The title of this post is my word for things being awry somehow. When setting design, I find myself sometimes trapped by a kind of beauty. It reminds me of Barbie, the doll. Its mark is complete sameness on each side of the design. In this form of beauty, every difference is seen as a deformity. From a human point of view, there must be total clearness of skin, slenderness, and the proper shape.
I have often said that this kind of beauty can be boring to produce because it calls for sameness. Over against it is skeewankis, an unbalance, a lack of similarities. Things can’t be too unbalanced. In that way, the story of the piece is squandered.
The picture for today is of a set of drawers that are angled on the front, thereby giving a place to pull out the drawer at the bottom. It’s not a new design (kind of mid-century, if I understand it correctly), but it just enough skeewankis to be interesting to me.
All of us are somehow skeewankis. Sadly, we spend a lot of time wishing that the things which make us unique weren’t true. Skeewankis is where most of us can find ourselves. Let’s not lose it.