h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I threw away my sofa, I decided a futon would be a better [and cheaper] alternative. So far, It's working well.

Agree with you, Hoovooloo, I couldn't find anythign I could sit on in Duff functional sofas, nor the furnature village place, nor, strangely enough in John lewis, and when I approched M&S, they didn't have any furnature in stock, at all, and your meant to go into the shop to look at a catalogue which, for obvious reasons just doesn't work can't even remember wehre Igot mine from in the end, but its one of the few sofas I've ever been able to sit on in any comfort, its the right height so I'm not inches off the floor, and its deep enough to let you sit on it properly, and not so soft you sink four foot into it when you sit down
c who's nancy, and which senit is this?

What I want to know is - does nobody TEST sofas?

Do they just draw them, build them, and send them to the store? I find it hard to believe that anyone with remotely my build EVER sat on the majority of the sofas I sat on when shopping and thought "ooh, nice".

isn't the current theory that the people on the sofa ads are abnormally small?

But, why then design, and make sofas for abnormally small people, as their abnormally small nature, means your designing things to fit far away from the mean/average at one end... whereas your potential market, is, mainly made up from people of average/mean height/size Anhow... I thought we're all meant to be taller these days... maybe there all (the designers), working to statistical data taken from the population, regarding size, shape, body size, etc., from decades and decades ago, when the average human was only 3FT 8 tall

I think you're forgetting the point. Sofas are not for sitting on. Sofas are for lying on.

My housemates threw out our sofas and replaced them with ones just too short to lie on. I would have complained, but this was the day before I moved out, so there was little point.

But seriously, if I'm alone on a sofa for more than about 40 seconds, I'll be lying on it. Can't help it.

TRiG.

Well I just bought one by mail order.

Admittedly I'd already sat on the same model.

Frankly, it wouldn't look good on your CV.

TRiG: My husband sent me off sofa hunting a few years ago with his requirements - low arms. Damn uncomfortable to lie on otherwise.

In at least one IKEA store I have seen a display with a bum-sized pad attached to a motorised crank bouncing up and down on a section of a chair or sofa. There was also one opening and closing a drawer ad infinitum. Weird ans instructive simultaneously.

Sho:

>>isn't the current theory that the people on the sofa ads are abnormally small?


I'm suddenly reminded of a famous Hollywood story.

'Casablanca' was filmed during wartime. They couldn't get hold of a Dakota for the airfield scene at the end because they were all in use for the war effort. So they planned to build a replica on the lot...but their budget wouldn't stretch to it. So they built one half size...and hired every midget in Hollywood to run round underneath it.

You'll remember this story next time you see the film,

It's not just sofas. I often wonder about really hideous things - fabrics, "decorative" knicknacks, useless kitchen gadgets - why one of the many people involved in the design, manufacture, packaging, marketing and distribution didn't go "hang on, this is stupid!"

Stupid in he sense of 'useless and/or unattractive' or in the sense of 'we can't sell this to some eejit'?

There's your clue right there.

Ooo! look! a shiney black beeping thing to go into the kitchen! ooo! it beeps! its black! Its shiney!
*buys*
I had a fabulus set of four dining room chairs... they were sort of metal framed things...
you just needed to look at one and it'd fall over, they were so utterly unbalanced and 'top heavy' The teak ones I have now not only stay upright, they're proper heavy and oughta outlast me

Thing is though, you can sell almost anything to some eejit. "The public wants what the public gets", to quote Mr Weller.

But it wouldn't necessarily take any more money or effort to produce something more useful than the array of crap Mal's referring to. It's as if they do it on purpose!

Another one for the list of questions: What's with the "3 little pigs" ad for the Guardian lately?

Something in the way it's filmed reminds me a lot of V for Vendetta or some of the Harry Potter films.

Isn't that GoCompare?

Both begin with G.

back to design: I wondered so much about awful fabric designs for the seats on public transport that I felt moved to blog about it
(KB )

No Icy, The Guardian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW_dBQPAeDY

On public transport they at least have a purpose, hiding graffiti...