Polarstern

There’s something particular about design competitions for consumer products. A corporation picks a theme—”Mystic Ice World”—and two hundred designers throw ideas at it, knowing maybe one will stick and they’ll get acknowledged in some limited way. Gorbachev vodka ran one of these a few years back. The winner was Gabriela Berdecio from Barcelona, and her design was called Polarstern: a starry night sky on midnight blue, cold and clear and not trying too hard.

But what gets to me is all the design that doesn’t make it. Someone spent time on a dozen directions for this bottle, sketches and half-thoughts, and now they don’t exist anywhere except maybe in a notebook. The thinking that happens and just ends. That’s the actual work of design most of the time—the invisible part.

The winning bottle is genuinely good though. You see it and you know exactly what it is.