I was looking at our outrageously expensive SMEG toaster and kettle today and thinking ‘who decided that was good design’? I know as much about art and design as a monkey knows about brain surgery and I always assumed that if I had to name one classic, it would be a guitar but it isn’t.
The one design classics that has personally affected me the most is the Ducati 916 (SP to be precise). Horribly slow steering on track and useless on the road but my god, it could make the blind see again.
I think the touchscreen phone as pioneered with the original iPhone in 2007 is surely the most influential current design (if one assumes cars have gone through too many iterations to be one design). Total ubiquity; can you imagine life now without them?
I first remember seeing it fly when my dad took me to the Farnborough Airshow in 1978. It did a high speed pass along the flight line after taking off and even now, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so loud. I won a competition to have a look around one a few years later, and got shown round the flight deck while they were doing maintenance on one. It was just such an amazing piece of engineering and probably one of the reasons I went into an engineering degree. Growing up in Kingston, Concorde would regulary fly over near us, usually on a Saturday morning at 10am, while I was playing for my football team. I’d also go running in Richmond Park and we’d regularly see, and hear it, on final approach into Heathrow. It was quite a big part of the background of my childhood. It was just always there. A sad day, when they were taken out of service.
My boys are 7 and 10 and all suddenly into Lego in a big way…
We’ve organised all branches of the family to buy them Lego and added to it ourselves. I reckon after 9am Xmas day we won’t need to talk to them again until new year…
I fell in love with this. I even managed to own one for a few years. Desperately wish I had kept hold of it. Guess I could buy one again, but they are basically unusable today.
