Scandinavian design. So simple, it hurts.

Magisso is a Finnish design company that mostly specializes in development of kitchen appliances and tableware. Juhani Siren, an executive director and lead designer at Magisso came to Design-Boom this Saturday to talk about his company and to introduce some of the products.

The presentation was short, but that's all it needed to be in order to capture two main points of Scandinavian design. Simplicity and functionality.

Magisso's design workflow is also simple:
IDEA, WOW FACTOR, DESIGN.
In other words, the product has to be practical, cool, and it has to look nice.

I won't go into details talking about the company but instead will give my opinion on their products. The company is quite young and has few products to offer but the two that stand out are the Cake Server and the Teacup.

The Cake Server is basically a cookie cutter-life knife designed to cut a perfect piece every time. Initially, I thought it to be a useless reinvention of the wheel. But later I realized its potential as a perfect gift buy. The "wow factor" ensures it to be a very good conversation piece at a party. The release date which coincided with the winter holidays ensured its good reception by the holiday shopping crowd.

The Tea Cup has a very interesting design. It uses simple physics and form to achieve a delicious cup of tea brewed from leaves while keeping them in a separate container inside the cup. This product is better suited for everyday use. I personally always hated drinking tea with leaves floating in it but this seems to be a pretty good solution.

Photos of the get-together:



PS: I asked Juhani whether it was true that Finnish people are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. He said he drinks at least 1.5 pots of coffee a day and that by Finnish standards it's not a lot.