Core77

When Form Follows Fugly

By Rain Noe - June 20, 2014

in Object Culture

I consider your average sinkside soap dish a design failure. They either have no drainage, leaving the bar to sit in a puddle of water that transforms its underside into slime, or they drain into a container, and either way you have to empty the damn thing. The notion that this thing is designed to hold soap for you, yet you must constantly attend to it by draining it into the sink, is absurd. Oughtn't good industrial design free us from this minutiae?

A far better idea is this design for a slanted soap dish pictured up top. But Jeez Louise is it ugly. It looks like the bottom half of a mouth, with two fangs and a leering tongue.

That being said, it looks like it would get the job done, at least for certain types of sinks, and one variant of this design has a suction cup on the base so it doesn't tip over. (Both are made out of plastic, not porcelain, so it's probably too light to not tip over during use.)

Where the overall the shape came from is no mystery—the form clearly follows the function (the function being self-drainage). Which begs the question: What do you do when form follows function, and the result is freaking fugly?

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Harald Hynell

9 years ago

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I think this is great example of a from that not follows the function. I've spent a few hours designing a soap saver with a form that follows the function to a greater extent. http://en.bosign.se/soap_saver
Arguable less ugly.

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David Oliver

9 years ago

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If you were to describe this in functional terms, you'd have something like:
1. Tilted for drainage(perhaps at a particular angle)
2. Channel for drainage into sink or tub.
3. Some detail to hold the soap bar in place

These attributes don't dictate that the end product is fugly.
It's ugly because whoever designed it had little to no sense of aesthetics, or simply didn't care what it looked like.

If you were to hold a design competition with these functional requirements, you'd be flooded with interpretations more aesthetically pleasing than this.

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Tim Harris

9 years ago

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http://begthequestion.info/

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Andis Slaitas

9 years ago

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I would agree wirh Corey, soap dispenser is the answer. If you are in a position to question the design of soap tray, you can surely afford a decent dispenser.

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dc_design

10 years ago

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It's actually *this* close to being a dinosaur...the Zuniceratops, to be exact...

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surp

10 years ago

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Fugly? Looking at this i would say just standard American design.
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Rob Wilkey

10 years ago

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I can think of plenty of ways that the form could be tweaked to be far more aesthetically pleasing without sacrificing function.

This just looks like an incomplete project. The engineering side is solved and sound, now the form needs some muscle relaxant and a few massages.

1/2 way there...
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Andrew

10 years ago

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I use a magnetic soap holder which does the trick. Although it can start causing problems when the soap has shrunken so much that the metal insert starts to break it up.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=magnetic+soap+holder&safe=off&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=OQWoU8aoL8-M0wWh1ICoAQ&ved=0CFYQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=971
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Peter

10 years ago

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How about putting some color on it and sell it as "The Count" on Alessi...
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kosmonaut

10 years ago

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Good for you, Corey, very funny.

However, the soap bar is cheaper, uses less packaging and takes up less space in transport. Still a pretty good option imho.
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Nick

10 years ago

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Corey, I think you're missing the point; this isn't about the product itself, but rather what results from a form-follows-function design process. The soap holder makes the point well, regardless of whether there are other solutions.
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Corey

10 years ago

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This is a solved problem. It's called a soap dispenser. For your next post, maybe you could complain about how ugly CD cases are.
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coco

10 years ago

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Seen this thing five years ago as a prize I got for a contest held by my high school's first-aid station. Hmm... :?
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Jameson

10 years ago

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First world problems...
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adora

10 years ago

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But when the soap gets too small or breaks, it won't stay on. I use Ivory soap and it often breaks in half when it is still more than half its volume.

Is it really a problem at all? I have an in-wall soap dish with groove/tooth at the bottom, and it does the job well enough. Never had slime problem.
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Mike

10 years ago

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â€œWhen I am working on a problem, I never think about beautyâ€¦but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is
wrong.â€
â€• Richard Buckminster Fuller
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