Notes Design

We got a little package from Alessi this week -- a small, carefully designed book with accompanying dvd. Described as "What is Design? The answers are provided by five masters in the 'Design Interviews' collection," it naturally was popped into the 'ol disk drive with hesitation. Another boring PR stunt?

Not at all.

For 20 minutes or so, this "volume" featured Ettore Sottsass' musings on design - why he does it, what it means, where it belongs in the world -- many of his thoughts, listened to in the midst of an overly-produced, overly-disposable world, rang of timely pertinence.

Drinking from a paper cup is totally different than drinking from a glass. If people drink out of a glass, it's because it is a little heavier than a paper cup, because it's more fragile and you have to respect this fragility, because the fragility makes you hold it in a different way. And because when you lift it to your lips, it has no taste that might adulterate the taste of water and so on. Therefore you experience all sorts of minor sensorial emotions, so when you drink from a glass you are aware of drinking because the object encourages you to realise that you exist...when you drink from a paper cup you drink quickly and throw the cup away, your life did not exist in that moment. You consume it without knowing it.

I have always been concerned with not being aware that one is living, and I want to feel that I am really living, dramatically living.

Sottsass' got tons more juicy quotes in there. And since this dvd isn't available to the public yet, it may just be worthy of a quote-a-day. Hmmm...be on the lookout.