There are some things that are flashing by! Since I lived in Korea for the most of my life, I would like to introduce some products that I have seen in Korea which are very creative to me.
The first item is a water bottle named Vio Soonsoo. This brand is produced by a worldwide well-known company “Coca-cola”. What is so special about this bottle? It seems very normal and similar with other bottles, but this one thinks a lot about the environment. Yellow dust coming before blooming flowers on the spring, sudden typhoon blowing with the quixotic nature of El Nino, and oil flowing in the U.S. Gulf Coast make our environment in a danger. I guess Coca-cola wanted to help our nature! They made the bottle to be only 14g by decreasing 22% of the use of plastic. This doesn’t only make the product lighter, but also cut carbon emissions a lot. Furthermore, due to the lightness, it is easy to be twisted and this results to the less volume of trash and pollutants in the recycling process. In the aspect of concerning the environment, it can be said that Vio Soonsoo agrees to the principle of Dieter Rams. To both of them, good design is concerned with the environment!
Seoul Milk has also a fresh design. Generally, milk does not have the date when it was manufactured on it. Consumers can only see the expiration date and try to drink it all before the due date. However, Seoul Milk began to mark the date it was produced from last year. Giving confidence to customers about fresh milk, there has been a noticeable increase in sales. The design of this milk reminds me the principle of Henry Dreyfuss. More than just pushing boundaries, he thought more about making good products. He believed that designer has succeeded if people are made safer, more comfortable, or more eager to purchase. That’s exactly what Seoul Milk targeted.
Searching about this topic, I found a couple of things more that are used every day and designed in an ingenious way. One of those was a chair also being used as a bookshelf. How could a person sit on it, and use it as a bookshelf at a same time? Can you imagine? I am not sure who made this brilliant furniture, but probably it would be popular in a few years. To describe the appearance of this chair, there is a sitting part and the bottom of it is formed in a curved shape that can handle books. With this chair, a person can sit down and reach for books easily. This chair is different with the tulip chair that Eero Saarinen has made, but I think at the point of demanding simple, sweeping, and arching structural curves they are quite similar. Eero Saarinen wanted to design a thing by considering its next larger context, and one who made this chair would probably thought about the next behavior of the chair’s user.
Another thing I have found out is a soap stick. Every time we use the soap, it gets hard to use when it becomes small. Especially when it gets wet, the squashy soap doesn’t give a nice feeling. For these kinds of drawbacks, a soap stick has been invented! This soap looks like a Lego piece. To use this, we can cut off into pieces and use it one by one. This way, we could clean our hands or bodies in a more hygienic condition. Actually, the purpose of the soap is to clean our bodies and provide refreshing feelings. However, with the clumsy soap that is wet would not be able to give us those feelings. On the other hand, this newly created soap would accomplish the particular purpose which seems to correspond to the principles presented by Charles Eames.
Writing about this subject, I realized that there are many innovative products and services which are enough to meet the consumer’s insight! I haven’t cared about it much and used things unconsciously. I must have just thought that everything is so natural and exits because they have to. However, now I know that many designers tend to concern a lot about every product to produce intriguing items which satisfy customer’s needs. Maybe I will get to find more interesting things after all!
p.s. These are some images of a creative toaster that I've found! Take a look!
Doesn't this has to be in the hospital? lol
