Mistakenly underrated, as comedy always is, the work of design’s tricksters is overdue for a considered appraisal. This paper looks at design that uses the tactics of humor – among them incongruity, absurdity, and exaggeration – to trigger emotional responses. Historical and contemporary examples are framed within the cultural frameworks of nature, the human body, animality, politics, and religion, both for their uncanny effects and their larger capacities to illuminate our relationships with things. Ranging in intent from calculated schadenfreude to pleasure-giving surprises, design that operates on comedy can work as a sudden shock or a slow burn that tells the brain and body that something’s amiss. Whether as critique or therapy or both, design that is comically unpredictable liberates us from the tyranny of the status quo and offers an antidote to complacency.
Keywords: comedy, design, therapy, critique, laughter