A Simple Fork
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, GalantiéreL. and Gilbert, S. (1984). Airman’s odyssey. San Diego: Harcourt.
This could appear to be a weird choice, but I hope the reader will hear me out. I have a bit of a story that made me settle on this being an example of good design. The recent lecture about what makes good design reminded me of one of the first assemblies I had in high school. A teacher brought in a big, attractive and modern looking piece of kitchen equipment. It was supposed to be a juicer, but he couldn't work out how to use it. In the end he went to a shop and bought a small wooden juicer tool for £2 and it worked fine. He was teaching us a lesson about good design. I was then wondering why I didn't have a juicer in my kitchen. I am a complete sucker for ordering kitchen utensils, but I do try to reign in my purchases and think to myself whether it actually has a practical use before I buy it (because space in my kitchen is sparse). Then I realised the reason why, it is because when I juice a lemon I use a fork. I cut a lemon in half, push a fork in the open flesh and squeeze the lemon around the fork, it does the exact same thing a “simple” juicer does, it is probably messy for some, but for my needs this works well.
I don't want to sound like a Beatle, but when I was thinking about the Fork I was whisking some eggs to make myself some scrambled eggs, and I realised I have a useless gadget that my partner's parents bought me for Christmas. It stays in the cutlery drawer because I never use it. It is a small whisk that you push down on to “whisk you eggs” I think I have used it once, it was fiddly and it made a mess. The fork is perfect, it is the perfect size to hold at an angle across a bowl and it whisks the eggs perfectly in seconds. Plus it fits neatly in my cutlery tray in my dishwasher, and I have loads of them in case I want to make eggs again later in the day (I do eat a lot of scrambled eggs).