Scissors-Action Stapling

http://gallery.me.com/designdingo/100025/Stapler-Green/web.jpg?ver=12637930390001

Matte Black Sound

There is a certain honesty and appeal in balls-out, straightforward, functional product design. I bought these speakers in the late 80s — Yamaha prodced these as Keyboard Monitor Speakers for professional touring musicians but I used them as computer speakers (on my then, state-of-the-art Mac II). I'll admit they're not the best sounding speakers — for the audio generated from a computer.

USB flash drives (or thumb drives, or USB keys, or flash thingies — can we standardize on a name of these things already? are a fool-proof way of transferring files from one computer to another — they've become the new floppy disk. Corporate and Government IT departments hate these — they undermine their carefully restricted, high-security networks. And yet they remain a convenient way to exchange data on the fly.

Sony has always charged a premium for their products, adding a little style and design quality as the added value. This line of USB flash drives certainly ups the ante — a cleaver sliding sleeve reveals the USB plug. The 2GB capacity seemed huge when I bought this in early 2009, but now is common place — storage technology never stands still.

Dustpanning

It's rather a pain to pull out the big vaccum cleaner every time I notice a piece of lint floating across my hardwood floor. So I make good use of the Oxo dustpan with inclusive form-fitting brush I bought last week.

Oxo is a company that puts a lot of effort in making its products ergonomically comfortable and with wonderfully expressive style, striking form, and crisp design in the details. Molded in blindingly white plastic, the smooth rounded curves have been styled with voluptuos charm. I would have to say though, that the bristles are not quite stiff enough so you end up flexing the bristles and hitting the hard plastic portion of the brush on whatever you're dusting. But otherwise it works flawlessly. Note the serrated edges of the dustpan that you can use to cleannoff the bristles.

Translucent Whiteness

This was my very first iPod — it's commonly referred to as the Third Generation model. (Don't get me started on Apple's bewilderingly vague product naming system). It was given to me as a gift and housed a massive 40GB spinning hard drive.

This was back in the day when Apple offered you iPods in any color you could want, as long as it was white. I remember being at the Apple Store in Palo Alto where they had a large poster with a night shot of this iPod showing how the buttons light up in the dark and several different groups of people came in asking about the black one in the poster. Apple finally saw the light a year later, cautiously adding a black model at first and then eventually releasing a range of iPods covering the entire color spectrum.

This model differed from the first generation in that it had a row of touch-sentive buttons for playback controls. They were a little too sensitive for most folks — it was easy to inadvertently skip ahead with the slightest brush. But they were still preferable to the previous models that had long thin buttons arranged around the circumference of the click wheel. I appreciated the translucent white case — the clear plastic housing was coated with opaque white on the inside surface, giving a lustrous feeling of depth to the finish. I was never that excited about the brick-like form though, with its uniform radii on every edge. It had all the excitement of a squared-off bar of soap, a necessary accommodation for the electrical components, I suppose.

While still in great shape cosmetically, this iPod is completely dead, unable to be resuscitated with any amount of recharging.

Stainless Stapling

I purchased this stapler from MOMA so long ago I can't even remember when. Made of polished stainless steel, the Folle 26 Stapler has a wonderfully restrained appearance and the solid heft of a real, functional machine. Its straightforward linear form is designed in the modern tradition and yet because of its rich materials and quality construction, hints at earlier era — something stylish you'd find in a desk drawer of your Parisian atelier. I love its monolithic metallic appearance and spare, structured form — a straightforward linear block with a circular head emphasizing the business end. A clearly etched arrow points to a sliding button on it's side that allows it to be opened up and loaded; while a spring-loaded button on the bottom lets you rotate the striking plate so that the staples can be splayed out rather than bend in on themselves for certain applications (which I have never really needed). It works flawlessly although I'll admit I only staple an handful of times a year — mostly around tax time. The Folle 26 Stapler is in the Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Perpetual Calendar

Door Stop Man

Picked up this whimsical little guy the other weekend — a fully rubberized reclining figure that stops doors from swinging in the wind. I have this problem with my upstairs study so I put him to work right away. Made with a hard rubber coating over a metal armature, he can be bent (with a bit of effort) to contort his shape subtly and prop open any door. I like the fact that it's the shape of the international icon of a human figure you typically see on signage rather than something more literal.

Extruded Time

Some of the more iconic styles of the 80s haven't aged very well — specifically the cutting edge Memphis design style, championed by the ledgendary Ettore Sottsass. A break from the modernist design themes of the 70s, the style combined kitsch elements from the 50s with busy leopard skin patterns and exuberant ziggurats and wave forms. The shapes, ornamentation and colors influenced graphic design with the California/Florida New Wave style utilizing busy patterns in teals and pinks, but made its biggest impact in furniture design. Memphis strived to shock, polarizing the opinions of many designers and challenged the time-honored, traditional notion that good design should be timeless. The Museum of Modern Art in New York famously refused to mount a Memphis design show. If you're unfamiliar with Memphis design watch, the film Ruthless People — you'll have no trouble spotting the furniture.

This Canetti desk clock by ArtTime (bought in the late 80s) is one of the more restrained examples of the style, and still keeps time, more or less. The hour is indicated with a perforated disc with a yellow arrow, the minute hand is a blocky red extention, and a ticking yellow orb with an embedded blue block denotes the seconds. The deep cylindrical design makes the form unusual for a standard clock, although it can still be easily hung on a wall or placed on a desk. I like the red, deep blue and yellow color accents — reminds me of Rietveld's De Stijl color palette. Now a quarter century on, the clock is, ironically, stuck in time — a dated moment in a design trend of the 80s.

Sticky Green

I bought this Alessi tape dispenser about a decade ago. Made out of green translucent plastic, its smooth, rounded edges really invite you to pick it up and use it. The stubby "Y" shaped arms, while appearing as a bit of design whimsy are actually perfectly functional: they extend the tape out for you to easily grasp. And the rounded body makes it very comfortable to hold. But this is not one of those weighted desk tape dispensers where you can pull off a piece of tape with a couple of fingers. This does require both hands — you must pick it up to use it — which is completely fine for casual home use. And the roll is nicely sealed completely within the plastic housing, so you can just toss it in a drawer and not risk the grimy, gluey edge sticking to other things, like the standard Scotch® tape dispensers do. And yet it's easy enough to pop one edge off to replace the roll when you need to.

New Year!

The year "Twenty-Ten" has a crisp, solid ring to it. We're finally out of the "Ohhhs" decade (or the "naughts" as the English would say) and none too soon. And nothing rings in the new year like a well-designed calendar/datebook. Maybe this is the year I'll actually have the discipline to use one rather than just tossing it in a drawer. This one caught my eye online — the Munken Agenda called Everynow 2010. I ordered a couple of these from England — they're produced as a paper sample from the manufacturer, Artic Paper.

Sporting an intriguing "timewheel" design theme, the cover design is wonderfully technical — concentric circles of numbers that depict the month, days in the month, weeks, day of the year, hours in the month etc. — all deliciously de-bossed (letterpressed) into its thick cover. The interior is equally well designed, with each spread displaying a full week, and the weekend days at the far right. (I can't for the life of me understand the standard American practice of splitting up the two weekend days, putting one day at the beginning and the other at the end of the week. In day-to-day living, Americans still have the mental model of the week starting on Monday and ending on Sunday, so I'm baffled by the proliferation of calendars and datebooks available in this country with the split-up weekends — makes them all unusable in my book.)

Iconic Celebration

Dom Pérignon. The classic champagne that dates back to Louis XIV times. Created by a Benedictine monk in the 1600s, it's become the de facto standard in celebratory beverages. It comes in a rather humble, dark glass bottle that's a little more bottom heavy and slope-shouldered than a standard champagne bottle. The distinctive shield-shaped label is remarkably understated — one-color printing with sparse typography in a rather friendly, simplistic script on a muted background. It all comes together in a wonderfully monochromatic, unified statement, quietly proclaiming its classic name from one of the most esteemed champagne houses.

Blue Sky Umbrella

When MOMA came out with this umbrella back in the 90s, the concept was just so clever I had to buy one immediately. Designed by Tibor Kalman of the renowned design firm M&Company, it embodies the witty charm all their products were famous for. The cheerful blue sky with happy puffy clouds is silkscreened onto a separate cloth insert attached to a conventional umbrella. It's well made, with a wooden veneer-covered central pole and nicely finished hook handle. Never fails to create a little smile in gloomy weather.

Milky Music

Apple had ignited the MP3 category with their iPod; now they needed a cheaper, simpler model to round out the line. The iPod Shuffle was launched to fulfill that role, its reduced cost evident by its limited storage capacity and lack of any kind of display. They also skimped on materials and design. Maybe they made it intentionally dull and monotonous looking to avoid stealing sales away from their more profitable models, but I still think the design is humdrum and unexciting. It's not offensive — its clean and white, with clear, minimalist controls marked in subtle grey — but it doesn't inspire either. There's an attempt at creating some visual interest by having sharply defined edges in one dimension that contrast with the rounded corners in an other, but that doesn't make up for its general blandness. It's very light, so it serves its purpose as a featherweight jogging accessory, but that also makes it feel cheap. There's a sliding switch on the back that selects shuffle modes, but it's tricky to grip and position accurately.



In one way it's superior to its more expensive brethren: it has its USB plug built right in — no need to look for that iPod connector cord. But as an avid Podcast listener that needs to find a particular show and then hear the episodes in an orderly sequence, I can't adapt to the random shuffling lifestyle.

It's interesting to note that the Apple Remote, included with all their computers for media viewing, has some similarity in form and control layout — although even it has a more pleasing aesthetic than the lowly Shuffle.

It's About Time

Black-faced watches have always looked cool to me. As a teenager, when I bought myself my first watch, I picked out an all-black model with a bright red-orange second hand. I always liked that look. Years later when I first saw the Seiko Sportura line, I was reminded of that design theme. Sportura is Seiko's contemporary-looking line of 'Sport" watches. By the time I had made up my mind that I wanted one in particular — the all-black Seiko Sportura Chronograph snappily designated the SNA595P2 — it had been discontinued. And replaced with a line of very bling watches — all kinds of shiny chrome bits highlighting the dials and bezel, swathed in decorative patterns. Most popular watches have gone in this design direction — a shiny jangly 70s revival available from many manufacturers. I had to do a little searching online for a retailer that still carried it.

Precision timepieces are a staple in most designers' collections of revered objects. I think it's the technological precision of most watches that is so appealing. Even up close the details are sharply rendered, the graphics crisply printed, the quality of manufacture clearly evident. I have to admire a timepiece where the quality is to such a level that even fifths of a second are cleanly marked. I like the simplicity of the brightly contrasting hour designations, visible even in complete darkness. I love the repeating pattern of circular holes across its face (it's actually more subtle than appears in this photograph). I even like the racing stripe orange stitching on its unique leather straps — the inside surface of which carry on the orange color theme. The straps recently wore out; another worldwide internet search tracked down a replacement set from England. It has all the usual chronograph timing functions as well as a built-in alarm function, but I've never been able to figure that part out.

The bezel surface might be a little too shiny black for my taste (the surface of which has gotten pretty well scratched up if you look close). And I do wish the orange highlighted details were more towards the red side of the color spectrum. But the thing that bugs me the most are the product naming graphics — I mean, four different typefaces for four words — really?

Low, Sleek and Mouse

It's ironic that Apple, the force behind making the computer mouse mainstream, is often a couple of steps behind the competition when it comes to pointing devices. I remember going through half a dozen different Microsoft and Logitech mice before Apple supported anything more than a double click. The Microsoft wheel mouse was a revelation, allowing a whole new level of flexibility in working with bigger files. Scrolling horizontally was added with subsequent tilt wheel models, and then Apple finally joined the fray with the "Mighty Mouse" and its little scroll ball. At last, a Macintosh could be used by a typical graphic designer right out of the box, for the first time since 1988.

Apple has now upped the ante with the goofily named "Magic Mouse" It's got to be one of the lowest profile mice ever created — It's so slim it's hard to believe that it encloses a couple of AA batteries. Yes, the new mouse only comes as a wireless model, which means it's a tad tougher to slide around because of the extra battery weight. Too bad it doesn't have the option to work with only one battery like the previous model.

The big news with this mouse is its touch-sensitive surface. A wonderful, curving, smooth, glossy surface of clear plastic with its underside colored opaque white, giving the top surface a slightly transparent look. Incorporating some of the technology that went into the touchpads of its notebooks, scrolling is acheived by sliding your finger over its face; flicking through pictures is accomplished by swiping two fingers. It's an improvement on the tiny scrollwheel — your finger doesn't get as cramped as it swipes through a larger swath of motion to scroll. I love the momentum feature — it gives you a wonderful fluid feeling when you're skating around a large photoshop file. Being an old-school Machead I never set up the mouse with the two button mode — pressing the control key with the other hand to get that functionality is fine by me. The hard edge around the perimeter of the mouse was initially weird feeling, but after a couple of days, I didn't really notice it. It seems to help you position the mouse more precisely, and with a more positive grip, or at least it feels like you are. And I don't miss the loss of the side buttons of the previous mouse. I always turned off that functionality — it was way too easy to trigger accidentally.

The bluetooth technology also seems to have improved — the initial pairing with your computer is a level of magnitude faster than previous mice I've used. A simple slide of the tiny switch on the bottom starts the process — that tiny black dot is a piercing green LED that indicates status.





The level of fit and finish of this new mouse is flawless — the feel of the light click as the whole top surface depresses with each click, the crisp clean edge of the curving plastic, the tight tolerances of the mating parts, even the quality of the little sliding switch and silk screened graphics on the bottom. Apple has often been praised for its high level of design, but here the quality in its manufacturing has reached a new high. It looks and feels like something Bang & Olufsen would put out, except they would charge $600 for it.

The high quality carries through to the packaging — the mouse ships in a clear plastic box contoured to its shape, with room for instructions in its platform base.

The Cutting Edge

I have been fighting the blade escalation of razors over the years, stubbornly continuing to use my trusty, 80s-era Gillette Trak II. How can it possibly do the job with only two blades, while all the newer models have three, four, even five blades in a row? It works fine, although the mechanism for holding the blades in is wearing out and becoming less effective. I have to admit though, I prize it mostly for its design.

Absent are the swooping curves and swirls of different colors wrapping around and in between each other in contrasting waves prevalent in current razor design. Here we have a clean, disciplined, structured design — a series of solid, functional, raised grips on a sleek silver handle. Everything is lined up — the handle clearly defined; the neck, appropriately abruptly, bent. A contrasting black metal seam runs down its spine, revealing and highlighting its manufacture.

This sort of restrained design language seems to be out of favor on many products these days. Cars, yachts, even toothbrushes — all seem to have numerous looping, curving intertwined surfaces — a design trend that seems to have evolved from the overdesigned, Nike running-shoe sector. Hopefully, there will be a return to santity, and maybe I'll even find a replacement handle of this model.

A Blast of Whimsy

The Giotto Rocket is a rarity in product design — an intriguing-looking object injected with fun and whimsy that is actually completely functional. Intended for use by photographers to blow away dust and debris from the nooks and crannies of their equipment, it sucks air from its base and shoots it out the top, preventing the dust you're trying to get rid of from just getting recirculated. The rocket fins make a functional stand. It comes in several different sizes, this being the smallest version — extra cute because its squeezable rubber center is completely spherical.

Splitting Nuts

I first caught sight of this gorgeous, heart-shaped nut splitter (designed by Jim Hannon-Tan in 2008) on the Alessi website. Usually put off by their more unusual and overly "cute" design objects, I thought this would be a great candidate for my very first Alessi purchase. Since I hadn't seen the tool in person, I held off on buying it until a few weeks ago when I happened across it at the Soho MoMA store in Manhattan... and it was on sale. I bought it without hesitation.

I was dying to try the splitter on some whole, unshelled walnuts, but there were none to be found at any of the nearby supermarkets. It was two weeks later that I finally discovered some in the produce section at Whole Foods. Beautiful and sensuous as the splitter is in appearance, its utility as a nutcracker is somewhat limited. While it will almost always split the walnut open in some fashion, it is all too easy to mangle the shell in the process and end up with too small an opening. Now we know why walnuts are usually sold pre-shelled!

Stylish Xylish

During a short trip to Japan this spring, I ate many delicious meals – the flavors of which would sometimes linger for hours after. In a search to remedy the problem, I came across this packet of gum, which looks pretty ordinary on the convenience store shelf. But peel off the outer wrapper and you're in for a treat: a stylishly embossed silver box forms a frame for a tiny "drawer" cradling individually wrapped, hard-coated pieces of gum (with a nice, mild grapefruit flavor). The foil wrappers are soft and flexible in texture, folded perfectly to hold each piece. This level of attention to detail was typical of packaging design in Japan, where they lavish creative ideas on even the most inexpensive and disposable of products. I only wish the outer wrapper were sleek enough to match its contents!

Winging it

This wonderfully whimsical fly squatter comes from the Dutch design label InvotisOrange. They make some interesting stuff — I haven't seen any of their product line in America. I picked this up in a stylish little store in downtown Athens and was struck by the cleverness of the concept. Called the Flyflap, this rather playful solution to the problem is approximately the same size and weight as a standard flyswatter, and looks to be just as effective — although the generous size of some of the openings may allow some smaller flies to survive unscathed. Designed by Ramon Middelkoop, this elegant weapon achieves a perfect balance of function and artistry, with an ironic sense of humor. I have yet to put it into use — I haven't seen any flies in the house lately.

Spiral Eraser

A friend recently gave me this very unusual looking black rubber eraser after returning from her trip to Tokyo. Looking like a tiny collapsable bellows, this barely 2-inch long flexible rubber spiral from Metaphys Stationary is not just cool looking but purposefully functional. The sharp ridges perform extremely well in erasing specific points of your pencil drawing or writing. The dramatic helical shape, designed by Chiaki Murata, quickly wears down though, blunting the crisp coiled ridges. I guess you have to have two of these then — one to put out on your desk for its iconic looks, and the one you really use tucked away in your pencil drawer.