Products, Design, Art, Fashion and other things that we find cool, interesting, provocative and simply brilliant
Unfortunately it is not unusual that our design is copied somewhere in the world. Going after the design-pirates is often a long, costly and difficult process. Instead, we thought you would like to see some of the design-freaks we sometimes spot and then make the judgement yourself!
Click below to enter the Design Champer of Horrors.
This morning one of the oldest (1965) and most well know neon signs in Copenhagen was taken down. The Chocolate frogs! Not familiar with the frogs? The frogs was a “ring of frogs” in neon on top of a chocolate factory (Galle & Jessen). In 1971 the chocolate brand was bought and “swallowed” by a bigger brand (Toms), the building sold to an IT company and nobody wanted the frogs… Well except for all the kids dreaming that the frogs were made out of real chocolate – or the grownups on the way home from a party – in desperate need of a neon fix-point to help navigate home.
The original (red) strainer is designed by Boje Estermann and was introduced by Normann Copenhagen in august 2005. The other version is a copy made by the company Sagaform – we found the pictures in their 2009 catalogue.
We are pretty sure that Sagaforms lawyer would argue that their version has no visual or funktional comparison to our Strainer… we will let you be the judge of that.
… and yes, our original strainer also comes in green. More info on our homepage.
Related blogposts:
Respect to Fritz – Fritz Hansens fight against copies of their furnitures
Fake Y-chair – We feel the pain
Zone Denmark – Do you need help
A couple of weeks ago we spotted a few odd signs in Stockholm (No pole-dancing in Swedish trains!)). But it seems that we Danes are just as bad. The text above the sign reads “Green wave”. Sorry, but that doesn’t help us much when all we see is a person with one leg shorter than the other sitting on a very thin pole. Do you have a different interpretation of the sign, please let us know.
Spotted outside our store in Copenhagen.
We just spotted this cool fight the copies campaign from Fritz Hansen furniture.
We spotted this pictogram on a train in Stockholm last night. But what does it try to communicate? Does it have something to do with dancing…in the rain or maybe that you are not allowed to stand on one foot when waving to your friends… we don’t know.
Making pictograms is probably one of the most difficult graphic design assignments one can get – so we really respect the designers (like Ole Søndergaard) that master the art… but something went very wrong in Stockholm. Please help interpret the next couple of examples.
Our suggestions are: 1. A strange new moon cart. 2. You are allowed to use a fitness ball on the train. 3. Bike with one small and one large seat. 4. Something with Marilyn Monroe. 5. Don´t smoke cigarets in the wrong end!
We just got back from the design fair Maison & Object in Paris. Due to very gusty winds during Friday the tent were exhibiting in were about to collaps, so everybody was evacuated. In this clip you can see how our Planes are ”flying”. Also notice the lamps that are about to take off in the last scene.
The tent didn´t fall and nobody got hurt – except some very tempered exhibitors who lost a day’s worth of sales.
Sometimes we find a fake Norm 69 lamp. This version we spotted on the British Dwell.co.uk aka.“King of Copycats” homepage, looks like it’s been melting! Dwell we feel sorry for your customers, because they are in for a surprise if they buy your cheap fake products.
More scary design freaks in our “We hate” category.
Want to see the real version – follow this link.
We feel pain when a product created with superior craftmanship and love is being copied like in this case. The Y chair // “Wishbone Chair” designed by Danish legend Hans J. Wegner has been produced by our Danish colleagues Carl Hansen www.carlhansen.com for almost 60 years.
We love the attention to details and feel almost sick seeing how the Copycat cut corners and take shortcuts trying to duplicate such an icon as the Y chair. Potential owners of this copy will learn it the hard way, since only true quality stand the test of time.
To all design fans – do not believe all you see, get close and FEEL it.
To the Copycats – If you mess with our friends you mess with us!!!!
We got a little worried when we found this Grundig computer at our gate leaving Frankfurt Airport. Let’s hope it is not this kind of hardware that handles the airplane-traffic at one of the most busy airports in Europe.
Peter H… safely back home
