Talk:Philippe Starck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philippe Starck is within the scope of WikiProject France, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

Please rate the article and, if you wish, leave comments here regarding your assessment or the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

The Juicy Salif, in fact, has since become an affordable and popular cult item

In my view this is an and completely disfunctional piece of kitchenware. It's not cheap either - since when has 40GBP been affordable for a lemon squeezer? Its legs are too close together, so you don't find many ordinary containers will fit below it to catch the juice - and it doesn't come with its own. Its high centre of gravity make it unstable especially when applying any force to actually squeeze a lemon on it. It doesn't catch the pips, so they end up in the juice, and its shape makes the juice run off at odd angles and often miss the container, assuming you've found one to put there. You may as well squeeze the lemon in your hand. Or buy one of those highly functional and very cheap (like 1GBP) plastic squeezers that actually work and usually come with their own built-in container and pip catcher. To me, the first rule of design is Form Follows Function - but this seems too everyday, pedestrian and sensible for many modern designers. They seem to feel that form is everything, and never mind the function. Recently a "top designer" (actually Marc Newson - I just looked it up) unveiled his idea of a flying car. Nothing wrong with speculating about the future, but it pays not one iota of attention to any principle of aerodynamics - it could never fly in other words. It was basically a Jetsons-looking car thingy with stub wings. It seemed to get the media very excited but it's really a joke. Have people become so enthralled by "designer" names that something looking cool is all that matters? The Starck juicer looks cool alright, like a 50s alien spaceship or something - but it's totally useless. I'd have more respect if he sold it honestly as a model of a 50s alien spaceship (paperweight?) instead of trying to pretend it's useful. And 'pretend' is the operative word - it's utterly pretentious. Graham 11:24, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fine, but how does this impact the article? If you want to add alternative POV, you have only to edit the article :) Dysprosia 11:32, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It doesn't impact the article as such, and it's highly POV, obviously, so that's why it's on the talk page. Maybe if it stimulates a debate some consensus might emerge about how criticisms of Starck or perhaps of "new design" in general can be addressed in the article. I wouldn't really know how to do it, there's something about Starck that gets right up my nose, so I'm the last one to be able to do it neutrally! Graham 11:39, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Starck?? Oh please...

Okay, I do find that he does challenge convention as an aesthetics designer.. but the true mark of a product designer is one who finds design solutions to existing problems. Starck adds more problems to existing products in purely in the search for aesthetic exotica. I have no problems with making things look great in theory, but they should be just that. In practise, you NEED to make sure that a product is practical to use.. anything else is just smacks of pretentiousness and you are not really engaging all sides of the brain to produce a suitable practical AND positively aesthetic product.

Lets face it. Starck products sell, because it is Starck. But often, you find that people that are likely to spend £40 on a juicer that causes more problems than it solve are also quite pretentious. The likes of Seymour and Powell, who find real solutions to problems, as well as design positively aesthetic products is much more preferable. Design exercises are great for exploring ideas but you cannot seriously think that everything that looks good is easy to use??

Ross Product Design University of Central England (BIAD/TIC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Starckbook.jpg

Image:Starckbook.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 11:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)