Design Critique: Products for People

My grandparents were spectacular people who gave me the best things in life: encouragement, loving memories, and cool artifacts from history. Their collection of old 78 shellac records not only sounds great, it looks great, too. Now I know why. Rudolf A. Bruil wrote a wonderfully thorough article on the visual design and packaging of […]

This well-written article breaks my heart. I’ve lived long enough to see the arc of companies that design and sell a magnificently successful product, often for many years, delighting their customers while earning a profit. At some point, management decides to “take cost out” of the product by removing the durability and other desirable features […]

Now this is how how to delight customers without hurting your profits. I ordered this inset plaque for the center console of my car–it covers up a bare space where the seat heater switches would go if my car had them–and FT86 Speed Factory not only shipped the part to me very quickly, but when […]

Hi everyone, Thanks for listening to Design Critique over the past year. 2008 was fun and I have three episodes in post-production right now for 2009. The photo is from the holiday card I sent this December to family and friends, and I thought why not share it with the listeners. I don’t know who […]