I ADOPT CANONS OF ETHICS FOR MY DESIGN CRITICISM

I couldn't think of a better model for the ethical code of a design critic than the Canons of Ethics proposed for judges by the American Bar Association. I present them here in their original form and as I have modified them to suit the needs of design critics and their audience.


ORIGINAL FOR JUDGES

CANON 1
A judge shall uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary.

CANON 2
A judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities.
CANON 3
A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially and diligently.
CANON 4
A judge shall so conduct the judge’s extra-judicial activities as to minimize the risk of conflict with judicial obligations.
CANON 5
A judge or judicial candidate shall refrain from inappropriate political activity.


Except for Canon 5, all of these can be adapted to the conduct of a design critic. As modified below, I hereby adopt them for my conduct in this blog. I add a new Canon 5 which I think is  relevant in criticism but not in judicial conduct. This also interacts with Canon 3. Unlike a judge, I think a design critic can "rule" on a subject with which he or she has a personal connection and may have some partiality so long as the nature of that connection is disclosed. A judge, on the other hand, in deciding between adversarial parties cannot have the same leeway.


MY CODE OF CRITICAL CONDUCT


CANON 1
A design critic shall uphold the integrity and independence of the critical profession.
CANON 2
A design critic shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the design critic’s activities.
CANON 3
A design critic shall perform the duties of design criticism impartially and diligently.
CANON 4
A design critic shall so conduct the design critic’s extra-critical activities as to minimize the risk of conflict with professional obligations.
CANON 5
A design critic shall disclose all connections the critic has to the subject under consideration.


Sworn to this 27th day of April, 2011.
Daniel Young

GLOBAL DESIGN VAULTS

I have been reading about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a back-up storage facility for the seeds of the world. It is located on a remote Norwegian island about 810 miles from the North Pole.

It made me think something similar is needed for the world's most important design objects. For example, in the event of world-wide catastrophe, (nuclear, climatic, geological etc.) it would be good to have places where examples of the wheel were securely stored to save future societies the trouble of inventing it. 

The only problem, in the event of total social disorder, would be maintaining and communicating knowledge of the locations of the Design Vaults and the importance of their contents.


For a number of reasons, existing "design" collections such as the one in MOMA (New York's Museum of Modern Art) will not be good for the purpose I have in mind. First of all, large urban areas such as New York City are likely to be uninhabitable and perhaps inaccessible. Second, a collection such as MOMA's is much too voluminous and frivolous. For example, it has 413 tables, 564 chairs, 94 stools and 77 ashtrays. It seems to be oriented more towards preserving fashion and idiosyncratic design proliferation than towards preserving knowledge of making essential design objects. 

I suppose there is some small benefit in knowing that at some point humans began to use bent wood for chairs and later progressed to bent metal and then to totally malleable plastic and anything else they could form into the shape of a chair. But I, for one, would find the design history of wheels from their probable origin as potter's wheels through their use for transportation up to such extravagances as the Ferris wheel much more interesting. 

In any event, the focus of a really useful design vault would be to enable people to produce and use those designs most needed to conduct a healthy civilized life. It would be much more instructive than the design exhibits aimed at informing shoppers about fashionable "design" objects.

My choice for the location of a design repository would be something like Piz Gloria, the mountain-top restaurant at Murren, Switzerland. 

I would choose it for its height above sea level, geological stability and the likelihood the Swiss will be in good shape even when the rest of the world is in chaos.

IF GODS ARE DESIGNERS, WHAT ARE DESIGNERS?

The "design" argument for the existence of gods is probably the best one. It says, "Things in nature look as if they were designed so there must be a designer or designers out there."


Whether or not this is so, it gives the practice of design by humans an exalted status. Of all human activities, it is the most godlike. At the very least, designers ought to belong to the class of angels. They have the power to affect everything that goes on in the world. In a way they are omnipresent. 

But, alas, they are clearly not omnipotent. For the most part, designers seem to be servants of corporations. How did it happen that, instead of ruling the world, designers are servants?


I think it has something to do with the existence of money. Designers, being primarily concerned with how things should work (and look) do not give first priority to the accumulation of money. This leaves the economy in the hands of those who give primary importance to collecting money. They use money to establish immortal entities (known as "corporations") with the purpose of making more money. The money class and its immortal entities arrange for selected people to run the non-profitable activities of the society. That is called the "government." 

The immortal entities entice the designers to make things that will bring in the most money and thereby keep them going forever.


We can conclude from this that the best way for designers to take a more prominent role in the leadership of the world is for them to concentrate more on accumulating money, on creating their own immortal entities and on playing a more important role in government. 

A wonderful shortcut might be to have a designer elected as President of the United States or to have designers with law degrees take over the Supreme Court. Congressmen and Senators do not seem to have much of a function these days so it would probably be best for designers to stay away from those positions.

A DESIGNER GETS ON A DISH-WASHING SOAPBOX

As an advanced practitioner of dish-washing I occasionally have to buy a bottle of liquid dish-washing soap. My preference in the past was an emerald-green syrup manufactured by Colgate-Palmolive. I like it because the color allows me to see clearly the amount of soap I am applying to the sponge, thus avoiding soap waste, one of the common sins of amateur dish-washing.


Two days ago I didn't see any green liquid in stock. So I bought a blue container, thinking the blue came from the liquid inside. Alas, only the container was blue and the soap is nearly invisible when applied to my sponge. My normal paranoia made me think that perhaps manufacturers are eliminating dark-colored dish-washing liquids because they want to encourage wasteful use of the product. However, I have no proof of this ....... yet.


In any event, this unpleasant shock led me to explore the Colgate-Palmolive dish-washing liquid site. I found that they have mastered the art of multiplying products unnecessarily, one of the most characteristic tactics of modern production and design. I will limit this analysis to those dish-washing liquids marketed under the trademark of Palmolive for hand dish-washing.


There seem to be six distinct "functional" types; one, the "Original," two, "Antibacterial," three, "Aroma Sensations," four, "Dry Skin," five, "Oxy Plus," and six, "Pure+." It exhausts me to list the sub-categories within these. For example, Aroma Sensations are Lavender, Green Apple and Tropical Blossom. Oxy Plus has one "Power Degreaser," one "Odor Eliminator" and one with "Bleach Alternative." The funniest category is "Pure +." It boasts "You'll love it for everything it doesn't have.... no unnecessary chemicals... no heavy fragrances... non-irritating dyes." Delving further I found yet another variation, "Ultra Baby" which claims, believe it or not, to have "no unnecessary ingredients." Still further one comes across even more variations but I am too numbed to mention them.

The section in which they show the ingredients and their purpose is most interesting.  The cleaning agents are mostly the same and are outnumbered by the ingredients which play a supporting role in controlling thickness, stability and consistency.

I defy anyone to defend this wasteful proliferation of what should be a simple form of soap. The only defense I anticipate is that it gives consumers what they want. I say that a society which wants this sort of variety in its cleaning substances has lost touch with reality and is fussing , or should I say "washing," itself into historical oblivion.


From my point of view the designer of a soap product should be going in exactly the opposite direction. The most commendable product would be one which not only washes dishes but also washes the hands, the body and the hair. Omnisoap! And why not have it wash the laundry as well? Of course, such a product would represent a threat to the economy worse than communism and terrorism. It would undermine the very foundation of contemporary capitalism. For that reason it can only remain a treasonous fantasy.

DESIGNS WHICH SAY "SCREW YOU"

Wine, an ancient grape-derived intoxicating beverage has, in some cases, been transformed into one of the most overpriced products of our time. At some future date I hope to deal with how designers have been accomplices in the wonderful con in which the beverage accompanying a meal costs more than the food. 

At the moment my attention has been caught by tools for extracting the cork with which some wine bottles are closed. The New York Times has just lavished attention on a line of corkscrews which range in price from $220 to $410. I call the design and production of such objects indecent and an offense against the higher ideals of design. These ideals include designing a quality product which can be sold at the lowest possible price.


First, let the record reflect that cork is no longer the best way to close a wine bottle. The screw cap probably is better. All cork has in its favor is its "tradition," the opening "ceremony" it compels and the power of the cork-producing interests. So we have an outrageously expensive tool dedicated to an inferior and soon-to-be obsolete closure of an overpriced product. How foolishly decadent can you get?

Second, the objects in question have no meaningful functional superiority to those which cost one-tenth the price or less. There is, however, a sort of perverse logical consistency in using an obscenely overpriced tool to open an obscenely overpriced bottle of wine.


I propose an alternative bottle-opening ceremony which could use the simplest and least expensive sort of corkscrew - a screw set in a horizontal handle. The wine-opening ceremony with such a tool could be gussied up this way: The sommelier or host wheels in a small platform with a hole in its center. He or she raises the top of the platform and inserts the wine bottle so that its neck extends up through the hole. Then he or she inserts the screw of a corkscrew into the cork, climbs up on the platform, bends over or kneels and pulls up on the corkscrew to extract the cork.


But wait, I have unjustifiably assumed that the screw cap means the end of the wine-opening ceremony. Maybe I have not reckoned with the ingenuity of designers working for the wine establishment. Perhaps it will be discovered that simply twisting off the cap with one's fingers traumatizes the wine. I begin to see the outlines of a wheel-shaped device held reverently in the hands of a sommelier. It resembles the steering wheel of a sailing ship. It delicately grips the cap and turns in a mystical circular movement. Yes, there is hope.

DESIGN IN THE TOILET

CAUTION: This design analysis discusses defecation and related matters. Those who find these things disgusting should go no further (and probably should not be involved in design on the most serious levels.)

"I discovered, said Gargantua, by long and painstaking experiments a way to wipe my ass, the most lordly, the most expedient that ever was seen."
                  - Francois Rabelais, Gargantua & Pantagruel, trans. by Donald Murdoch Frame


It appalls me that, in a society overflowing with unnecessary toiletries of all kinds, the design of ass-wiping paraphernalia has remained in a primitive state. The dominant method of ass-wiping in advanced societies is to use a dry paper product. Dry paper is obviously an unsatisfactory to remove glutinous matter from the human skin. Moistness is essential to such a process.


We will put aside the bidet for the purpose of this discussion. It is too complex, too expensive, too ecologically demanding and too effete for a young country such as ours. The same is certainly true of  more complicated toilets which rinse, air dry and connect you to the internet.

For many years the solution was right in front of us in the form of moist tissues for wiping the asses of babies. But the product was not marketed for adults and only a few enlightened adults were clever enough to adapt the product to their purposes. (The adult user avoided the potential toilet stuffing problem by tearing the approximately 9-inch by 6-inch wipe in  half before using. Two such half-wipes were more than adequate for most ass-wiping purposes, followed by a minimal use of one or two sheets of ordinary toilet paper for drying purposes.)

I am happy to report that an attempt is being made to market moist toilet wipes to adults (years after introduction in Europe.) Kimberly Clark is leading the way with its Cottonelle brand. I have not yet tried them and I doubt they will match the baby wipes for cost effectiveness. When I have done more research I will report the results. I will also address the question of whether these products are indeed "flushable" as advertised.


As a concluding footnote I point out that the cleaning of the ass would be made easier in general if children were educated, at home or in school, to spread their ass cheeks when defecating. A survey has shown that, at present, only 58% of the population do so.

A CURE FOR DESIGNORRHEA

For a long time the single most pressing problem in design has been that too many unnecessary things are being designed and produced. I can't improve on what Victor Papanek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Papanek wrote in the preface to the first edition of his essential book, Design For The Real World. "In an environment that is screwed up visually, physically, and chemically the best and simplest thing that architects, industrial designers, planners, etc., could do for humanity would be to stop working entirely."



Papanek softened his view to advocate the practice of socially beneficial design but his basic premise is still valuable. In the spirit of his tirade I propose the following design to help designers restrain their "creative" impulses:


ANTI-DESIGNORRHEA GLOVES - A pair of gloves joined at the base of the palms. These would be a genteel way of applying handcuffs, keeping the hands of the designer away from further mischief  on computers, that primary contemporary adjunct to unnecessary design.These gloves would also prevent designers from sketching on paper pads and napkins, another practice which often leads to the spread of designed objects.


For example, had Philippe Starck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Starck, a leading sufferer from designorrhea, been in the habit of wearing these gloves it is possible we would have been spared such objects as the Juicy Salif, a "design object" masquerading as a juicer. Perhaps in a future ramble I will deal with the interesting subject of malfunctioning objects marketed and collected as "icons" of design.

A MODEST DESIGN PROPOSAL - NUCLEAR POWER IN EVERY TOILET

Designers have an obligation to work to make sure that the blessings of nuclear power are not lost to humanity in a foolish reaction to minor nuclear mishaps like Chernobyl and Fukushima.


Fortunately, I have a design proposal which holds the promise of eliminating all the large-scale risks of nuclear power. All that has to be done is to reduce the scale of power-generation to something more human in scale and less dangerous in the event of accident. The facilities already exist for this reduction - the toilet which is found in every home and apartment and the well-established miniaturization capabilities of industry.


I propose first that the central nuclear power source be reduced in size to approximately the size of a cellphone. This can easily be accomplished by a concerted joint effort by industry and government. Perhaps it can be given the catchy name of the "IPow." In all probability an amount of radioactive material the size of a pea would be sufficient to provide heat and electricity to a household for years. This amount could easily be secured in a protective shell of indestructible material and (here's the great ingenuity) cooled by the water already present in the toilet water tanks found in every bathroom. That tank of water behind the toilet bowl has plenty of available room. Thus, every home and apartment could have its own mini-facility for generating heat and electricity, safely tucked away in the toilet. Plumbers could be trained to handle whatever routine maintenance is required.


The toilet room is already lined with tile and could easily be retrofitted with lead as an extra precaution. This arrangement would have a number of beneficial side effects. The healthy and reasonable time limits placed on time in the bathroom would probably eliminate the family conflicts which now arise over use of the bathroom. In addition, the use of the bathroom for improper self-abuse would be greatly discouraged. Finally, in the unlikely event of an accident, the radiation danger would be confined to a very limited area, probably no larger than a few households for a few generations, at most. (As we know, radiation hazards are greatly exaggerated and may actually have beneficial effects. After all, does not evolution proceed by way of mutation and survival of the fittest?)


A proper design will also provide for those malcontents and primitives who do not want to live in harmony with this advance in nuclear power. For those people I would propose the establishment of special reservations, modeled on the areas governments kindly provide to the savages who do not want to join in the benefits of civilization.

A DESIGN REACTION TO PENIS MUTILATION

There seems to be general agreement in the civilized world that female "circumcision" is a violation of human rights. For more than you may want to know about this practice, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting

Surprisingly, male circumcision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision has defenders. On the primitive level they may simply defend it as the command of a god or as an essential ritual for achieving mature manhood. On a more sophisticated if nonsensical level it is defended as a hygienic step and a protection against disease. One might as well propose pulling the teeth as a preventative measure. After all, brushing and flossing are much more onerous than cleaning the foreskin.

From a designer's point of view it is obvious that the foreskin has a primary protective purpose, particularly when it is noted that all male mammals have it. It very likely also has a pleasure-enhancing function which comprises part of the biological reproductive incentives on the basic level and purely sensual incentives on the interpersonal, non-reproductive level. One would think the human species had learned from the overly quick removal of tonsils and the loss of their immunological contribution that natural parts of the body are not to be tampered with except for the most serious reasons. Similarly, the appendix, formerly thought to be vestigial, is now known to serve important developmental, immunological and restorative purposes. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix

I thought it would be useful and amusing to design a small cylindrical object to go over the sharpened point of a pencil or the point of one of those inexpensive ball point pens which have an annoying separate cap. The cylinder would slide back and forth in imitation of the foreskin, covering and uncovering the point. The combination might be called the "Forepen." My theory is that this object would, by analogy, teach the obvious purpose of the foreskin and help bring an end to the barbarous practice of circumcision.

Going one step further, one wonders whether an artificial foreskin for the circumcised penis might be a worthy design. I don't see it as a concealed replacement like a breast form for a mastectomy but rather as  a personal statement a person might want to make in the locker room of a gym or in a bedroom. Perhaps this design object might also have the attributes of an adornment. There may be room here for adding color or graphics. The first step, I think, is to decide on the appropriate material. 

CLOUD COMPUTING DOES NOT MAKE DESIGN SENSE

Cloud computing for personal information has set off my designer alarm bells. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing For the purposes of this analysis it means keeping your private data, such as e-mails, pictures, financial records etc. in a place other than your home computers and accessing them by connecting to that storage location. Let's call this material your "information assets." I think this method of turning your information assets over to third parties completely contradicts the design purpose of modern memory storage and computers.

Here's a question which looks absurd but may actually clear up this "cloudy" area. If you owned millions of tiny angels trained to dance on the head of a single little pin is there any reason why you should not keep that pin in your possession? Is there any reason why you should turn that pin and all the little angels over to an "angel storage"company located in a cloud a thousand miles away? Is there any reason to pay such a company to have control over your angels and your pin in order to let you look at them through special communication channels entirely out of your control? I'm hoping the reader will say "Hell, No! Not with my angels!"

Now, switch the angels to bits of your information and change the pin to the tiny device needed to store and access that information in your home or office. My design point is this: The entire trend of modern computer information technology is to allow the storage and use of data to be accomplished in tiny, highly portable devices, perfect for personal use. Why on earth would anyone now give up this control to centralized, corporate entities? A person can probably carry all the knowledge of humanity in a single attache case right now and on a three by five postcard in another ten years.

This looks like one of the biggest con games in history - an attempt by corporations to persuade people to turn over basic assets to them for no good reason. It smells something like the classic tactic of selling the salami slice by slice rather than in one unit. I suppose it's all about potential profitability.

Some important commercial forces have apparently reached the conclusion that it will be more profitable to persuade consumer/suckers (let's call them "consuckers") to give up the powerful means they already have to keep and use their information assets in a fully independent and private way at home and turn it all over to a "cloud" controlled by the corporation.  It may be one thing for the "cloud" to supply entertainment from a central source but supplying personal information assets back to the people who created them and own them looks like a deception with tremendous potential for restriction of individual rights.

So my design advice is simple. Stay away from clouds and cloudy places. Let the sun shine in! Keep your tiny angels at home. You don't want to wake up one day and find you have no access to your correspondence, photos, records and all the electronic evidence that shows you exist. Not to mention the things you may not want to have in the possession of unfriendly entities.

AN OVERRATED WATCH DESIGN HAS "ART" INSTEAD OF FUNCTION

In 1947 an American industrial designer named Nathan George Horwitt produced a watch with a black face and a single circle indicating twelve o'clock. Movado copied it a year later without authorization and ultimately settled with Horwitt for $29,000 in 1975. Museums and others foolishly swooned over the design and it is  now marketed as the "Museum  Watch." The Movado site is not working as of this writing so I provide another link for models of this watch. http://www.jomashop.com/movmussaf.html

This is a good example of  the collapse of good design standards in the face of  arty pretensions, in this case, in the face of the art cult of minimalism. It may be that the removal of detail, color, line and other indicia from a painting can add ineffable qualities. But the removal of time indications from a watch face is nothing but a detriment to what should be its main function, i.e., the telling of time. Beware of products which make themselves harder to use in the name of  "art" and "design." To paraphrase a nasty fellow from the Twentieth Century "When I hear that a product uses the slogan 'The Art of Design' I reach for my gun."

The "museum" watch is just one step away from the total invisibility of the clothing sold by those famous con men to the gullible Emperor and his court in Hans Christian Andersen's famous tale. In fact, nothing would really be lost if the twelve o'clock mark was completely removed from this piece. The user would have even more of the "pleasure" of  the extra effort needed to determine the hour and minute. The time-setting knob at three o'clock could serve just as well as the point from which other hours are located.

The latest iteration of this product adds color to the dot, and matches the color in a ring around the face and the hands. This bold move is characterized in an ad as creating "watches with a new attitude, energized by color."

I guess when you are asking a high price for a product whose function can be satisfactorily supplied for just a few dollars you have to add some sort of fairy dust to it. This is generally true in the watch industry and the various tactics they use to survive deserve further analysis. For this particular company though, Art and Design appear to be the ideal things with which to befuddle the gullible emperors of the contemporary world.

TWO IMPORTANT THINGS JACK LARSEN SAID AT SOFA

Jack Larsen, a leading figure in the world of crafts, announced his decision on the best work and best booth at SOFA http://www.sofaexpo.com/ on April 14, 2011. He said two things which resonated with me.

One, that those involved in making craft objects were diminished by being called craft persons (something which makes them sound small) or craft artists (something which makes them sound like a lesser form of artist) and would be better described as "makers" or "artists."

Second, he expressed the opinion that Americans are entirely too concerned with bigness, i.e., the biggest box office grosses, highest auction prices, largest sales etc.

Larsen's depth and breadth are too great to detail here. More information about him can be found on the site of LongHouse, the treasure house of crafts and gardens he founded in East Hampton, NY. http://www.longhouse.org/

Both of Larsen's points can be applied to the world of designers and design objects. I will touch on this in the future.

DISORDER AND WASTEFULNESS ARE NOT "STYLE" OR "DESIGN"

The New York Times, once a newspaper, occasionally publishes magazines devoted to "style" and "design." These are useful guides to the deterioration of our civilization. For example, the cover of the Spring 2011 "Style" magazine and the magazine editor's effusions about it are wonderful demonstrations of how far "dumbing down" now extends. http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2011/04/01/t-magazine/design-issue/index.html?ref=style

The magazine cover shows a messy children's playroom newly located in what was once the basement kitchen of a renovated 40-room Georgian manor house set on 29 acres in Somerset, England (now occupied in its entirety by an "IT" couple and their four children.) The editor of this magazine, one Sally Singer, gushes that "[w]hat we saw in that room was imagination, spontaneity, persistence (all those open-ended projects) and heart. "We saw, in essence, the underpinnings of great design."

I suppose that, depending on one's state of intoxication or mystical delusion, one can see the underpinnings of anything anywhere. All I saw on the cover was a messy children's playroom with enough objects on the floor to make walking through it at night without a light a dangerous undertaking. The only judgment I can make based on this picture is that the children are not being taught to keep their playthings in order.

Treating this example of disorder and wastefulness as a precursor of great design is sheer nonsense and a perversion of the higher principles of design. (I will touch on these as time goes by.) This wretched cover does however, at the very least, give us a good picture of the standards now prevailing in this magazine's perverse view of the world of style and design.

A nice footnote to the lack of true style which pervades this magazine is the signature of the editor to her puffy introduction. (Page 14 or screen 15 of the link above) She signs it with two loopy flourishes which bear no resemblance to the initials of her name or to any permutation of the letter "s" known to Western civilization. This signature "design" conveys volumes about a loss of contact with honest communication and a glorification of empty "style" over substance. Yes, the arts of handwriting analysis and design analysis are not dead!

A GREAT OLD DESIGN - BUT MUCH TOO EXPENSIVE NOW

Once in a blue moon an object is produced which almost perfectly fulfills the highest standards of design. In other words, it combines usefulness, beauty and economy in a harmonious whole.

Such an object is the chess set designed in 1923 by Josef Hartwig, http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/josef-hartwig a craft master who headed the stone and wood sculpture workshop at the State Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 to 1925. It is often referred to as the Bauhaus Chess Set. Hartwig made some changes in the original design and the version which has lasted into contemporary times is somewhat blockier and more modular than the first version. http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=4240

[I was sorry to learn Hartwig was a member of the Nazi party during the Third Reich (1933 - 1945). So far as I could find on the Internet, this was disclosed only on the Bauhaus site shown above, obviously attributable to a special German sensitivity in this area. As is true in music and art, there appears to be no correlation between high accomplishment or genius and moral character.]

In any event, Hartwig's design has all the qualities one could want except possibly a true essentiality of function for the most important life purposes. After all, chess is a game and not something needed for survival. That aside, it achieves a perfection of its particular play function by using the shapes of the pieces to convey their movement on the board; it has a good measure of beauty in the simplicity of the shapes and it has a notable economy (at least originally) in the use of basic wood forms.

Ironically, if you want to buy a modern version of this masterpiece you have to pay about $300 for the pieces and $200 for the board. They are made by Naef, a Swiss toy producer which does high-quality woodworking. But I can see no justification for these kingly prices. I believe part of it may be due to heavy royalties demanded by the Hartwig estate. Perhaps part of it is due to the mistaken notion that "designer" objects should cost more than "non-designer" objects. This is the opposite of what should be the case. At its best, design should make objects less expensive and more accessible than before.

I APPOINT MYSELF A DESIGN RAMBLER

A FORMAL, LEGALISTIC OPENING 

I, Daniel Young, founder of Paradoxy Products, http://www.paradoxyproducts.com, about whom it has been said that I create completely new design objects, crossing the borders between fun and philosophy and between design and art, believing myself possessed of a designing mind, some knowledge of the history of design as well as some grounding in subjects relevant to the drawing of reasoned conclusions  on matters amenable to design analysis and desirous of improving the lot of humanity as much as possible hereby undertake to write a blog giving my opinion, observations and musings.

A SUMMARY

In short, I am going to ramble, look at things of interest and write about them from a designer's point of view. I take the name of my blog from the Rambler of Dr. Samuel Johnson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rambler 

Everything in the world is subject to analysis from a design point of view so I will not limit myself to things which are considered "design" in the narrow sense, such as the latest mutational chair or bookcase, the military/industrial objects chosen by museums for their "design" collections, or the frivolities which appear in the special "design" issues of magazines and newspapers.