What the Anna G Anniversary Corkscrew Teaches us about Good Design

Alessi’s Anna G Anniversary Corkscrew (or AGAC) is ostentatious. That’s the point. You must stop and think before grabbing its oversized head, hidden behind a mask that slides on top but doesn’t stay in place. Stop, think. Good design asks us to revise our interactions with everyday objects by liberating us from mindless routines and offering space for reflection.

Founded in 1921, Alessi is an Italian company that combines smart design with industrial production. Until the 1950s, Alessi produced mainly small wood and metal objects for the home. As the economy industrialized and consumerism too hold, design became an essential tool to stimulate consumer desire. Form may have followed function, but form was an increasingly integral to function. In 1955 when Ettore Alessi decided to introduce product collaborations with external designers, he asserted the industrial object’s potential to be an artistic product. Italians mitigated society’s transition to consumerism by uniting an object’s aesthetic value with its use value.

It’s not immediately clear how AGAC manifests this union or if it does at all. The corkscrew jars with Alessi’s sleek spoons and clever kettles. The garish plastic body and oversized magnet mask seems to combine a day of the dead mask with a vintage doily. You turn away. And then you turn back. Because Alessi’s AGAC isn’t a bottle opener but an invitation to celebrate daily life.

I discovered the AGAC as a sales associate at Eataly. They were released to commemorate the twenty years of the corkscrew’s manufacture. AGAC cost $150. We received four and sold them all, including the sample. This surprises people who don’t believe in spending more than $20 on a single kitchen tool. But when you buy an AGAC you don’t purchase just a kitchen tool. You buy an invitation to the party, a conversation piece, a moment of reflection.

I was carrying the floor sample while searching for a colleague. You have to hold the AGAC upright so the head doesn’t fall off. I circled the store once, twice, three times. My face pinched into a mask of annoyance. I’m trying to do something important, I fumed, where are they! I walked by a mirror, caught a glimpse of myself and laughed. In my hand was a $150 corkscrew with an expression that suspiciously resembled my own strained scowl. How could I be angry? For a moment, I saw from afar. I’d become so invested in my invented drama, I forgot myself and my surroundings. AGAC brought me back.

Good design forces us to step outside of ourselves and re-examine our situation. Good design doesn’t make acts thoughtless. Absentmindedness is a flaw of bad design. Think about the duvet you toss over your bed or the shoelaces you notice only when they turn black. Whereas bad design reminds us of its presence through its flaws, good design directs us to reconsider our routine. Think about your buttery smooth leather wallet or the magazine whose pages feel pleasantly weighty in your hands. These moments invite us to reconnect with our actions and thereby cultivate a more mindful attitude. Good design finds reason to celebrate the ordinary.

The Enchanting Universe of the Experimental Cocktail Club

The exteriors are unmarked. Except for the line. It may just be two or three people, perhaps a few more on Friday evening, but savvy drinkers know to arrive early to secure their seat at the Experimental Cocktail Club. Started in Paris in 2007, this mini-chain — it has locations in New York and London — presents itself as an exclusive speakeasy. But this isn’t a Gatsby gaudy stage set. The Experimental Cocktail Club exudes an effortless style that allows both mixed drink aficionados and novices to assimilate subdued modern glamour for the duration of their drink.

Regardless of the specific city, ECC — as christened by their loyal customers — locates their bars in similar neighborhoods. They sit on the border of an ethnic enclave and hip area: the Marais in Paris; Chinatown/Lower East Side in New York; and Chinatown/Soho in London. The central location lets visitors feign exploration while lingering in their stomping ground.

This combination of the novel and familiar permeates the ECC universe. That seemingly unmarked entrance? Look closer; it’s a sign. In Pairs light glimmers behind blacks velvet curtains; in New York there’s a not-quite hidden restaurant hygiene grade; in London the door is worn down. Although these markings could appear incidental — people do knock on the door in London, the bar must display a hygiene rating in New York — the ECC atmosphere use these markings as tools that build a community in opposition to standard bars. Since their facades don’t resemble a regular restaurant, the visitor experiments when approaching the door. They ring an anonymous doorbell; they clank an unidentified knocker. Through experimentation cocktail lovers enter into a club of people that share an attitude toward drinking.

Once inside, the discomfort of experimentation disappears and the club enchants its members. From the tables and lighting to the drinks and the music, the Experimental Cocktail Club reproduces their bars like a global corporation, while maintaining an exclusive ambiance. Each location retains the same bar, the same low seats, the same glassware and the same beats. Low lighting hides the particulars, leaving a spectral glow of oriental opulence. Trendy tea lights on private tables and at the bar cast an orange-y glow over the space. Subtle variations keep the cookie cutter structure novel. Reorganizations of the proportions position New York’s as a cool American bar, London’s as an updated British gentleman’s club, and Paris’ as an artist’s haunt. The frame is streamlined, but the content is altered.

 Thus, it won’t shock visitors to multiple locations that each outpost’s menu riffs on a limited group of basics. There’s the drink with bourbon and an egg white; the one with rum, a spice and lemon or lime; there’s the sweet one with cognac. These aren’t Starbucks’ globalized offerings. The drinks mix the local accent into the set cocktails. New Yorkers get tropical, tiki inspired drinks, while Londoners sip updated classics. These variations serve the visitor an interpretation of the city in a glass. Entering an ECC incorporates the drinker into a club where cultural differences are experienced as novel twists on a familiar structure, emphasizing experimentation’s potential to bridge differences.

This hybrid of familiar and novel naturalizes the speakeasy gimmick. Although the hidden door satisfies an imagined prohibition nostalgia, drinking at ECC doesn’t feel contrived. Once inside, the speakeasy script finishes. Apart from a reservation, there’s no code word required to order a drink. There’s no insider knowledge needed to decipher the menu. It’s experimental. The bartenders don’t invent, but present riffs the familiar. ECC experiments with new accents in their different locations and invites their customers to do the same. It’s a club. And the drink’s just happen to be well-made. It’s a cocktail.

On The Myth of Being a Regular Customer

Meet the regular: he always sits at the table by the window. He has a jaunty moustache. Wait: is it really him? Doesn’t he usually carry a canvas tote? The regular is fiction. Although the character woos us in literature and entertains us on television, the contemporary cityscape reduces them to myth through diverse options, hectic schedules and social obligations antagonistic to the development of routine.

TV dramas and sitcoms love regulars. Week after week Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer dined at Monks; Sabrina the Teenage Witch went to The Slicery. But such hangouts weren’t portrayed as active, pleasant choices. Elaine loved the big salad, but the show’s memorable food moments happened in operating theatres and soup kiosks. Sabrina lamented The Slicery’s perpetually sticky arcade games. These places collected friends, but they didn’t collect good times. 

Creating a habitual spot and attendant group of regulars is a social and spatial concern for producers. Script writers are restricted in their ability to introduce new characters. Thus the regulars must be friends. A complicated background story accompanies one-off appearances. For shows shot in a studio, having a single hub for characters to meet provides an economic solution for set builders. When shows break out of the studio, the regular spot transforms into an endless rotation of social spaces. TV constructed the regular and reflects their demise.

If the regular has left the screen, where have they gone? Blogs and magazines locate them at the bar. They depict an economic relationship; regulars go where they get discounted alcohol. Establishing a friendship with the barman lets the habitual customer stay solvent. After a few weeks of tipping heavily for a Manhattan, the barman will knock off a few cents off the bill and reach for top-shelf Rye. This drink-dispensing therapist is a universal trope: Italy boasts the barista, America the bartender, and Britain the chatty tearoom owner.

Unlike TV, which ignores the benefits regulars enjoy, these articles extol them. The habitual customer enters into a social capital network that ensures a convivial meal is only as far as their spot. This meal will be quality; their friends’ presence implicitly vouches good service, a lively atmosphere and a vibrant history. Through locating the regular in reality, magazines and blogs reinforce the myths surrounding them.

Being a regular is a romantic proposition. It signals an unchanging landscape in cities where nice cafes struggle to survive greedy landlords. The regular believes they’ll always enjoy the best table and feels assured having a reliable spot to suggest for meetings. As social media extends the realm of local to Google map’s scrolling borders, being a regular focuses the world around a specific spot. Goodbye debilitating choice. Goodbye postmodern city life. The regular enjoys this drink in this place at this time. Being a regular is a coping device for modern life. We’re not coping well. 

Analog and Digital Culture? It's a question of community, not luxury

I want to read a book. Not consume a story on a screen. Adieu Netflix! Ciao ciao Instagram! Tomorrow I’ll leave my kindle lying on my desk, close down my laptop and forget my iPhone. I want the physical world.

But I can’t figure out if I’m alone in my desires. On one hand, there’s Zoe Williams’ article for The Guardian, “Even my Furby knows it: our love affair with shopping is over,” which argues that we’ve entered a post-consumerist age in which the only things of values are personalized digital non-objects. According to Williams, I will be shopping alone at the bookstore this year.

On the other hand, it might not be so bleak. In "Digital Culture, Meet Analog Fever" for The New York Times, Rob Walker advocates for the continued allure of physical media as individuals use it to declare their devotion to preferred cultural forms. Rather than personalize our digital consumption, Walker sees society specializing its material consumption. Modern consumer society is undergoing a paradigm shift that fragments subject identities between physical and mental spaces. 

Digital media orients the subject in a mental realm through intentionally alienating interfaces. We’re supposed to lose ourselves in a warren of links when reading digital newspapers. Amazon boasts that the kindle dissolves the boundary between individual and book. Youtube leases our music listening to autoplay. Digital media isolates the subject as it individualizes our consumption of culture.

So-called analog media roots the subject in the physical world. Materiality limits us. We can only carry so many books. Our evenings can only accommodate so many performances. A band decides the songs they play at a gig, not us. Walker’s analog media reminds us that our freedom is not total.

But Walker omitted an important aspect. As I see it, it’s the defining aspect of physical culture: community.

If the proliferation of technology has generated a discourse of luxury surrounding material culture, this suggests that the marginalization of analog has reinforced consuming communities. Spending on a product for which technology provides a more convenient alternative asserts an identity. Walker understands this. This physical consumption also forces diverse subjects to enter a single shared space: to go to the bookstore or to the museum or to the theatre. These moments provide opportunities for interaction that unite our shared physical world with our individual mental realities. 

Digital encroachments on the analog don’t jeopardize this community. Although buying a book on Amazon is a solitary experience, the item may be shared and unite us with others. Watching a film at the cinema might be estranged from theatre’s immediacy, but the audience unites as they gasp and laugh. Analog culture forces us to interact with a community regardless of whether or not we identify with the product-as-luxury.

Analog media shouldn’t be reduced to a symbolic assertion of identity. It shouldn’t be exclusive. It should be a right and a ritual. It should be a given that reminds us of our humanity as physical beings with diverse perceptions. Let’s act like it