A Startlingly Useful Tea-Towel
By Bella Acton, 7/09/2010
You’re cooking something, your fingers are smeared in melted chocolate and other edible delectables, and suddenly the recipe asks you for a measurement of which you can’t quite comprehend. So you flick through your cookbook to the measurement section, staining each and every page as you go – or consult your smartphone and coat it with a paint of miscellaneous kitchen mess. Finally, you have your conversions, measures and over temperatures at hand. Sound familiar? If so, you’ll most likely be enamoured with this idea. A tea-towel with all this information printed on it. Genius. Problem solving genius.
If you read this blog regularly, it’s probably become quite apparent that I’m a big fan of single-minded, problem-solving innovation. There are so many menial problems like this in need of a simple solution. And its interesting that it took a designer to come up with this concept, not Betty Crocker or Splenda. So what would you come up with if ‘startling utility’ was at the centre of your brief? How might you try to solve the problems directly in front of you?
Hey guys, I really like reading your posts.
Always makes me take a fresh look at what’s around me.
Here’s an idea I think you’ll appreciate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbfe2_2DDc0
That’s brilliant! What a great idea. I love that they’re challenging training wheels and the ‘bad habits’ they encourage. it gives the product a purpose beyond a mere incremental improvement. It also makes you realise that even the most accepted products and formulas around us are not absolute. Great find, thanks Dave.