Fascinated by the article in Readymade about Method soap. 2 roomates post college hating to clean decide to create soap company. Now, 3 years later, they are wildly successful, in targets and homes all over the place. Their hook? Design.
Design seems to be the next step in merchandising. We assume quality, prices are low, so now we need design. The philippe starck juicer, the michael graves shredder, even a todd oldham lazy boy. It's no longer just jeans that have the designer label, it's all the way down to your dish soap dispenser. So, what's next? What niche market can be dominated solely by design?
Posted by heyhansen at May 19, 2004 09:38 AMThe irony of the current "design" push is that most of that design fails on basic usability requirements, making it very poor design indeed. That Starck juicer is pretty, but also pretty useless. Karim Rashid's latest line of teapots fails to include a way to clean them. Oops.
I think what you're really seeing is the commodification of design, where we turn it into one more "thing" we can sell. At the ICFF show there was a guy who had a reasonably clever set of bookshelves cut from a single sheet of Baltic birch plywood that slotted together. Price: $500 wholesale. Let's see, that's $50 for the wood, $25 for the CNC time, $25 for the finish and packaging, and $400 for the "design."
And where's my copy of Readymade, anyway? Those people are flaky.
Posted by: Scott at May 21, 2004 10:24 AM