The Adams Dining Hall has new mugs!! My friends and I were very excited by both the practical and aesthetic upgrades of this mug. It got us really thinking about the importance of design in our everyday lives. The old mugs were thick, didn’t carry much liquid, hard to hold due to their narrow handles, and tipped over easily. This new design has a larger handle, wider mouth, thinner lip, and cleaner shape. It carries more liquid, doesn’t spill as often, and on top of that, looks and feels better. I think it is a more modern design. In some ways, it looks like one of the first graphic design exercises I did in high school with vectors – straight lines, no extra lip at the mouth, no curves, etc. It is a simple and clean design that translates to newness and cleanness, perhaps because of the digital age and resulting aesthetics that came out of that process of design. It is interesting to think about how the start of digital art might have influenced the way we create actual products.
