on 5 December 2008
Jennifer Hudson’s previous titles include 1000 New Designs and 1001 Buildings You Must See Before you Die. This time she’s gone for depth rather than breadth, and the result is a striking insight into the ways designers and manufacturers work together to bring products from conception to reality.
There’s a fascinating book to be written about the industrial processes behind commodity products like Tupperware, Pritt sticks and IKEA sofas, but this isn’t it. Instead, Hudson has picked the most innovative and exotic objects. The likes of Ron Arad, Karim Rashid and the Bouroullec brothers are joined by less familiar names in an incredibly varied selection, from Richard Sapper’s Halley Light, a Calderesque desk lamp with a heatpipe cooling system borrowed from laptops, to Tokujin Yoshioka’s Pane Chair, baked like a loaf of bread and emerging to resemble a Claes Oldenburg soft sculpture.
What links all these designs is an attitude perhaps best summarised in a quotation from Scandinavian group Propeller. Today’s sophisticated consumers, they point out, want products that don’t just function well, but create an experience. continue reading at www.macuser.co.uk
adambanksdotcom @gbarl Bah, missed your Watchdog. Do they do it on iPlayer?