Miscellaneous | January 10, 2008No Comments
Ettore Sottsass
Brilliant Italian designer, Ettore Sottsass, died last week at the age of 90. Sottsass designed many iconic products, along the way changing the way we look at everyday objects. He never retired and was still working with his Milan design team until just before his death. Deyan Sudjic, a writer for The Guardian, said it best:
Sottsass showed that it was possible to understand design as a cultural as well as a technical issue. When he designed the Valentine portable typewriter for Olivetti in 1969, with the British designer Perry King, he was able to turn a piece of office equipment into a desirable object by understanding that there are emotions involved as well as ergonomics in the way that we use and understand our possessions.
Sottsass made the Valentine out of bright red plastic, with twin splashes of vivid orange for the spools; turning it from a machine into a kind of toy. As he put it himself, “the sort of thing to keep lonely poets company on Sundays in the country.”
Sottsass was also responsible for creating the Memphis design movement in 1981.
