Oh no, Another blog post about a chair design

I am in the minority here, but I cannot believe how many people press the ‘like’, ‘appreciate’, thumbs up, high five, secret handshake or any other form of positive rating button used on industrial design websites for a mundane chair.  I cannot believe how many of the product design websites I regularly visit blog about chairs, we are drowning in posts about chairs (ironically, this is another one).  My initial beef was with the plethora of similar chairs being designed.  On an almost daily basis there is another image of the latest and greatest chair design, I’d look at it and think – ‘4 legs, seat, back, wood..yep it’s another chair, similar to the one I saw yesterday (slightly different colour, slightly different shape) and yawn, the day before and the day before that and Zzzzzzz.’ 

Then I looked at my own chair designs and realised…. ‘4 legs, seat, back….ah.’   I remembered how much I learnt designing and making the chairs I’ve designed and how useful those lessons and the chairs themselves have been.  So I changed my mind, we should not stop designing chairs, just stop blogging about them and stop liking them.  The thing is, chairs are not difficult to design, Phillipe Stark claimed he could design a new one in 2 minutes.  Imagine if all the design effort across the globe that has been put into designing chairs was channelled into solving real problems, would we be further on? 

I’ve seen amazing product design concepts on websites that have ‘appreciate’ buttons, that are used as a gauge of how the public rate the design idea, styling etc.  There are some absolutely brilliant ideas that only get a handful of ‘likes’ yet a plain 4 legged, 1 seat, 1 back rest, wooden chair gets thousands of appreciations and if you stick an arm rest or two on it - wow.  I cannot understand why these designs receive so much attention at all, where is the demand coming from.  Don’t get me started on tables!

chair

Just before Christmas, I stayed with my Nan (the one in the kitchen video).  Social services have supplied her with a new chair that tilts to make it easier for her to do the washing up.  Whilst functionality is top priority as well as price, I still have to wonder why they make these pieces so....ugly?