Impractical Designs

Regarding “The Imagery of Business: Products Should Look Just Like What They Do,” the May 31 Viewpoints column by Michael McCoy:

I’d be the first to agree on the need for more flexibility and creativity in design, while recognizing the matter is by no means new, existing long before there were any “American industrial designers.”

There are a variety of competing and contradicting needs to address. True efficiency is not automatically bad.

As for the products whose designs McCoy cited, that long, slim toaster could be a storage-placement problem. So could the video camera, which also may present a cleaning problem.

And will the compact disc player tumble easily? All in all, what is really new and “advanced” about these ideas? The pretention caused McCoy to waste a lot of space that could have gone to more useful information on the topic. No magic, please.

PAUL H. LOGAN

Los Angeles