Philippe Starck says the e-book reader's designer 'wasn't quite humble enough to completely disappear'
December 13, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- Philippe Starck, a French designer who champions simplicity of form, has proclaimed Amazon's Kindle e-book reader "almost modern" but "a bit sad."
Starck was a speaker at the Le Web 3 social networking conference outside Paris on Tuesday. After an energetic, rambling speech about modern design, he was handed a Kindle by technology blogger Robert Scoble and asked what he thought of it.
"In this type of product, the best design is the least design possible," said Starck. That means it should be small, simple and strong, and not distract from the content, which should be the most interesting part.
The Kindle almost achieves that, "but the designer wasn't quite humble enough to completely disappear, so he made a little slope here, a diagonal there," Starck said. "It's a little sad because the concept is modern, but the design is less modern, because the designer doesn't want to disappear."
"No no," he concluded, "it is almost modern."
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