Objects with stories beat objects with features

The chipped green mug wins every morning. It holds less coffee than the new one and the handle is objectively worse, but it came from a small studio on a wet Tuesday in Kyoto.

We compare products with features because features are countable. We live with them through rituals, memory and touch. The things that last manage to cross that gap.

“Utility gets an object onto the shelf. Meaning keeps it out of the drawer.

Design for the retelling

A good object gives its owner a sentence worth saying: where it came from, why one detail is odd, who made it or what changed because it was there.