Design fail

May 28, 2013 • 11:21 am

Is this really that hard to spot?  From Complex Art + Design we learn that J. C. Penney is marketing a new teakettle on a bulletin board by a highway in Los Angeles. The thing is, it looks like Hitler. The resemblance is pretty amazing:

Picture 4

As the site notes:

This ad for the new Michael Graves Design Bells and Whistles Stainless Steel Tea Kettle that appears over the 405 Interstate Highway in Los Angeles bears a striking resemblance to the evil Nazi leader. The handle is reminiscent of his distinctive hair part, the lid handle is his mustache, and the spout is the Nazi salute. This is either a really bad joke on the designer’s end, unfortunate oversight by J.C. Penney and the advertisers, or pure coincidence. Nevertheless, once you see it, there is no unseeing it. Good luck trying to make tea that doesn’t taste evil.

Here it is from the J. C. Penney site (link above), and it still looks like der Führer!

Picture 5

126 thoughts on “Design fail”

  2. Flip photo horizontally–no problem.

    PS: Anyone who’s used tea kettles like this will realize that Hitler-resemblance is but one part of its design problems.

      2. Whatever the selection pressures that resulted in this teapot, they did not include utility.

        It probably survives by conveying the message that any utensil that can afford to be this ugly and unusable must be a really badass utensil.

  3. It sure gives the childhood song “I’m a little teapot” an evil taint. 😀

  5. I have to go with unfortunate oversight. They are in business of selling things, and Nazis seem like a particularly poor demographic to cater to.

    I must admit, however, that now I too cannot “un-see it”. I suppose they should have gone with a different accent color than black.

    1. I think if it hadn’t been pointed out as Hitler I would have seen it as a cute butler.

  6. Rule #1 when designing billboards: always have a view of the billboard on your screen literally the size of a postage stamp, and make that be your primary view.

    Because that’s the actual size of a billboard in your field of view.

    Designers often get excited at the thought of a billboard — so much space! So huge! But, in reality, when you combine both the viewing distance and the mere seconds available to devote attention to it, it’s probably the smallest, most restrictive medium there is.

    Sure, go ahead and zoom way in to tweak things here and there, just as you normally would. But, unless your design makes for a great postage stamp, it’ll be a failure as a billboard.

    At the size of a postage stamp, it would have been impossible to have missed the Hitler outline. But if the artist never zoomed farther out than “fit to window” on a 24″ display, it never would have registered on anybody’s consciousness.

    Cheers,

    b&

    1. Or, perhaps they were subconsciously inspired to make a kettle Hitler because of the way he “boiled over” in that classic scene in the movie, Downfall (with kudos to Bruno Ganz).

  8. That’s pretty funny, but I’m going to go with gbjames. The powerful human brain can play some pretty stupid tricks on itself.

    Wait. Per Godwin’s Law, can we even talk about this?

      1. There’s a corollary to Godwin’s Law that states that the probability of Godwin’s Law being mentioned in every Internet discussion about Hitler also approaches 1.

        b&

  9. I wouldn’t see the resemblance unless you pointed it out.JC Penney needs a lot of publicity right now and is bringing coupons back.

  10. Am I the only one to notice that the back handle is on the side instead of the back? Ever try to pour tea that way? It gets curiouser and curiouser.

    1. If you watched Antiques Roadshow recently, you’d know that George Jensen was a noted Danish silversmith, and his tea servers characteristically had the handle on the side. Odd, but if you search George Jensen silver tea service and go to Images, you can see plenty of them.

    2. If you’re referring to the I-shaped black band facing the camera, that’s not part of the kettle; it’s an arrangement of light panels in the photographer’s studio, reflected in the chrome surface. The only handle is on top.

      If you look closely at cookware catalogs you can often see reflections of cameras and other photographic gear.

    1. Damn. One has to be quick here.

      …one explanation would be it’s boiling because the water molecules are moving around excitedly and the liquid state is being transformed into gas.

      But at the same time you could just as easily have answered that question by saying, it’s boiling because my wife and I hate ze Jews.

  14. So, us “Old Hippies” are still in control!

    Probably ask “Who was Hitler?” to the “main thrust demographic” for this teakettle, and probably few could answer, much less pick him out of a line-up of similar faces.

    Instead of an article like this, an invented kerfuffle, I believe we’ll all much much much more affected by the important news:

    http://www.technologyreview.com/graphiti/513836/the-enduring-technology-of-coal/

    1,119 NEW coal-fired power stations on the way!

    Meanwhile, let’s talk about Hitler!!

      2. I assumed it was just a misplaced sense of humor. Maybe it will turn up somewhere.

      1. I don’t know if they all appear the same everywhere, but Draken’s avatar here looks like a somewhat decorated swastika (not a Hackenkreutz, it’s turning clockwise, or would if it were a lawn sprinkler). The prepared mind….

      2. I think it looks like Charlie Chaplin too, it’s too cute to be Hitler. Or Cartman, that works too.

  17. Why does everyone just assume that Hitler was evil? I would suggest he was no worse that his adversary, Joseph Stalin, but Stalin is never mentioned as often as Hitler.

        1. Given definitions of evil accepted across a wide range of cultures and moral philosophies, and the usual standards for historical veracity, yes it can.

          I had thought you were asking why Hitler is used as the paradigmatic example of evil, when Stalin was arguably just as bad[*], but now I’m confused as to what you meant.

          * Could be; I don’t know the history well enough to judge. I do realize Stalin’s regime racked up a pretty high body count, while instituting repression probably comparable to that of the Third Reich.

          1. Well, I did mean exactly that: people often refer to Hitler as the paragon of evil, especially when trying to malign their opponents (“well, he’s no better than Hitler!”). But I will make the further point that Hitler cannot be proven to be evil at all. I suspect, given the nature of warfare and all the propaganda that was going back and forth during WWII, that he is probably one of the most lied about people in history. Some people, such as David Irving, have raised doubts as to whether or not he wrote Mein Kampf. It can even be reasonably doubted that there ever was a concerted effort to eliminate European Jewry (there hasn’t been a single Nazi document ever discovered to indicate that there was such an effort).

            And besides, ‘evil’ is a metaphysical term that is rather meaningless. There’s no such thing as evil.

          3. Oh. That’s it, then. You’re a Holocaust denier.

            Christ on cracker, I’d put up with a dozen Creationists at my dinner table before I’d feed a starving Holocaust denier out of my garbage can.

          8. Man, that’s a tough one — fortunately, not one I’m likely to encounter, but still a tough one.

            In all honesty, I think I’d call a certain rabbi I know whom I’d trust in such matters, and offer to pay the cab fare to the synagogue. The starving Nazi would have food to eat and the opportunity to learn something about humanity that he’s so profoundly ignorant of.

            But I don’t think I could take it upon myself, or even trust myself, to be the one to feed him.

            (This is assuming, of course, no reason to think he poses an imminent threat of violence, something I’d be particularly wary of.)

            There’s a certain level of schadenfreude in contemplating his starvation, but, alas, that’s not a civilized option. Be nice if it was, though.

            b&

          9. And, of course, we should believe an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism, and who has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.

            /@

          10. PS. Here’s a porcupine. Our host’s rules prohibit me from proffering any specific advice about what you should do with it. But, please, use your (overly fertile) imagination.

          16. Can we call this Hitler argument a “tempest in a teapot”? 😀

        3. You are asserting here that it cannot be proven that Hitler was evil?

          You believe that there is no evidence?

          Or any documentation that exists is not convincing?

        4. O_o

          “Cannot be proven” in the philosophical, is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-evil sense, or in the holocaust-denial sense?

          I think it’s safe to say, putting the philosophical debate aside, that when most people talk about an “evil” person, a person who behaved like Hitler would fill the bill nicely.

          1. OH… I get it now. I thought he was asserting that it was impossible to prove that *EVERYONE* thinks Hitler was evil. I could get behind that one.

    2. Pardon?

      Perhaps, before I shred you like a year old cabbage, you’d appreciate an opportunity to clarify?

    3. Am I understanding that you think people need to pick only one of these guys as examples of evil?

      1. Ignoring the Holocaust denial bit, there’s something more colourful and flagrant about Hitler. Gas chambers and crematoria are more vivid than death by starvation on remote steppes. Hitler’s – or rather Goebbels’ sense of theatre made a much more memorable tyrrany.

        (And it seems Mao was responsible for more than his share of death by starvation too, with his mad scheme to melt down tractors to make steel in every back yard. Maybe when China really deMaoises….)

        1. And don’t forget the British Empire, which also killed millions during the same period.

          Death by starvation (sometimes done maliciously, sometimes, as in the case above, mostly with a combination of apathy and incompetence with only a tinge of malice thrown in) seems to have been a popular mode of operation in several tyrannies of that era.

      2. Isn’t a genocidal leader evil whether killing 11 million or 20 million? Or is there a magical number of murders when one crosses over from “swell guy” to “genocidal maniac”?

        Oh, that Hitler – he wasn’t so bad, he only killed 11 million but that Stalin….

    4. I always wonder why the theists who argue that ‘without God, we wouldn’t know Hitler was evil’, assume he was evil based on his evil deeds, without actually having used God.

    5. Actually, John here failed, quite dismally, to mark the obvious point:
      If ‘evil’ in ‘evil Nazi leader’ is taken as a qualifier of ‘Nazi leader’, then the statement yields falsehood; it is, so to speak, quinified. Hitler was obviously, and by definition, the ‘good’ Nazi leader according to the tenets of Nazism. (And just to confirm o2generate’s suspicion that we “Old Hippies” are still firmly in control, I’ll quote the ineffable Walter Sobchak character played by John Goodman in The Big Lebowski:

      “I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”

      On the other hand, if ‘evil’ is understood in accordance with even the least common denominator of accepted human standards, then it is redundant: a Nazi leader, let alone Hitler, is per se evil.
      The hyperbole is but a typical flag of careless journalism.

  20. Anyone see anything interesting in their toast today? Honest to god, mine had the image of the prophet Mohammed, but unfortunately I took a bite before I realized what it was that I saw. I need to be more careful.

    (BTW, don’t you think it is kind of a cute Hitler? You know, the puppy-loving one, not the cruel genocidal one.)

    1. As long a you are “honest to god”, can we then assume that it didn’t happen?

  21. That Kettle would have been an ideal design from Braun GmbH ~ the consumer products design group 🙂

    MICHAEL GRAVES

    His background is architecture. Went big in the ’80s as a post-modernist

    Some of his household product designs are virtually unusable [style over substance]

    Appointed recently by the Obama Administration to improve the lives of the disabled through better design. From what I’ve seen of that stuff he [or his design team]are being a lot more practical…

      1. Presumably, then, Michael Graves’ work isn’t real design because it doesn’t have enough rectangles.

        However, I don’t think a rectangular teapot would be any improvement in functionality.

        1. Nice try — epic fail. You wanna take up someone like Dieter Rams on design, you better get up early and, preferably, bright.
          I am not aware that Rams ever designed a teapot (not his cup of tea). Had he done so, one thing we can be absolutely certain of, it would never, ever, have been angular. The Rams design principles are clear:

          Good Design Makes a Product Useful — A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

          Good Design Makes A Product Understandable — It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.

          Good Design Is Unobtrusive — Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

          Good Design Is Honest — It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

          (More Rams design principles here.)

          The design of Michael Graves ultimately fails because it lacks integrity.

    2. Merciful to John, maybe. But there’re still all these claws that need sharpening! Won’t somebody please think of the claws?

      b&

      1. If you need someone to say something stupid, I’m sure I can help. My wife says I have a knack.

    3. There’s no actual evidence that you banned him. While I’m not denying he was banned, I think it’s possible that it’s been somewhat exaggerated. So John can rest easy that no actual banning took place. Right John?

      1. I would at first nominate this for a threadwinner…but, on second thought, I do believe that John’s response to Nom de Plume, whatever form it may or may not take, is even more deserving.

        b&

        1. Yeah, my feeling is that he was “taking the piss”, as the British would say.
          It was quite disappointing that it was taken so easily.

    4. Aww crap. That’s what I get for being slow to respond. I’d never met a Holocaust denier in the wild and now I’ve missed it. 😉

  25. Awful design anyway (is that retro?), no way tea could taste anything but bad.

    [Ah, finally my pc has recovered enough from the crash for browsing again! I don’t know if I’ll have time to watch my old threads. Not that I ever have…]

  26. How much difference is there between the ideology of the tea party which is supported by the Repuglicans and the Nazi faction which also seems imbedded within the Repugs? Are they merging as their numbers are hopefully dwindling?

    1. I find a discussion about dualism (good vs evil) to be somewhat misplaced in a blog for atheists. And how does ‘evil’ jive with earlier discussions about determinism, absence of free will, etc? Is ‘evil’ not simply a label we apply to actions that we strongly object to? Or is someone going to point out that there is an ancient book written by sun-dazed shepherds that defines good and evil?

    2. Ha ha funny but it should be Amerikanischer. Otherwise, hilarious. 🙂

    4. Vell vell, zees comes tshust at ze right time to try zat white tea zat I got from ze colonialwarenladen.

    1. Yeah, I don’t get it. Hitler is the last thing that would of come to my mind.
      I guess some people see Hitler everywhere.

  29. I’ll bet on pure coincidence. My bet is that the designer totally forgot about Negative Space from art classes. The designer was so focused on the shinny pot that the open space above it didn’t even register.

  30. If they’d just take the shot from the other side, at least the hair part would be on the wrong side.

    Which reminds me of this coffee cup with no handle that I have, acquired in Stockholm yrs ago. You first have to understand that in Sweden they tell jokes about Norwegians, and I understand that in Norway they tell the same jokes about Swedes. Törbjorn may already know what’s coming.

    On one side it says NORGE MUGGEN (The Norway Mug)

    On the back it says NORGEMUGGENS TILLKOMST (Norway Mug’s origin)

    Den norske fabrikanten frågade något förbryllad sin svenske kollega:

    (The Norwegian manufacturer asked his Swedish colleague, somewhat confoundedly:)

    -Vi håller på att tillverka en mugg och undrar nu var handtaget skall sitta, på vänster eller på höger sida?

    (-We’re in the process of making a mug and wonder where we should put the handle, on the left or right side?)

    Svensken svarade då något irriterat: För Guds skull, använd insidan!

    (The Swede answered somewhat irritatedly: For gods sake [Idiomatically] use your brains! [Literally] use the inside!)

    Och norrmannen lydde det gode rådet.
    (And the Norwegian took his good advice.)

    And of course, there’s a handle on the inside.

    1. Which explains the origin of the English idiom, “get a grip”, roughly translated from Old Norse.

  31. This is like seeing the virgin in a toasted cheese sandwich, except rather than attracting Catholics it attracts neo-nazis.

    1. I think the apt idiom would be, “isn’t that the Nazi teapot calling the fascist kettle genocidal” 😀

  33. Ok, showed to folks sans pic of Hitler and guess what, none of them came up with that. Try the experiment yourself.

    1. I suppose for all those neo Nazi tea partied that are so popular with fascists that include those crustless cucumber sandwiches and elegant hats. 🙂

      1. Just for the sake of curiosity I checked eBay too, but they had none either. However, I noticed that most of the old teapots there on eBay had lids with little spikes on top, making the lids look for all the world like WW I era German army helmets. What do you think all of this means?

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