Hasta La Ideas

While the object fetishism of this era has somewhat eroded this statement’s validity, I often find myself repeating the design-school mantra drummed into my head: “People don’t want toasters. What they want is toast.”

Howard J. Brown is the founder of dMass, a consultancy that focuses on “reduction through design” and integrating environmentalism with business. A guy like Brown understands the no-toaster concept well. In this video below, which is fascinating despite being rendered in primitive cartoon style, the same concept (though worded differently) is presented to a manufacturer of objects in an effort to place them on the right—and profitable—track for the future.

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