I haven’t blogged much lately—been busy with the transition and setup of PureModern UK, but in the course of that I’ve become a consumer of products I don’t regularly buy and have experienced a valuable lesson about design. When you move from one country to another you often have to buy things you’ve owned for years, in my case, a new television. I happened upon the new line of Samsung LED TV’s ultra thin super cool and premium price. I rationalized this purchase by saying - hey I have a small flat I should get something thin that doesn’t project out into the room… seems logical Here is where the lesson begins:

The TV is clearly about design - sold to look like beautiful moving photograph on your wall with its extremely bright 1080p image. Well that advanced design comes with flaws in the manufacturing—not all advances in technology come smoothly as we all know as computer users. But when these bumps in the road happen you look to a company to make it right. Samsung is NOT one of those companies. I’ve been put thru the ringer. I have owned this television for 6 months - of that time 3 months it has been in the possession of their “repair center” ... i use the quotations to make the point that repairing it seems to be the least of their concerns as it has been returned to me and taken away for more “repair” two additional times. Samsung corporate refuses to refund the purchase saying they have to “repair” it… and I get the pleasure of continuing to look at a blank wall that has a full subscription to cable

So again with the LESSON… high design does not equal high quality. High price does not equal reliability. This is a lesson I try to impress upon our design clients that you can spend 10K on a sofa or 2k and you may well get the better product at 2k.... I failed in that I didn’t heed my own lecture and bought solely on design.

I hope this experience can serve as a reminder to our readers, customers, and clients - that form and function must happen together and within the context of the space… sacrifice and compromise are not the same thing.

Please not that the image I post here is provided courtesy of SAMSUNG… my personal TV image can be see on the link below..