(via Yanko Design and Interior design room)

This is a very pretty picture of a tea kettle which burns your tea.

See, here’s the thing. This is obviously the work of a talented artist. I’m not sure if it’s actually been manufactured or this is just a 3D rendering, but it looks nice and clearly the artist put a lot of effort into it.

But it’s not a design. Designs work. You don’t just draw a picture of the teapot of your dreams. You research how tea is brewed. You build prototypes. You test, you refine, you start over. And maybe you end up with something good.

Had the artist actually done any of that work, he would have found out that you can’t brew tea in boiling water. It’s too hot. It causes the essential oils to denature or evaporate or something, and the tea becomes undrinkably bitter.

This is why I can’t stand concept cars, flexible cell phones, gravity-powered lamps, and all the other nonsense manufacturers pretend they can build (not to mention make road-safe and nontoxic) just for the press attention. The judges of design contests that give awards to things like this should be ashamed. If it doesn’t work, it’s not a design—it’s just a picture.