Deconstructing Product Design

Juicy Salif

Philippe Starck for Alessi, 1990

1. The Juicy Salif — the name apparently derived from the French word for saliva, salive — has become iconic in the field of product design. Designed by Philippe Starck, the lemon juicer’s commercial success is rivaled only by its unapologetic emphasis on form over function. Philippe Starck’s reply to such criticism: “Sometimes you must choose why you design — in this case not to squeeze lemons, even though as a lemon squeezer it works. Sometimes you need some more humble service: on a certain night, the young couple, just married, invites the parents of the groom to dinner, and the groom and his father go to watch football on the TV. And for the first time the mother of the groom and the young ...