Product Design

Murray Moss|Essays

Design Hates a Depression

“Design tends to thrive in hard times,” says The New York Times’s Michael Cannell. No, it doesn’t. It tends to suffer.

Andrew Blauvelt|Essays

Towards Relational Design

Bionic Hamster, using the iRobot Create kit, c. 2006 Is there an overarching philosophy that can connect projects from such diverse fields as architecture, graphic and product design? Or are we beyond such pronouncements? Should we even …

Adam Harrison Levy|Essays

The Inventor of the Cowboy Shirt

Jack A. Weil. Photo by Rick Wilking, 2006A few years ago, I found myself lost inside a shopping mall with the man who, in 1946, invented the snap-buttoned cowboy shirt. Jack A. Weil, better known as Jack A, was one hundred and one years …

Randy Nakamura|Essays

Steampunk'd, Or Humbug by Design

Illustration by Suzanne R. Forbes: Jake Von Slatt and Datamancer working on a steampunk keyboard. Image courtesy slurkflickr “A little reflection will show that humbug is an astonishingly wide-spread phenomenon — in fact almost …

Ettore Sottsass|Essays

When I Was a Very Small Boy

"Ettore Sottsass: Work in Progress," photo by Luca FregosoWhen I was very small, a little boy of five or six years old, I was certainly no infant prodigy, but I did do drawings with houses, with vases and flowers, with gypsy caravans, …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Fitting

Charles Brannock only invented one thing in his life: that metal thing in shoe stores that the salesman uses to measure your feet. Is it the most perfect invention of the 20th century?

Allan Chochinov|Poetry

"Ode To My Toaster"

Ode to my toaster, so shiny and cleanYou’re the butterknife's foe, you're the bread's trampolineYou're the lightest, the darkest, the coolest and proudYou’re the jack-in-the-box of the countertop crowd.In the old days you had a side …

Rob Walker|Essays

Timeless Object

What makes a useless-seeming watch potentially more valuable — in identity terms — than, say, regular jewelry?

Alice Twemlow|Essays

Design Criticism's Winding Road

Cover of 1955 Buick catalog.On the whole, Deborah Allen had little patience for the "expensive toys" she reviewed as car critic for Industrial Design magazine in the 1950's. She lived in New York, used public transport, and didn't even …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Another Myth Brilliantly Debunked

Popular Science, June, 1956.In 1933, just three months after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 folding-carton manufacturers met in Washington DC to organize objectives and clarify for their constituents a proposed Code of Fair …

David Stairs|Essays

Why Design Won't Save the World

Design for the Other 90%, catalog cover. Photograph by Vestergaard Frandsen; design by Tsang Seymour Design.The well-documented efforts of other professions to assist impoverished nations is already a part of the legend and legacy of …

Thomas de Monchaux|Essays

What If Apple Is Bad for Design?

Original Apple iPod, photo courtesy bioneural.net.Odds are you're reading this on a screen with radially-rounded corners; odds are the frame has a centimeter or so of pearly titanium grey, or milky plasticky white, or calfskin-smooth …