Arts Déco

Mobi Boom: l’explosion du design en France (1945–75)

23 September 2010–2 January 2011

This exhibition explores the prodigious renaissance in furniture design in France from 1945 to 1975, in its creation, amnufacturing and marketing. The advent of new materials – foams, plastics, elastic meshes and Formica – prompted the emergence of new furniture catering to the needs of a comfort-conscious clientele.
The contribution of new talents, including Pierre Paulin, Olivier Mourgue, André Fermigier and Roger Tallon, and the importance of the design manufacturers, retailers and publishers (Roche-Bobois, Roset and Mobilier International) are explored in depth.

cc Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France

Just to talk about successful design too. Who knows ? While in Paris...

The aquarium/cage duplex

Let's face it. The idea of birds within a glass dome, being watched by goldfishes, bring back some memories from the worst... lamest... hopefully long forgotten era of cheap surrealism art. Yup, when everyone was convinced he was the new René Magritte.

Anyway, I would only add a few words : mass center.

Or kitty buffet.

Via Gizmodo < Mocoloco

Frugal Soap

I don't plan to take down in flames every concept that appears on the Web, so, after a pure scam Scamazing rating in the first post, I quickly searched Yanko Design for a really neat and honest design. In order to stick an amazing Scamazing rating once, you know ?

So I picked this charming Frugal Soap. The idea is to carve a concave top in the fresh soap bar, designed to receive the very last remaining puck from the used soap. Very clever way to reduce waste !

Innovation. Well, err... Busted right from the first comment on YD. It appears that a shrinkage occurring during the manufacturing of the english Pears Soap managed exactly the same concave top receptacle. Which was used for the exact same purpose. Since the 19th century.
Damn ! Fail again !

Feasability. No problemo, easily doable. Since the 19th century.

Usability. Approved. Since the 19th century.

Scamazing rating : scam (quite possibly not deliberate)

K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. is an acronym for "Keep It Simple, Stupid", a well known design principle. According to Wikipedia, there's many variations, as "Simple & Straightforward", "Small & Simple", "Simple & Sweet", etc., etc.
It was once a wise word shared in state-of-the-art design and engineering circles, now it's a quite obvious feature in the seductive scheme of some mundane conceptual projects. How can you blame a design aimed at simplify manufacturing process as well as user's life ?

The bottom line : frequently, the simplest things are already discovered. "New simplest things", while being charming, come often with hidden costs, or mysteriously undocumented flaw. In the Designorant book, K.I.S.S. is a sure way to fork astronomical amounts of Scamazing scam points.

Butter ! Better !

This packaging concept just popped on the Internet, spreading (eh ! eh!) itself on an alarming number of gadgetry/lifestyle/geek novelties sites and blogs, all of them cloning this stone-engraved statement : "would revolutionize single serving butter". Oddly, this definitive sentence doesn't even come from the root news, posted on Yanko Design.

Innovation. It is rather unclear in which way this package would bring a substantial improvement : as far as I know, creating a food container with parts also acting as cutlery is already an old challenge, especially in the dairy products domain. A simple googling scoops some established patents (see the italian DIPILEG Spoonpot's, or this US patents string, from the 70's). The real invention could remain in the KISS approach of the design : the spnife, or knoon, or whatever that forms the lid come in one solid piece, without requiring any complex folding, bending, twisting or tearing actions, as in former patents. But like its predecessor, it fails on a crucial point : I prefer to keep both sides of my cutlery clear from store clerks and indecise Costco™ customers finger grease (if not worse). Hence the improvement's improvement suggested in the YD post, the safety plastic cover. In other words, our spnife spatula lid is no longer the only lid on our container. Revolution, schmevolution...

Feasability. Plastic container, doable. Wooden spatula, doable. Safe food-compliant seal between wood and plastic ? I have no idea. Could be solved by the necessary mean of the safety plastic cover, which is never illustrated, by the way.

Usability. I won't argue about the fact that this single-serving ration puts you, de facto, on top of the polar bears kill-on-sight list. It isn't the point. In this particular field, I would say the Butter ! Better ! concept would be pretty efficient, once solved the hygiene issue. Remove the ghost safety cover, take apart and wield your spknife lid, and voilà, you're ready to spread butter.
But this apparent elegant "user-friendliness" has a hidden cost. It's hard to not forecast the shipping issues or premature opening guaranteed by the protruding handle.
As stated in many comments to this invention, it would be way safer, cheaper, and easier to conditioning butter in sauce-packets like squeezable pouches. Does it sound less modern ? Think Space Age, sacrebleu !

Scamazing rating : scam.