February 8, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, my husband attended a Martha Stewart show for Dads featuring Super Bowl food and entertaining ideas. Consistent with what appears to be today’s talk show standard, each audience member walked away with some amazing freebies. Aside from continuing to be perplexed about how companies can afford to underwrite these large giveaways (they are expensive!) and despite the fact that in my house my husband rules the kitchen, as any good consumer products businesswoman would do, I still checked out the design details of each of the giveaways.
One in particular earned my design-awe — a Breville sandwich/panini maker called “The Smart Grill“. Or more specifically, its amazingly cool outlet plug! How many of you have suffered broken nails, squeezed fingers or just gotten darn frustrated trying to remove appliance plugs? Check out what an absolutely cool idea Breville employed in its already above-the-top fabulous sandwich/panini-maker — a finger hole right below the outlet plug, for easy removal. Brilliant.
I’ve always been a huge fan of great design that is as much about practicality and function as it is about beauty. Breville’s Smart Grill delivers on every level of my “A-list”. Hats off Breville! And yes, we enjoyed awesome panini’s courtesy of my Martha Stewart-trained husband yesterday watching the Saints beat the Colts among well-fed friends.
