I have one like this one listed on Ebay. It is very handy and the best looking mini mixer I have ever seen. The thumb switch is too small, and smooth and far forward for good fingertip control of speed, however. But, again, the design is amazingly elegant and handy otherwise. Who designed this?
Elegant as in not more or les...
Elegant as in not more or less than needed to do the job well. Pleasing geometric form language. No unnecessary ornament. Compact. Slim. Neatly integrated logo. Inverted trapezoid side profile creates inverted massing and corresponding lightness with right-side-up trapezoid hand slot to create counter balance and scalar self-similarity at two scales. Add a dash of dark color at the base to create a balance between the inverted massing of the handle with the dark color of the base adds further balance. Again, the only thing to dislike for me is the too small and slippery speed knob on top. To me this humble little HB Mixette is an example of all that was good about modern, HP, and could be again, to borrow from Field of Dreams. 🙂
Tell me: what do see inelegant about it?
The trapezoid which you like...
The trapezoid which you like I can't stand (why make injection moulding more complex than it already is?) The lettering is too small, the two tone colouring is unecessary, theres nowhere for the cord to wrap, the buttons look small (as you say) it looks undersized and is too angular, its shrewish and no doubt noisy.
This is electronics done the way they should be!
http://members.tripod.com/cheryldrake_1/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpi...
Or like this. I can't quite...
Or like this. I can't quite explain why I own 2 out of these 3, I'm neither a woman nor do I shave.
Though if anyone has a Braun Sixtant or the Marcant 6 I will give you a fair price.
DC I salute your passion, I presume you can't stand much of what is offered to us on the market, these vile silver and blue things which try and seduce us with their whores glamour! I'd rather mix food by hand them have some new nasty Chinese contraption in my house.
http://messmate.blogspot.com/
HP...
The radios you pictured are perhaps not a useful comparison with a mixer, since it would be rather busy to have a perfectly rectilinear mixer in a brushed aluminum case covered with 15 or 20 perfectly round, machined knobs of varying sizes when only one was needed. 🙂
"Shrewish" is also an aesthetics term with which I am unfamiliar, though I kind of like the sound of it. 😉
Regarding your distaste for trapezoids, I am not quite sure how to respond. Would you consider it persuasive and enlightening criticism by me, if I were to say I do not like the radios you pictured, because I intrinsically detest circles and squares? Probably not.
One has to look at the forms played with and evaluate whether the way they are managed is deft aesthetically and contribute favorably to function. If they add function and pleasing form, making injection moulding harder (and this case of the HP Mixette hardly seems a challenge in this regard) becomes a worthwhile tradeoff, if you can sell the thing at the resulting price point.
Frankly, I thought one of the tenants of modernist design was a willingness to explore composition in a form language that included most kinds of geometric forms where and when these forms contributed positively to the function.
Also, I thought it was okay to make use of abstraction where it simplified the interface with an object and so improved function (we don't have to expose structure and underlying components, if doing so fails to make something easier to use).
Having held and used this Mixette, I think the trapezoidal compositions and abstraction of structure (covering of electronic innards) contribute postively on both counts. Its easy to handle. Well balanced. More pleasing visually than most mini mixers I've seen. And I think about what I'm mixing and not about the mixer (except for the speed button), when I am using it.
There is no law that says all electric appliances need to look like a Grundig electric radio by Porsche. Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing Porche break out a little. Surely the company that penned the 911 sports car can do more than circles and squares.
HP...
Even old Braun coffee pots had a tad more feel good, than a classic, manly Aryan Braun Dieter Rams electric razor, which I happen to own and still use occassionally when I tire of lathering up and whacking whiskers with my new five edge rig from Gilette, or whomever.
In turn, your pictures of electric shavers do not shed much light on how a mixer ought to look IMHO. What they look like is what a shaver you travel with might look like, if you need to take it in and out of your pocket alot. They have a form language aspiring to more organic shape (read flattened jelly beans) that appeal to persons who prefer organic shapes to geometric shapes. Alas, this flattened jelly bean form language doesn't really contribute all that much function to something you don't need to slip in and out of your pocket. Why should a Braun electric razor one uses daily in one's bathroom, or carries with one in luggage, or a small kitchen mixer used in a kitchen, be designed like a flattened jelly bean? It escapes me, unless, perhaps, the Braun razor and Mixette were being designed for a homeless person (not a bad idea in the currently corporate welfare encumbered country I live in).
I'm being a little bit playful here, but I'm sure you see my point about the superficiality and arbitrariness of these Braun designs you have pictured. Yes, I like them, but not because they are good examples of modernist design principles. Quite the contrary, they seem rather "heavy modern" in my terminology. They seem all about surfaces and shapes and colors that are essentially unrelated to function at all. I don't know their time period, but they seem designed chiefly to catch the eye in an electronics store, catalogue, or what have you. Exactly why are they loud colors? What do these loud colors contribute to function? Could I really not find them in the box at night unless they were loudly colored? Why are two monochromatic and one is bichromatic? Why aren't their edges less round, or more round? Aren't they hard to stand up on a counter, while I'm reaching for my hair of the dog Bloody Mary? Why isn't there any padding on any of them to reduce the unpleasantness of the vibration in my fingers? Why don't the cords retract into them? Why do they need the nuisance of a box to store their cords? Can't the cleaning brush be recessed into them some way also? Forget the stupid box. The old Hamilton Beach Mixette has a pasteboard box I can store the cord in for Christ's sake. I want a retractable cord for storage...that would be progress.
Hp...
I am willing to entertain nominations for better designed electric hand held mixers than the HB Mixette, when you find them and picture them. Until then, however, I will have to stick with my new old HB with the unfortunate speed control. This made in America item still running strong after several decades was a steal at fifty cents. I have long hated lugging my wife's monumental Kitchen Aid out of the cabinet to mix up topping for my mom's apple crisp recipe, or for the Normandy and Ligerian cooking I am fond of undertaking on occassion.
As post script, serious cooks (home or restaurant varieties) hand mix with a whisk chiefly ingredients that are easy to hand mix or require some delicacy of folding not available with a hand electric mixer or an industrial strength batter beater. They don't frig around hand mixing anything that can be done as well and faster by an electric mixer. I would even go so far as to say serious cooks hand mix that which can be done with an electric mixer about as often as Hans Wegner whittled Danish modern wood furniture with a pocket knife. A serious cook who hand mixes a Betty Crocker cake mix for a kid's birthday party is quite irrational. And one who makes a cake from scratch for a kid's birthday is just plain nuts. The kids can't taste the difference. And the parents wish they weren't there and could care less about the damn cake! 🙂
As post post script, I too admire your passion, HP, and eagerly await your recommendations on electric hand mixers. I am nothing if not stubbornly open to improvement and change in the kitchen.
By the way, do you know who designed the HB Mixette? 🙂
it comes down to beauty is...
it comes down to beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose but...
I posted the radio image not as any suggestion of what a mixer itself might look like but how the functions of the radio were handled without resorting to sharpened angularity, I admire the way many products clearly reflect their manufacture (cylinders from a lathe etc) and I can't see that in the mixer.
I think a critisicm based on a gut reaction or a dislike of a particular shape (I personally HATE hexagons)is quite legitimate if its not masquerading as a reasoned argument.
One major aspect of modernism is an innate conservatism and sense of moderation, we have been modern for so long and are so drenched with it now that to speak of it as anything "new" would be anachronistic, its the known language of designers and apart from a few mavericks is adhered to strictly. I think its comforting to have a "form language" (Braun had a language under Rams, the mixer was a poorly pronounced word) which does not walk its own path whenever a new problem is encountered.
Two questions, you've admitted it doesn't function entirely well and I havn't heard you say its beautiful?
Is it either? To you? I do not have anything in my house that is not one, the other or both.
An informative response a good question...
Answer: I find it very pleasing visually. I find almost no appliances or industrial devices beautiful. Beauty usually requires compromises of function that appliances and industrial devices cannot tolerate. I find this HB Mixette elegantly designed in a light modern, pre high tech sort of way. The angles you dislike I like. The trapezoids you dislike, I like aestehtically and find functional in this mixer. A handy electric hand-held mixer that you dislike, because you'd rather hand mix, I like, because I do enough mixing by hand to relish when I can save the elbow grease on inconsequential things for important dishes.
Tangentially, I've always disliked the disingenuousness marketing of "industrial grade" in home appliances and home power tools. I live in a home. I am not ashamed of that. I don't need a drill that will penetrate three quarter inch thick sheet steel. I don't need a mixer that will make the dough for 5000 loaves of bread and 10,000 pizzas and blend batters for 45,000 cakes. You get my drift here.
I AM bored with the digital electronic high tech for the sake of digital electronic high tech look. I like the digital electronic high tech look in things that ARE digtal electronic and high tech. I don't see a mixer as remotely high tech, whether they make use of a few dumb chips, or not. As I said, everything doesn't need to look like a Grundig radio by Porsche, or an iPod for that matter, or a flattened transluscent gum drop.
In what ever form language one chooses to work in, the form of the thing ought to be a feasible fit between it components space requirements and its users ergonomic requirements and be as beautiful within these constraints as possible. On this we likely agree completely.
I find the HB Model 97 Mixette quite pleasing visually in a light modern sort of way. I think the angular trapezoidal form language used helps the function and helps the look of a mixer manifest rather than be supressed.
I think the unfortunate speed control was probably the result of a man who didn't actually use mixers designing the mixer. He probably was a fairly good designer who focused on how it felt in his dry hand and thought of the mixer being used with dry hands and in linear, 1, 2, 3 sort of way the way he used his power tools of that time. Find the right speed, set it and forget it. He got the speed control wrong. But he got the package quite right. And the speed control could have easily been fixed without altering the package or its look or broader functionality substantively at all.
Pt. 2
Finally, to reiterate, I don't need or want my mixer to look high tech. Frankly, what I like most about this HB Mixette is that despite its light modern form language, actually largely because of it, it truly looks like the function of a hand mixer, and not of a shaver or a radio, or a generic digital electronic high tech applicance. Ever since the Dieter Rams days, at least, design has IMHO adopted an electronic high tech form language that visually labels an appliance electric (and now digital), rather than visually labelling it the kind of appliance that it is (i.e., its function). At the time this HB mixette was made, HB made electric knives in a similar light modern form language at similar level of abstraction, but they used different forms for the knife than hey did for the mixer. They did not have to make everything look like a polished steel rectalinear box, or a flattened gum drop. Why the presense of digital electronics became more important to convey than the actual function of the appliance remains a mystery to me.
The digital high tech box is appropriate when you have alot of knob-clutter to deal with, I suppose. But there is nothing sacred about the flattened jelly bean of certain shavers and cell phones IMHO nor the monochromatic wafer look of the iPod and certain other cell phones. Cell phone will eventually escape the Star Trek look. iPods will probably move beyond neo Dieter Rams on a silicon diet.
But why can't a mix master have inverted massing and counter balancing trapezoids when it helps the handling of the mixer and looks nifty in a light modern sort of way? I see considerable virtue and no sin (beyond the speed control) in this humble, low end, vintage American made apppliance by HB.
Again, I thoroughly appreciate and respect your thoughts and comments and find them informative and helpful even though on this particular little mixer we disagree.
kitchen Aid
i put my money on the kitchen Aid mixer . my wife bought one when we moved in to our new home 10 months ago in sleek stainless steel and it is sleek!!!! this mixer has been around for over 45 years and i hate to say i got my first one when i got married 30 years ago next week , I lost it in the Divorce but that was o.k. since i never even knew how to flip the switch and getting rid of the natsy woman i called my wife was well worth seeing the sleek kitchen aid go.
This machine has not changed in design but new gadgets have been added over the years to compete with competeors but the basic design has remained the same, Sleek, sleek, sleek. To me it goes in the book with the best designs of the 20 th century with the Olivette typewrite , and Henry Dryfuss bakelite telephone.
dcwilson
single best thing i ever did was say good buy to that nasty bitch 14 months after i married her and her kitchen Aid, and the Canada Jell-o . just a few funny things that i can remember about that whole fiasco, of 14 months. we all make mistakes put that one for some reason added up to 10 all at once,
I am just glad my life turned out so good with out her, dragging me down .
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