Es-Presso

Psychologists tell us that we unconsciously favour the physically attractive. Beautiful people earn more, are more likely to be employed in an interview, get better service in shops, are smiled at more than the rest of us, and generally preferred in innumerable ways every day of their blessed lives.

I have a similar prejudice about inanimate objects. I think beautiful things are going to be better, more efficient, easier to use than ugly things, and I want this to be true and will maintain it against all evidence to the contrary. (I seem to remember reading something along the lines that useful things are necessarily beautiful, but that's a different matter).

So it is that I want this to be the best coffee maker in the world.


I've never tasted a cup of coffee from this machine, but I want it to be perfect. The design is so starkly brilliant, so simple, in contrast to the overpriced contraptions that look more like Victorian steam organs than something that might make a decent cup of coffee, that I want it to be good.

It is called the Presso, and it was designed by Patrick Hunt, of design consultancy Therefore.

There are several nifty videos of it being demonstrated on youtube.

Can you tell I've been enjoying my coffee lately?