barry burton
Posts tagged "Design"
Ergonomic and otherwise well designed kitchen and household items. Notable for their stainless steel foot lift trash cans.
Ergonomic and otherwise well designed kitchen and household items.
Glass with shapes designed according to the character of the wine. Reasonably priced machine blown crystal and more expensive hand blown crystal.
Observation
Wearing a bluetooth headset even while not in use—
It’s the new “keeping a cellphone in an awkward case1 on the belt”.
The good news is that one can still look like a technocratic-communications-showoff-with-no-real-style, but now one has more room for the Leatherman and its belt-stowed accessories. The bluetooth headset also has the added bonus of confusing those around the wearer. (Are they on the phone? Am I interrupting?)
1 The modifier, ‘awkward’, is redundant, but was included for the sake of clarity. In actuality, all cases purposed for the attaching of cellphones to belts are, by definition, awkward. And seriously, do cellphones and iPods really need these car-bra2 type cases? The wear lines are just embarrassing. What I don’t get is what these cases accomplish. I mean, I would assume they are supposed to protect the finish and beauty of the item inside, say an iPod. The iPod itself is a beautiful object. An iPod with scratches is perhaps less beautiful in some ways, but I think a certain elegance is gained from the authenticity of scratches. Proof that the object functions and does so well enough that it is used frequently. Proof of a beauty that is more than skin deep. However, the car-bra-case clad iPod has been plastered by objectionable materials resulting in an object that just looks silly. So if the case is never removed, the iPod always looks silly. Thus the purpose of the case is self defeating. Why?
2 642,000 to 113,000, Google says no ‘s’.
Method
Soaps and household cleansers have long been a bastion of terrible design and nasty chemicals. Method is a newish company attempting to rectify this situation. Their tag-line is “People Against Dirty”. It’s catchy.
The graphic design on packaging is great, but even better, the industrial design of their bottles is wonderful—very functional and simply beautiful sitting out on the countertop. Most importantly, the cleansers are all biodegradable and avoid harsh chemicals. The packaging is minimal and designed to be fully recyclable.
One example of environmentally careless convention is laundry detergents. Most are diluted to give the impression of getting more for the money, but the extra water wastes plastics on packaging as well energy on transporting the weight of the unnecessary water. Method’s laundry detergents are concentrated, and not only does this prevent waste, it makes toting supplies to the laundry mat a more tolerable task.
Method is based in San Francisco and I have watched their distribution grow to Targets in Northern California, to Targets nationwide, and now to CVS/Pharmacies nationwide. Admittedly, the cleansers are not organic, but I think important first steps are being made. It’s good to see well designed and biodegradable products being distributed nationally on a growing scale. Hopefully the trend will continue.
