I personally believe Function must always come b4 Aesthetics, for what good is a design that looks good but does not have a useful purpose? A lady was shown a lovely designed teapot but she did not want to buy it. Why, the seller asked. She pointed out that the 'mouth' of the pot was too small for her to put her hand in to clean. And because the pot was squarish and not round,she said it would be even more difficult to clean the inner corners of the pot.
That also got me thinking. Make a survey of olden day coffee pots & teapots. What major similarities do the similar pots have? You would notice that :
- a coffee pot is narrow & long
- a teapot is short and round
And the round shape of the teapot is related to the flavour and temperature. Because the pot is round and short, the tea leaves all float in the same space, thus all equally emits the flavour, at the same temperature. And i believe that it stays hotter, longer than if it was in a long pot. Stable temperature is necessary to allow tea leaves time to infuse.
So one may play with the superficial exterior of an item, good design dictates that certain criterias are taken in to account seriously ie. shape of the item befitting its use and type of material used to make it.
