Mini essay today. I went to a couple of design events this week but was not taking notes. There’s a new USM Haller set of record shelves (done with Symbol) that are strong. A bit on the nose but useful. I’m not sure the price point but there isn’t much for explicit record shelving with a point of view outside Ikea’s Expedit/Kallax shelves at the more accessible end of the spectrum, and bespoke stuff (Vitsoe) at the higher end. To me the best thing is an Umbo:
Though big ones are hard to find and they’re a little deep for records, anyways if they’re not set flush to the wall. (Not a fan of the decoration in this pic. But the piece speaks for itself.) I’m a fan of repurposing furniture (office tables for the kitchen is big) but for vinyl storage not as much. Scant good storage for 7” records. I’m not sure the problem will be solved, honestly, since so much of the new vinyl market is based on 12” LPs—not on smaller records*.
*I also think the more low fi your records are, the more expensive your turntable needs to be. I need a Mitchell Transcriptor turntable ($250K) to listen to my Parabellum 7”. This behavior is actually cure for malaise.
I also liked this quite a bit:
By Alvaro, who’s an inspired designer. His work is distilled, really fluid, playful and strong. ALways strong. There’s a tech/fabrication/insider angle here to it, it’s fun. It also disrespects the napkin a little, which is excellent. Like a bookend that leaves an imprint. It’s coming out right now (Tuesday night) at Bon Studio.
Obs 151: Designer Ties
I think about design quite a bit, rarely optimistically, at least in the consumerist sense. There is some great stuff out there (if you look) but you really need to look hard, and the design world does a rough job of showing what’s worth buying and keeping to regular folks. There’s a massive gulf between what gets produced and what’s seen. Some of this is because of plain economics. Much of design doesn’t meet consumers where they stand. The fairs here in New York (and in Milan last month) have eye-catching furniture sprinkled among the required items but little of either are eye-level accessible to working people… where is it at? Where is the tyranny of small differences? These days it just all feels both obscure and mainstream. Everything looks similar and it’s hard to say who made what, or when. There’s an overwhelm for consumers and writers both. Why go deeper if nothing jumps out at me, and if everything is $20K?
I wonder what the solutions are. I’ve thrown a dozen or so ideas around in old newsletters. Maybe moving to simpler/more accessible materials—maybe 3D printing. Maybe upholstery—maybe making old crap kind of new. Maybe moving every sort of design innovation to smalls. Maybe it’s just a question of aesthetics: if there was a dirt-cheap Flying Tiger but brutalist, or if Muji’s home goods were harsher, or had an angle (or point of view) then there’d be some democratic design taste out there. Less of a gulf between the haves and the have nots.
But after talking to folks, though, over the week, I’ve come to another conclusion. There aren’t enough good pieces out there. New and old, but mostly new. There need to be 100 accessible, great chairs in production at all time. In a flotilla of options. Not easy easy easy to buy. But easy to see. And easy-ish to buy if you save up a little. Visible. Visibility. That’s one reason USM isn’t relenting. It’s visible. Unlike so much of the design world, you see it more than once. You see it and and understand.
Related to this is the question: where’s the microcasting? Why is so much of the discussion centered around the same thing? I compare the design discussion to men’s fashion, which Sam Hine (congrats on the gig m8) describes here as a “fairly niche topic” a decade ago. I look at the menswear newsletters I subscribe to, several of them relatively cover the same beat—men’s clothes; kind of invisible, all very nice—but among them a tyranny of small differences. One covers different iterations of Polo. One a wide variety of “slow fashion,” though not only. Another newsletter sticks to Victorinox-ish tailoring. Even someone who doesn’t keep up to the minute on menswear can see that there are differences, big ones, in the products they cover and like. It’s inspiring to see writers getting paid and such a healthy, lively industry. Newsletters that are popular and serve readers in part because there’s a real industry that people want to define themselves. And behind these writers are a surfeit of companies making thoughtful and stylish clothes with real theory and point of view and crafstmanship behind it, and prices that are, while expensive, not insultingly out of reach.
There’s nothing like this in design. There aren’t arguments or conversations. There’s only this main street. There are reasons for this—look at the archive, I keep talking about it—but maybe we’re just a decade away. One day we’ll think about Replacements.com like we think about Grailed. There’s lots of good furniture out there.
I’ve been waiting for the jet fuel moment for years. What can you do. Also, check these things out:
Never seen them on auction before.
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