Democratic objects
Another one of those excellent Fiell/Taschen overviews on design. This time, a huge 704 page, beautifully designed and printed pictorial collection of the essence of Scandinavian creativity. Although it covers the obvious furniture, metalware, glass, textiles and ceramics it also considers commercial products from companies like Fiskars, Hasselblad, IKEA, Lego, Saab, Volvo and nicely, even a company like Kompan, a producer of childrens playground equipment that is sold worldwide. I think there is a reason for the commercial and creative success of Scandinavian products: they believe that good, simple design should be applied to everything and be available to all, the introduction calls these products democratic objects.
The book is a joy to look at. Each designer (or company with their logo) starts on a spread with a small head shot of the person, some text and the rest of the space, sometimes over several pages, devoted to photos. Interestingly with so many photos (more than 1600) many of which came from various sources, the colour values are very similar and they all blend together throughout the book. I think Taschen are to be congratulated on producing (yet again) a stunning looking book that covers the subject so well and anyone involved with craft creativity and design will be pleased to have a copy.
