Geek Chic: Products for Design Snobs from CES
Author:Shoshana BergerTablets, tablets, blah blah blah. That was the news out of CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Vegas last week. But wither the products for design snobs? I tracked down a few:
1. Furniture of the future: The sculptural Davone Ray speakers; Teknion’s minimalist Conflux Task Light that also charges your mobile devices; Yves Behar’s Sayl, a gorgeous new task or side chair from Herman Miller; and an induction countertop from Fulton Innovation that cooks your food right in the can. Slap that soup down, pop the top, and serve.
2. Non-cyborg earbuds: Urban ears’ headphones come in bright colors and are sold in origami-style packaging that’s too clever to throw away. Though they were announced last year, I still crave Think Sound’s Danish teak version of earphones—the Rain and ts02+mic that lower your earprint with PVC-free cables and hand-crafted wooden casing. Or, forget about the earth and go for the fantastic plastic of these Hong Kong-designed Moshi Moshi Pop handsets.
3. Sleek notebooks: Samsung’s 9 Series notebook, an Apple Air rival at just under 3 pounds, looks more like the kind of svelte attaché you’d see under Anna Wintour’s arm than a computer.
No reason us nerds shouldn’t look good, right David Pogue?
Shoshana got her magazine chops at Wired in the pre-Facebook era, then went on to write for The New York Times, Spin, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Business 2.0, Travel and Leisure, and Sunset. In 1999, she became an editorial director for Young & Rubicam’s Brand Futures division. She cofounded ReadyMade magazine in 2001 and served as its Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She is the coauthor of ReadyMade: How to Make Almost Everything (Crown, 2005), which was featured in the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial. She has lectured and taught workshops at Stanford, the Dallas Museum of Art, IDEO, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and in Clay Felker’s magazine program at UC Berkeley.
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