In September 2026, after the close of the London Design Festival, the first volume of the monograph The Product Design 100 appeared on shelves — a Design Burger publication that seeks to capture the current state of industrial design in material form.
The book, at around 325–360 pages, presents 100 real products from studios and brands of varying scale: from the legacy of Barber Osgerby and the work of Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison to projects by Rimowa, Vitra, Nothing and teenage engineering. There is no single theme in the selection, but a common thread of quality and attention to detail runs through it.
Design Burger, founded in 2018 by industrial designers Alex Philpott, Oscar Pearce, Kester Page and Joe Slatter, has over eight years turned its platform for promoting designers into a physical archive. The graphic design was done in collaboration with Collaborate London, and the format — a substantial linen binding of 230 × 300 mm — underscores the intention to create a durable object.
In an era when product images flash endlessly through feeds without context or attribution, and some of them do not exist in reality at all, a return to a curated printed edition takes on particular meaning. The monograph captures a moment when design balances between luxury craft, highly specialised devices and solutions dictated by environmental requirements.
Among the participants are both large corporations such as Nike, Google and Meta and small studios. Not all the projects will become commercial hits; some have already vanished under the pressure of hype and entrepreneurial risks. The book honestly shows that not every beautiful image turns into a lasting product.
The release is accompanied by an exhibition at Shoreditch Design Week, which reinforces the publication's role as not merely a catalogue but a starting point for a conversation about the industry's future. Unlike endless digital compilations, a physical book forces you to slow down and examine how form, function and commerce intertwine in real objects.
Thus The Product Design 100 reminds us: in a world where visual noise grows faster than the things themselves, it is precisely carefully selected material evidence that helps us understand where industrial design is heading and what in it truly matters.
