?

As a photographer, I see the world through a lens. It might sound like a cliché, but to a large extent this assertion is true.

Take a look at one of my photographs. What you see may not be an exact replica of the stuff that surrounds you, but more likely an improved version of the items I choose to picture. In a sense, the outcome of my work could be described as the world as I wish to see it, because in my world the colors are somewhat brighter, the lines slightly straighter and the finishes a tad bit more luxurious. In short, my vision of the perfect world.

One of the great French philosophers once remarked on the assumption that “you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of, and you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life”.

No wonder so many philosophers suffer mental collapses and frantic deaths, with all that endless thinking going on … True or not, I have of lately not been able to stop thinking about aesthetics and photography, and how these subjects so often enter into areas loosely covered within the philosophic realm.

If you look up the meaning of the word ‘aesthetics’, it is described as the philosophical study of beauty and taste. Aesthetics are often not taken quite as seriously as other philosophic pursuits, much due to its perceived shallowness and simplicity. But as a true aesthetic, I feel the strong urge to object to this.
In existentialism, however, arts and aesthetics are refreshingly the very medium through which philosophy is expressed and communicated. Because existentialism is treated as a philosophy to live by, rather than a system that must be contemplated in the school bench, it won’t come as a surprise that many of the existential thoughts can be found in modern art forms.

How did existentialism come about? Following the Great Depression and World War II, there was a deep sense of despair. Existentialism took hold, and was inspired by the works and teachings of among others Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, and became popular in the mid-20th century through the French writers and philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. In short, the thesis is that the human is thrown into the world, and is therefore free. The human being must take this freedom of being, and accept the responsibility of her actions. In other words: with freedom of choice comes responsibility. And a personal choice becomes unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth.

Existentialism has philosophers divided about the most noble of the arts. German thinker Heidegger argued that poetry is the highest, most expressive form of art, while French theorist Merleau-Ponty claimed that painting holds that honor. Where I believe that photography fits into this, will remain unsaid.

Ultimately, though, the forms of art most used by existentialists to get their message across have been novels and plays. Just take a look at the work of Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus and Gabriel Marcel for compelling proof. What is of great interest is that many of these pieces of literature weren’t for other philosophers; their main target audiences were regular people. By being exposed to these pieces, we, the readers, are made responsible for what is revealed to us in the text. Or in the poem, painting, photography, film and dance, as it were.
We may not be responsible for an injustice we are unaware of, but once made aware of it we are faced with choosing to act or not to act. Either way, the artist makes us responsible for what happens next.

In the eyes of an existentialist, art is not a reflection of objective and external reality, but in fact a free projection of the human being. Similarly, the act of photography could be seen as a transcendence of reality by creating something out of what lies before us through the lens, rather than simply and objectively capturing authenticity. I agree with the statement that we should freely project our own influences and emotions into our images, as not to make it a worthless documentation of the reality around us. Unless, of course, that is the precise objective of the photos you’re taking.

As a photographer, you are free to choose to picture any aspect of the world. And perhaps these choices are what define us as human beings, and also as photographers. Our photographs can, without a doubt, define our existence and shape our view of the world.
Something to think about next time you visit a photo exhibition, view a movie or listen to a new song on the radio …

What do Evian, American Apparel, Commes des Garçons, the New York subway system and I have in common? The most detail oriented of my readers might know the answer, but for many of us a simple typeface easily escapes the eye.
The common denominator is Helvetica, a font used in all of the corporate identities mention above. Including my own. And tens of thousands of other logos. Why, you ask? In short, because it does its job so well. It delivers a message, without any fuss. You might never have heard of Helvetica before, but you will for sure have seen it.

Helvetica was conceived by Edouard Hoffmann of Haas Type Foundary in the picturesque, Swiss town Münchenstein. The little-known typographer Max Miedinger was commissioned to create a contemporary version of the popular late 19th century sans serif Akzidenz Grotesk, and his vision of the modernized font debuted to little fanfare in 1957. At that time, it was launched under the name Neue Haas Grotesk, and never really made it big due to the expenses that came with buying an entire set of hand-carved metal shapes that were needed for utilizing it.

Four years later, the typeface was rebranded as part of a marketing plan to sell the typeface internationally. Swiss design was hot at the time, and the name Helvetica was the perfect pitch for the reborn font (Helvetia is Latin for Switzerland, Helvetica means ‘Swiss’). The plan worked like a charm, and the typeface was quickly picked up by the US advertising agencies of the 1960s seeking to imbue their campaigns with cosmopolitanism and modernism. Think slick designs and clean lines. Think television’s Mad Men (who, by the way, have managed to get every single detail right in the show, except for the ending credits ironically set in the poor pastiche Arial). The graphic designers of the era loved the bold new look, and soon Helvetica was everywhere.

By the late 1980s, Helvetica was more or less ubiquitous thanks in part to the introduction of the computer, as Helvetica came bundled with the first Macintosh computers. Today no longer part of the pre-installed group of typefaces, the digital distribution of the font is however still very smooth compared to the expensive metal shapes of former times. It retails at around 99 US dollars when purchased online.

In 2007, Helvetica celebrated 50 years. With a dozen books, a film, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to its name, the typeface is without a doubt unique. Have you ever seen people singing the praises of Times New Roman, or casting Monaco as the starring lead in a film? I thought so. To make my point, I’d like to mention the fact that Helvetica was perhaps the first typeface on the moon, used on the Space Shuttle orbiter.
But not everyone loves Helvetica. In the independent feature-length documentary film Helvetica, director Gary Hustwit finds that Helvetica has its haters as well as its fans. Its use by governments and corporations has turned it into a target for conspiracy theorists holding it to account for all the pro-establishment messages it has carried. Paula Scher, a New York graphic designer and artist interviewed for the film, recalls how, back in the 1960s, Helvetica became a symbol of the Vietnam War, because official communication relied so heavily on the type.
On the other side of the chart, others show Helvetica nothing but love. Christian Larsen, curator of the MoMA exhibition gives his view on the typeface:
”Helvetica delivers a message quickly and efficiently without imposing itself, When reading it, one hardly notices the letter forms, only the meaning, it’s that well-designed. It’s crisp, clean and sharply legible, yet humanized by round, soft strokes. Many type designers have said that they can not improve on it.”

53 years old, and still going strong. No wonder Helvetica has been called the official typeface of the 20th century. But will Helvetica survive another 50? Maybe. Frutiger has of lately started to replace Helvetica in many business contexts, and others complain of it being too neutral. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Helvetica has left a lasting mark on modernity.
“Why do some people find it so strange that a typeface should be used for over 50 years? When something is constructed as well as Helvetica, it should last for a couple of hundred years, just like great architecture.”

When Danny van den Dungen of Dutch graphic design team Experimental Jetset puts it like this, everything falls into place. Much like great architecture, a Chanel dress or an exclusive bottle of wine, Helvetica is to be cherished. Helvetica is a democratic luxury, an art form that can and is to be experienced by everyone. But without the price tag.
Enjoy!