The difference between well-designed gadgets and designer electronics

Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel word perfect delineation between between design and designer crap:

Take the sleep light on a Mac: Jonathan Ive (Apple's head designer) was once challenged that this was trivial eye candy. His answer? That a soft, pulsing light perfectly represents the sleep state of the computer. That it also looks good is an intentional bonus. Lately, this design has been refined -- the light glows steadily when the display sleeps, indicating that the machine is still on. It also glows steadily while the contents of RAM are written to disk on entering hibernation.

That is design: Details sweated over so thoroughly that they look almost childishly simple. Which is why it rankles so much when some airheaded moron sprays a little glue onto a gadget, rolls it in a bag of crushed glass and calls it a "Designer Phone". It's utterly demeaning to any real designer.

Fashion Computers Just as Air-headed as their Catwalk Contemporaries [Gadget Lab]

[#1 posted by Anonymous , June 23, 2008 9:39 AM]

This is silly. The article is using two senses of "designer" as one. Design as in functionality and usability, and design as in pure aesthetics.

There's nothing wrong with aesthetics-focused designers adding to a product. The problem here is that most of what we've seen so far is rather ugly. That's a fault of the "aesthetics" designer, not an inherent fault in designer devices.

[#2 posted by stratojoe , June 23, 2008 2:02 PM]

Ah.. but change out that crushed glass for brass and gears and you've got yourself a bona-fide fashion movement, hot damn!