Rambuchan
The Funky President
Some of you may be old enough and interested enough in British comedy to know about Ben Elton's famous stand-up routine from the late 80s or early 90s that included a spiel about "The Ministry of Crap Design".
In it he lambasted designers and entrepreneurs who brought out products that were just mighty difficult to use. Their design frustrated you so much that it blinded you from the actual benefits the product brought to your life. The crap design obstructed you from living your life more easily. If I remember rightly, it was the Tetrapack (seen below) that received the main brunt of his comic broadside.
This design saw you having to lift a flimsy, almost clothy, cardboard lip, seen as the black triangle above. You would then have to rip along a perforated line (which most often wasn't there) in order to create a hole through which you could pour the contents of the Terapack. Well, that was the idea.
In reality, when you went for this manoeuvre you would just rip off a piece of the cardboard clothy stuff and be left with nothing else to grip onto. You'd have no way of even getting to the perforated line, which like I say, quite often wasn't there. In the end, you'd have to stab a hole in the side with a knife (not included) to get to your juice, milk, whatever. Or if you were lucky enough to rip open the flap and get to the all haloed perforated line, it would rip in an ugly fashion and when you went to pour, it would send the contents in random directions. Truly crap design.
So what other examples of crap design can you think of that really make our lives a misery? And we may as well share what we think are amazingly good examples of design eh?
In it he lambasted designers and entrepreneurs who brought out products that were just mighty difficult to use. Their design frustrated you so much that it blinded you from the actual benefits the product brought to your life. The crap design obstructed you from living your life more easily. If I remember rightly, it was the Tetrapack (seen below) that received the main brunt of his comic broadside.
This design saw you having to lift a flimsy, almost clothy, cardboard lip, seen as the black triangle above. You would then have to rip along a perforated line (which most often wasn't there) in order to create a hole through which you could pour the contents of the Terapack. Well, that was the idea.
In reality, when you went for this manoeuvre you would just rip off a piece of the cardboard clothy stuff and be left with nothing else to grip onto. You'd have no way of even getting to the perforated line, which like I say, quite often wasn't there. In the end, you'd have to stab a hole in the side with a knife (not included) to get to your juice, milk, whatever. Or if you were lucky enough to rip open the flap and get to the all haloed perforated line, it would rip in an ugly fashion and when you went to pour, it would send the contents in random directions. Truly crap design.
So what other examples of crap design can you think of that really make our lives a misery? And we may as well share what we think are amazingly good examples of design eh?
I didn't think it would take long.
In the basement, there is one waiting for me to install it for half a year now. Luckily there are a lot of other things i can fix in the house, before i have to turn to it. 
