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General discussion

Possibly the classiest looking computers...ever...

May 4, 2010 4:41AM PDT

Possibly the classiest looking computers...ever...

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/jeffrey_stephensons_computers_with_class_16504.asp

excerpt:
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Engineer and computer designer Jeffrey Stephenson cranks out custom-made PC's in stark defiance of everything going on in current computer design: he produces them in styles ranging from Mission to Art Deco to Machine Age and more.
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Wow...I kinda feel like I need some white gloves to handle them...

--S

Discussion is locked

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Art Deco...my wife would love this stuff...
May 4, 2010 6:42AM PDT

Remind me not to show her. Can't afford it!

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Possibly the classiest looking computers...ever...
May 4, 2010 7:40AM PDT

Nice looking computers

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Ahh the 30s
May 4, 2010 10:20AM PDT

30s, 60s and 00s good times for design. Anyone else think that the 80s and 90s were a terrible time for gadget industrial design?

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Not crazy about them. But that's just the designer in me.
May 4, 2010 2:43PM PDT

I have a low tolerance for novelty and kitsch. I can't stand PT Cruisers, the short lived new Thunderbird and all those other retro styled cars either.

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Ohh?
May 4, 2010 3:09PM PDT

I like retro, quality of yesterday is not always disregarded because it was bad, but rather merely because it wasn't new. Nothing wrong when designers try to rediscover the quality of yesterday.

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This is a philosophical distinction
May 4, 2010 11:26PM PDT

but many designers believe something should be an expression of the time it was made. Retro designs are made to invoke nostalgia. Real art deco designs are gorgeous because they reflect the time and place they were made. Sticking a phone into the shape of a victrola or a 30's radio is just cheesy in my opinion. It's a one liner.

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Well
May 5, 2010 9:37PM PDT

Maybe in some cases. But to say such designs are only to invoke nostelgia, I think is a very cheap view of the past. I take more the view that it's trying to rediscover forgotten quality and is done with a sense of humbleness that what's done today isn't necessarily better. Nostelgia? Few people today have any nostlegic memories of anything from the 30s.

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Things are a product of their times.
May 6, 2010 9:48AM PDT

Putting modern cellphones into a 1930's hand-cranked phone form is a one-dimensional gimmick that draws on none of the richness of thought that originally went into making the authentic hand cranked phone. Nor does it have anything to due with the context that made such a design possible (cheap labor, early 20th century material availability, machining techniques, etc). Same with mp3 players in the shape of an old 50's jukebox..