better

Hard to find these days, the old-fashioned post-order catalog. Mostly you’ll find copies of this almost distinct species on kitchen tables, in crowded newspaper baskets, and for sure it’s to be found at the restroom, true?
You can browse for hours and sniff up all those beautiful products featured on glossy pages…

Here in Germany, the catalog of all catalogs, next to the one from IKEA, is issued by Manufactum – in their catalog, you’ll find all those things you’ve been looking for all those years on flea markets (yes, and on eBay these days…), or hoped to inherit from a forgotten auntie. All products feature timeless elegance, are well-built, and have the potential to serve their owner for many, many years until both reach a well-deserved retirement. These products are not affected by short-lived hype and fashion – they are true classics, and you can still buy them, brand new!

When I was flipping through a Manufactum lately, it made me think, though. It triggered the designer in me: Is it really true that all products made today, as the editor implied, are actually not better than those featured in this ‘Miss Manners Guide’ for product design?

In the Manufactum catalog, it says that “today, at the latest, the enemy of the good is not the better, but the worse, the cheap, the banal. There is hardly any quality product around that is not endangered by sickeningly inferior, way cheaper competitors and copycats. How many of what can be bought today will later turn into a good, cherished, and beloved ‘old piece’?”

Good question. As a designer, one has to accept that not only catalog owners address this issue to you, but also how it feels when you are not making things better, just cheaper and fancier. Has design become the tool for continuously producing short-lived consumer goods, rather than long-lasting products? How does it feel to create landfill? Well…

It’s true that many products are not intrinsically better than their predecessors, but rather reinterpret the product’s style. As long as those products are not inferior in quality, it should be possible to create these variations on a theme and, with that, cater to the individual tastes of consumers: the fact that there is no ‘taste-doctrine’ is an achievement compared to those days when there was no space for individualism and variety. Way better.

If you combine this effort with the opportunity to produce the product more simply and cheaply, it can also be bought by people who so far could not afford it. In this way, good design work supports the democratization of our society, which is, in essence, much better than before, when many products were only accessible to a few.

As usual, the real problem lies in human greed, and in the fact that they can use their skills to only make themselves ‘better’ (in financial terms): greed makes products cheap instead of affordable, it turns products into fast-moving goods and from long-lasting into short-lived consumables that end up as landfill. That’s why all – being designer or consumer, client or employee – should follow their conscience and refrain from greed: it only leads in one direction, namely straight into the pockets of those lucky few, who exactly live as the ‘bad products’ they produce: short-lived, banal, and soon to be obsolete.

What remains is the designer’s conscience, since they live off the fact that the wheel of renewal needs to keep turning for business and products. If they stop turning products out, they stop designing… Can designers still go to work with confidence and in good spirits?

Of course they can, and they must! I would stick to another quote from the Manufactum catalog: “the enemy of the good is the better!”  – and every product can always be done better!