Chasing good design is an arduous journey and discovering the codes can be a most wonderful revelation.

Aficionados who cherish good products know about design codes that make their babys unique in a world of copy paste fast forward fashion and short lived trends.

Good design stays, and what makes these products special are design codes – special features that make them recognisable at first sight.

Take the snowflake hour hand of the Black Bay, the teardrop shaped glasses of the Aviator or the curved back of the 911 and you catch the spirit of distinction.

Mostly these features derive from a functional perspective, underlining the design archetype “form follows function”; sometimes they are born from pure serendipity, and become the distinguished code as a side effect.

The rather heavy, crisp edged base of the hartmud cup was the result of our mission to create a heavy duty robust coffee cup that would have good grip and be easy to handle and be piled up for service in a high frequency specialty shop. Luckily our studio was careful enough to protect this exact design feature in the first hour after its birth.

Today the edged cup base has become the design code that makes hartmud unique and your cup distinguishable at first sight.

In the end when chasing future classics we are looking for these codes, along with superior product quality, scarcity stemming from limited production numbers and that solemn beauty that humbly stands out from today’s mass production.