Who makes WiFi routers, with those swollen-blob, low-polygon, trypophobic plastic cases that look like they came from a parallel universe where German Democratic Republic industrial designers toil over overclocked EB Kombinat Robotron PCs running cracked copies of Autodesk under the watchful eye of stopwatch-bearing Stasi agents? Rain Noe of Core 77 says "there seem to be at least seven guidelines that designers of routers follow."
They include:
- Take a geometric shape, then warp it, so it looks like you earned that design degree.
- Add facets, the more the better.
- Add facets and a splash of a hi-tech color.
- Add facets and attention-getting vents.
- Mold decorative grooves into at least one face.
- Use multiple surface textures, matte, shiny, vented, etc.
