I just read this interview with Hulger CEO
Nicolas Roope.
I have to say that i find it really refreshing and i think that the world of product design needs more people who share the same approach/values as Roope. For me there are few more miserable sights in the world than walking into Dixons and seeing row upon row of plastic multifunctional products. For me mainstream industrial design usually only succeeds in adding to this banality.
I wish that a large spread of the ID world would come to admire Hulger's Bakelite phone receiver. Its an electrical product' yes, but its human. It does try to solve a crudely defined 'problem' or do things faster. It says
'people are silly',
'people are sentimental' and it achieves
a maximum poetic effect through an economy of means, which is a quality implicit in every rare example of design I truly love. Sociologist
Michel de Certeau. De Certeau writes about this topic in relation to storytelling. In de Certeau's school of thinking I think that the Hulger phone would rate pretty highly.
Nicolas Roope makes a really interesting point here I think -
"There's a growing market who willingly pay a premium to guarantee the source and production of food for example because they know it's good for them, tastes better and makes them feel good supporting the smaller producer. In a similar way people want to feel that the products they consume are rooted in an ideology or story that resonates with them in deeper way than just through its use. Not only does this make them feel better about using these things but in the case of a fashion item like our phones, they feel good about their association with this brand when using them in public."
