I am not always convinced that great design is easy to appreciate \u2013 it takes a bit of thought, a moment of pause. I\u2019ve run across a couple examples of this lately in reading about author J.R.R. Tolkien and designer Alfredo Haberli.<\/p>\n
After reading Tolkien\u2019s classic The Hobbit<\/em>, reviewer May Lamberton Becker, wrote:<\/p>\n At the time of writing, still under the spell of the story, I cannot bend my mind to ask myself whether our American children will like it. My impulse is to say if they don\u2019t so much the worse for them\u2026the story has the unmistakable signs of having been told to intelligent children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Luckily, children did embrace the book.<\/p>\n However, it does not always go so well. I was first introduced to Alfredo Haberli\u2019s designs after reading an interview<\/a> in June\u2019s I.D. From there, a discovery of his Origo dish set<\/a> which is a study in beautiful simplicity. These pieces are every bit as intelligent and lovely as you might imagine. Haberli elaborates:<\/p>\n Our eating habits have changed. We are more and more open to inspirataion from Mediterranean, Scandinavian, Asian, and African countries. With all that in mind I designed a set of seven pieces that interact with each other or work along\u2026It\u2019s playful. It adapts. Different containers have new and multiple functions. People don\u2019t really understand the system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Is marketing at the center of this? Tolkien had a publisher that went out of their way to highlight the children\u2019s book, even taking out the rare full page adds. On the other hand, Haberli states that for him, \u201cmarketing efforts did not succeed in communicating the invention behind the set.\u201d Two different times, two different creations \u2013 one big lesson?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two different times, two different creations \u2013 one big lesson?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/08\/cozy-yard-near-hobbit-burrow-2023-11-27-05-24-57-utc-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27235,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/27235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}