20 Designs That Are Everyday Super Normal

Design is ubiquitous, it is global, it is unavoidable. Design is artificial, manufactured, built and crafted, both knowingly and fortuitously. Design influences how we live and the choices that we make. Many of the greatest designs are the everyday “super normal” tools that we find essential in our homes, at work, during play and when we travel. In a book titled Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary, written by designers Jasper Morrison & Naoto Fukasawa, the concept of Super Normal is described as: “[that which] is already lying exposed before us; it exists in the here and now; it is real and available: we need only open our eyes.”

Francis-Francis-X1-espresso-machine-217x155

Many of the finest designs begin with the principle that everyday objects play a significant role in people’s lives: personally, emotionally, culturally, historically and traditionally. From a vegetable peeler to a casserole pot, a chair to a shelf, a light to a coat-rack, these designs are normal and Super Normal. Interactions with such objects are often automatic and unconscious, and we use them without thinking about the significant role they play in our daily being.

Super Normal design is simple and complex, affordable and expensive, utilitarian and elegant. Differing from person to person, it adds meaning and value, knowingly or unwittingly, to everyday moments. Remarkable and unremarkable, Super Normal design is good design.

The following twenty objects are examples of Super Normal designs –