As the last of the Christmas decorations return to the attic suddenly the house looks uncluttered again. It struck me that Christmas – which being a most enjoyable occasion – is sadly also a time of truly terrible design.
Good design to put on your wish list for next Christmas - Ceramic Speakers Designed by SF-based industrial designer Joey Roth, available from Gselect.
Take the humble table cracker with all its sparkly bits and promise of a wanted gift, funny joke and wearable hat. As the pathetically crafted yoyo fell into my lap after a tussle of sibling rivalry, I realised that I hadn’t really been elated about winning the bulbous end of a cracker for at least ten years. Not only was the paper crown of Lilliputian dimensions, the joke surely had to been have lost in translation and the yoyo was reduced to the sum of its parts once removed from its paper pouch. How simple can it be to make a working yoyo? I felt annoyed – deprived of the opportunity to stroll down memory lane and rediscover ‘walking the dog’, ‘around the world’ in front of my swollen family! Perhaps none of the Christmas cracker’s contents are designed ever to be used, it just has make a jolly little bang before it hits the bin liner with all the other festive paraphernalia.
Another object of desire and a great example of a classic redesigned - Fuji Instax Instant Camera available from Urban Outiftters.
And the rant doesn’t really stop here. I usually get at least one ridiculous gadget at Christmas, most years it is some sort of table-top, scaled down form of game – carpet bowls or mini-putt-putt. However, this year an old friend trumped me with a…. swivelling fork (!)… To make the strenuous chore of eating spaghetti that bit more bearable. It saddens me that some wave of insanity overrides shopper’s better judgement at Christmas time and the people producing the tat get lucky.
While we are on the subject of Christmas hindering ones sensibility, at no other time of year would anyone wear a loud green and red itchy wool jumper with a reindeer prancing across it. At no other time of year would anybody in their right mind attach all-singing-all-dancing Santa miniatures to their ear lobes. At no other time of year would anyone purchase a battery operated singing trout to ‘Wish you a Merry Christmas’ (an item I genuinely saw in an actual shop with an actual price tag stuck to its silicone scales).
To me, M&S is the iconic Christmas store. Every year, Mother Santa has earned her loyalty points by finding us the perfect gift that will last for years – the cashmere sweater, the silky loungewear, that leather jewellery box. Into the conscience assuaging dumping ground – the charity shop – goes the wriggling robot guinea pig, the Tamagochi, the nylon, ‘Groovy Chick’ top. I actually felt embarrassed to be donating these unwanted gifts – or was I recycling waste?
It's time for a change - perhaps in the form of this retro Analogue FLAP clock from Habitat
So, I try pretty hard not to buy the useless gadgets and gizmos (so often made by Santa’s little helpers in China) that flood the market in the run up to Christmas – but wouldn’t it be nice if they just weren’t there in the first place? There would be no need to wrestle with one’s design consciousness. If this were the case there wouldn’t be a pile of pointless cracker toys on the kitchen table right now… a comb fit for a squirrel or a necklace not even a five year old would don. Landfill!
Check out: Cool Hunting, a great website that does just want it says on the packet – http://www.coolhunting.com/
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‘silky loungewear’… really?