.jpg)
“Nobody stops at a stop sign and thinks: ‘When are they going to redesign that? It’s so old!’”
So declared Susan Kare, the American artist and graphic designer, during a design panel in Paris for the buzzy digital security company Ledger. Kare, renowned for her pioneering work at Apple—where she created many of the company’s earliest and enduring bitmap icons and typefaces—was brought on by Ledger to “add a little graphic welcome,” via interchangeable plug elements on its latest storage device, the Ledger Nano Gen5.
That same company also employs Ian Rogers, former chief digital officer of LVMH (and another Apple alum) and, currently, Ledger’s chief experience officer. A few minutes prior to the panel, he told me that “the more time we spend with technology, the more we’ll value human connection. You don’t fall in love with a robot—you fall in love with a human.”
Both were speaking to the same idea: that what feels essential to human life—things experienced away from screens—remains vital to design, even as tech’s importance compounds. Fittingly, this year’s Design Miami.Paris, which alongside Art Basel now anchors Paris’s annual October art and design week, marks Apple’s first direct participation in the fair. The brand commissioned four artists for a series called “Designers of Tomorrow.” The twist? Each used an iPad to create their work.
Of course, big tech looms over nearly every conversation today. It has its hand, or rather its code, in everything. Yet from a design standpoint, it seems there’s an emerging return to the behavioral, the emotional, the biological, and even the nostalgic. Hand-crafted and artisanal methods have been trending for a while, yes—but what I sensed in Paris felt different: an aesthetic grounded in lived experience. The world may be accelerating forward on crypto, AI, and quantum computing, but design, rather nicely, seems to be rediscovering its innately human appeal.
Harry Nuriev–who is known for his tech-y aesthetic of chrome and hyper-modernity–has set up an installation on Paris’s Left Bank called Objets Trouvés. It features rows of aluminium boxes filled with, seemingly, junk; a broken tennis racket, a tattered tote bag. To enter, one must give an object, and to leave, one must take an object. I gave a yoga T-shirt that I happened to have in my bag (clean!) and took a “Hits of the 1960s” CD. When you depart, staffers certify it, and provide a certificate of authenticity. It was the most analog, low-tech example of art I saw in Paris, and it stands nicely in juxtaposition to Nuriev’s future-glancing M.O. And sure, there’s nothing as human as browsing a marketplace, even if the setup here differed from your usual bazaar or flea.
Milan-based Nilufar Gallery has brought examples of Audrey Large’s lighting to its Design Miami.Paris installation, and they’re weirdly, magnetically beautiful. I’m not sure that a lung is something Large was actually going for, but it’s impossible not to see it, and, to kind of feel it. I found myself staring at the golden glow of the oblong shapes, focusing on my breathing and resetting in the moment. I’d love to have that as a daily reminder around the house. This was my favorite piece at Design Miami.Paris.
.JPG)
Maui-based designer James de Wulf’s Design Miami.Paris installation is a ping pong x dining table that also functions as a sound bath, and it was awarded a “Best in Show” prize by the fair’s jurors. When playing, fine-tuned metal plates emit a church bell or organ-like reverb from their planes. It’s a strange sensation, aurally and tangibly, yet it reminded me of summer nights playing table tennis with my grandfather–well before cell phones were commonplace.
This collaboration debuted at Salone del Mobile, but it’s too beautiful to not include, and its backstory is apropos of the topic: Charlotte Perriand purpose-built some of these pieces—now on view at Galerie Patrick Seguin—solely as pragmatic one-offs, without commercialization in mind. The “Rio de Janeiro Bookcase” from 1962–which blockily invokes the mosaic patterns of Ipanema and Copacabana’s boardwalks–is notable in this regard. It was designed by Perriand for her husband Jacques Martin’s apartment in the Brazilian city, originally intended as singular objects. It was meant to carry not only books, but display art, hold lamps, et al. It’s an extraordinary piece of humanity-imbued design, which Saint Laurent, under Anthony Vaccarello, has brought back in a limited-edition run.
.jpg)
Designer Duyi Han’s Apple-underwritten piece at Design Miami.Paris is a surfboard-shaped mirror that opens as if it were a locket. Han used AI to make it, and yet, perhaps intentionally ironically, the work very clearly depicts a human body and written-out thoughts. (Here’s one: “Your nervous system is your first language.”) I looked at it for a long while, and I liked the tension of what, at first, feels like something developed by hand and eye, but that was ultimately tested and developed via the screen. Han’s was the most intriguing of the Apple commissions.