Culture

The Soy Sauce Bottle, Post-its, and 9 Other Everyday Icons of Industrial Design

The passing of Kenji Ekuan, inventor of the soy sauce bottle, spurred an appreciation for other everyday icons we can’t live without.
Image may contain Drink Alcohol Beverage Sake and Beer
Soy sauce bottles are placed on the table with chopsticks and other condiments at a restaurant in Tokyo Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015. It’s a simple glass bottle with a red top that has become a symbol of soy sauce in Japan and much of the world. More than half a century after its creation, the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle remains a familiar and comforting shape on restaurant and dining room tables in many countries. The bottle’s designer, Kenji Ekuan, died Saturday, Feb. 7 of a heart condition at age 85. Japanese on the bottle reads: Premium unprocessed soybeans soy sauce. Japanese on the red bottle reads: Seven flavored red pepper. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)Photo: AP

Kenji Ekuan, the Japanese industrial designer who created that ubiquitous soy sauce bottle, died at the age of 85 on Sunday. His passing has spurred a deluge of appreciation online for his simple yet indispensable design—over 300 million soy sauce bottles have been sold since the bottle’s invention in 1961. Inspired by this unsung hero of industrial design, we’ve rounded up ten other everyday objects we take for granted, but couldn’t live without.

1 / 10
Photo: Getty Images
The Post-it Note
Chemist Spencer Silver invented the magical low-tack adhesive back in the late sixties, but it wasn’t until 1974, when his colleague Arthur Fry was trying to think of a way to keep bookmarks in his hymnals from falling out, that the Post-it note was born.