THE BEAUTY OF BAD TASTE
In conversation with Jonas Nyffenegger and Sébastien Mathys, the minds behind Ugly Design, Instagram’s most unhinged account.
- Written by: Amanda Breeze
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Ugly Design
If you had told Jonas Nyffenegger and Sébastien Mathys over a decade ago that the Blogspot project they created as design students would grow into a global reference for absurd design, they wouldn’t have believed it. They met in 2008 during their one-year arts program and spent Sunday afternoons in Nyffenegger’s mom’s kitchen, trading the strangest furniture finds they could dig up online: a bathtub turned into a sofa, a tiger-shaped couch, a table perched on a gripping foot. Over the years, the side project grew and matured with them, ultimately becoming what they call a “friendship project.” Those early sessions laid the foundation for what is now an Instagram archive followed by hundreds of thousands, a natural evolution of two Swiss designers who have spent more than a decade orbiting the odd corners of design, collecting objects that sit somewhere between miscalculation and genius.
The account moved from Blogspot to Tumblr before finding its footing on Instagram, where it grew into a hub for absurd and eccentric design. Even as Nyffenegger moved to Stockholm and Mathys to Geneva, the rhythm of the content remained in sync, as if they were “curating from the same room.” Over time, Ugly Design earned a reputation as a global embassy for the beautifully misguided, an unexpected home for objects that refuse to behave. Timing and context mattered, and as fashion and design began to embrace idiosyncrasy and challenge conventional notions of beauty, Ugly Design was perfectly positioned to capture it.
Having carved out this space in the design world, the duo has always approached “ugly” as a “fluid concept,” Mathys explains. “It is shaped by background, education, and experience. An object that seems grotesque on a shelf at home might captivate the eye when placed in a gallery.” Over twelve years, they have explored the nuances between objects that shock, amuse, or provoke, showing that what we label ugly often tells us more about context than design itself. What still surprises them is how the category refuses to dry up. “You think you’ve reached the limit, and then something stranger appears,” Nyffenegger says. “I was always scared of running out of content at the start, but here we are.”
Now, with 789,000 followers, Ugly Design has become more than an Instagram feed. It’s a living archive of imagination, a reflection on how taste evolves and spreads. It was never about establishing a hierarchy; it was about sharing the objects that make you pause, laugh, or rethink what design can be.
As their archive grew, Nyffenegger and Mathys amassed a collection that is equal parts absurd, astonishing, and strangely compelling. Today, they imagine taking the project offline, whether through workshops or publishing a book, offering a tangible glimpse into the wonderfully warped world they’ve spent more than a decade curating. Their success shows that the appetite for things that upend good taste has never been stronger.
Amanda Breeze
Jonas Nyffenegger and Sébastien Mathys
How did Ugly Design begin, and what were you hoping to achieve when you first started collecting these images?
SM: We had a really intense friendship back in school. Jonas was a designer, and I was a graphic designer. We were quite geeky, we spent a lot of time together studying, and so we started this project on Blogspot at first.
JN: We met every Sunday in my mother’s kitchen and put images together. We had the whole concept, and zero followers. Then, one year we were at Milan Design Week, and saw a bathtub that had been redesigned into a sofa, which was hilarious to us as design students because it was the complete opposite of everything we’d been learning. That was when we came up with the name Ugly Design and created a Tumblr account for it, which was a big fail. Things started evolving on Instagram when we started using hashtags and curated images from others instead of only using our own. We started by posting stuff we hated, but eventually we began to see so much nuance in ugliness and labeled things almost like on a scale from “ugly ugly” to “ugly cool” to “ugly funny,” and so on.
SM: This project grew as our friendship did. We began as young students with a very black and white perspective on what qualified as ugly. Eventually, Jonas and I moved to different cities as Ugly Design kept growing on Instagram, so we wouldn’t speak much or tell each other what we were about to post next. We sort of treated it like a game where whoever got the most likes won. But for some reason, the curation always seemed right, almost as if we were curating our posts from the same room.
I’m curious which post first set the tone for what Ugly Design would become.
SM: [laughs] We had a really good friend at the time who took a photo of a cupboard he really hated at Salone del Mobile, which really made us laugh so much. We ended up taking it down sadly.
JN: There was also an image I found of a table with a foot for the base, the toes gripping the glass top. And another was a tiger-shaped sofa that Sébastien found, which was hilarious. Those images made us want to hunt down the craziest things online, and it quickly turned into a kind of competition over who could find the most outrageous stuff. It’s funny, so much of the design I’m obsessed with now is stuff I would’ve hated back then, like the heel with a toilet bowl on top that I just 3D-modeled. Eventually, I’d like to create a series of toilets and chairs in 3D.
Ever think of selling objects? There’s definitely a market for it.
SM: There is, but it’s a bit of a risk. As designers, we have this big contradiction. We love both beautiful things and super eccentric things at the same time. We feel guilty about selling cheap items, and for us, it would have to be either something ultra-niche for a limited audience or mass-market items that wouldn’t have the best quality. We’ve never really been convinced about it.
How do you define ugly today? I’m interested in how that definition has shifted since the account began.
JN: It’s impossible to define. It’s very personal, depending on your background.
SM: And the context. You can see something in someone’s home and you’d hate it, but then putting that same object in a museum could completely change your opinion. Our eye has evolved, and so has our following. But when we started, our audience kept pushing for more crazy and ugly content, which was really hard for us at one point. Because I mean, how ugly can you get?
JN: I was always scared to run out of content. But here we are, 12 years later, still managing to find the craziest shit on the internet.
So if context shifts how we see things, what actually separates ugly from badly designed?
JN: When I was a student, I learned that something beautiful was expected to be minimalist. And back then, we weren’t really using the term maximalist as often. But honestly, something can be minimalist and beautiful but not serve any function, whereas something maximalist and ugly can be the most functional.
SM: There are so many sides you can answer this from. But for me, if the object has no use, it’s bad design. But then at the same time, you can have something beautifully designed that’s nice to look at, but doesn’t work.
When did ugly start to feel desirable? Was there a cultural tipping point, or is it something the internet accelerated?
SM: It’s all about cycles. I think a lot of people got sick of the ultra-minimalist stuff, which we saw in fashion, furniture, and in a lot of other spaces. Back then, people had more money to spend, and the economy was flourishing. So there was this link between wealth and how good everything was going overall, so we were able to play with a lot of different codes, like being able to spend on creating something really silly. Whereas now, context is a bit more complicated, and we’re going back to being super conservative in how we do things, especially in design and fashion. I think we really tested the limits on aesthetics over the last years. Maybe we went too far?
JN: Yeah. For us, Ugly Design kind of started at a time when it felt like people weren’t exploring these certain areas as much, which is why I think it made them super excited. We just happened to arrive at the right moment with the right name and idea.
And now we’re in a completely different landscape, with AI tools pushing everything toward extreme polish and perfection. Do you think AI will ever understand what makes something ugly?
SM: Yeah, AI really changed things because now anything can be generated. Before, everything looked super clean and sophisticated, which is part of why we stood out. Now people can just come up with a stupid idea without ever actually making it. And that is the beauty of Ugly Design. Most of our content comes from real products made by real people who were crazy enough to think about it and actually make it.
AI definitely makes things less fun. But it would be cool to create a really ugly algorithm. You know what, maybe that will be our next workshop!
So with all of this in mind, what does taste mean to you now?
SM: Hmmm. It’s very personal. I think it depends on where you come from, like your social background, education, etc. Because to me, taste is all about connecting with people who have similar taste to you.
JN: I will say, living in Stockholm, I realize that taste is something that really rubs off on people. Literally! Everyone starts owning and liking the same things. So I think to avoid this, you really need to have a strong belief in what you like and stay true to that.
SM: It’s really true. Of course, we’re all influenced by people around us, the internet, the commercial market, and so on, so it is quite hard to have your own taste today. Most people who aren’t following trends are weirdos in my opinion. The good weirdos! We really need them; they’re the ones challenging aesthetics.
Speaking of weird, I have to ask, what’s the strangest thing you own?
JN: Well, there’s this [laughs]—this really ugly toy car model I just bought, which is currently my favorite. It’s the Fiat Multipla in the ugliest yellow color. Who knows, maybe I’ll turn it into a lamp one day. [laughs]
SM: I definitely have some ugly stuff, but I’d say one that comes to mind right now is made from a really good weirdo. It’s the Champagne Candle from PZtoday. It’s not ugly, but it’s a weird object. I really love it. Or the Lettuce Slides from Rombaut! We both have a pair.
What keeps Ugly Design going after all these years? Is it the humor, or has it become something else, like a kind of ongoing study of taste and culture?
SM: It’s everything. But we would love to publish a book. It’s been one of our dreams to create something physical, something that exists beyond the internet. I mean, Ugly Design is like a museum, so why not?
JN: Ugly gallery!
Amanda Breeze is a writer at SSENSE. Her work has appeared in Schön!, METAL, and SICKY.
- Written by: Amanda Breeze
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Ugly Design
