form vs. function

form

{via TheCoolist}

Is this the world's most jaw-dropping car? The 1948 Buick Streamliner (by Norman E. Timbs) was found in the LA desert in 2002 and restored by Dave Crouse at Custom Auto, who spent 2 years bringing the car back to life.

How beautiful is this car? And what a strangely compelling paradox...

Who wouldn't want to drive it along Highway 101 with the stereo on full blast? But think again - perhaps this car's a piece of junk. After all, it's completely inadequate at providing even the most basic function of a real life car. Imagine that journey on Highway 101. It starts to rain - where's the roof? You need to take a suitcase - where's the boot? Passengers? Hope they're small. Let's not even think about parking. Highway 101? Not in this car.

function

For those of us who live in crowded, polluted cities the G-Wiz must be the perfect vehicle. Small (very), electric, easy to park, quiet, it even has a roof. But as a car it looks repellant. I couldn't bring myself to touch it let alone drive it.

If design is about matching form and function, which is more important? Maybe good design is no more than the sum of the best compromises.

Peter

our favourite {London} shops

official: wonderlandWPA is a nice company

MyType, an online application that asks users to answer questions to determine their personality, raised some eyebrows when it released results from its recent survey.

Hidden in the results was the scientific fact that "iPad owners, or people that want an iPad, are selfish, scoring low on measures of kindness and altruism. They value power and achievement much more than others." So in other words, iPad owners are pretty horrible people.

Armed with this (highly debatable) research, we did a straw poll around the studio to find out who wanted an iPad, and even worse, whether any of these cold blooded individuals actually intended to buy one.

After the results were counted and verified, we were all able to breathe a sigh of collective relief. Well, apart from the 10% of us that, as it turns out, are pretty selfish individuals.

So we're officially a 90% thoroughly nice and not-very-selfish-at-all company, which might be another reason for you to get in touch with us... unless you're planning to email us from your iPad.

Source: Guardian