MIX Interiors invites Jasper Sanders to share his thoughts on ‘Things I Hate’. A light-hearted exploration of designers’ biggest pet peeves and industry bugbears.
‘Things I Hate’ – Design Pet Peeves
Jasper Sanders was invited by Mix Interiors to contribute to their recurring feature, Things I Hate — a light-hearted exploration of designers’ biggest pet peeves and industry bugbears. Jasper shares personal reflections and experiences that have shaped his views, offering thoughtful critiques on issues ranging from over-design to waste. With a mix of humour and conviction, he challenges us to think more deeply about what good design really means.
1 | Over-Design: When More Is Much Less
‘Over-design’ is often worse, and sometimes more damaging, than ‘under-design’. We convince ourselves that highly engineered objects, like say a Ferrari, must be good design simply because its more designed. But what exactly are we aspiring to? Why chase speeds we’ll never use, or justify larger engines that require heavier chassis and oversized brakes? It’s design for vanity. It’s understandable we’re biologically wired to demonstrate our capacity to provide, but we must also be conscious of the environmental cost that this kind of thinking inflicts on the planet.
An old boss once told me that good design must be generous. He meant kind and respectful – not greedy.
Contrast that with the Citroën Ami: identical doors on both sides to reduce tooling, fewer parts to reduce energy use, lightweight and perfectly suited to city life.
Good design isn’t ‘more design.’ It’s empathetic.
2 | Lazy Thinking: The Shortcut Illusion
Computer drawings today give an illusion of validity ‘if it’s been CAD’d, it must be right’. I started out on a drawing board, using Rotring pens. Every line had to be deliberate. Mistakes took minutes to scrape off with a razor blade. There were consequences to careless thinking.
Now? Ai lets us type a prompt and skip straight to a result, bypassing the value of process – the learning, the shaping, the critical thought that leads to better design. The internet has made things too easy. When everything is instantly available, what’s the motivation to be inquisitive and question?
Design requires curiosity, insight, and effort. Lazy thinking is one of my biggest pet peeves. Speed isn’t always progress.
3 | Design That Forgets People
My oven drives me mad. I’m no chef, but try finding the invisible touchscreen buttons under moody lighting – you need your phone torch just to warm food. How did that get signed off? Yes, make things beautiful, but never at the expense of function. Life’s too short to wrestle with appliances.
4 | Plastic Plants: The Irony of False Greenery
‘We want to boost well-being, let’s get plants!’ Great. ‘But we don’t want to look after them, so we’ll get plastic ones.’ Really? High-energy, petrochemical products that outlive us all, just to fake biophilia? Meanwhile, real plants clean the air, support biodiversity, and uplift us. It feels utterly self-defeating.
5 | Outside-In Architecture: Missing the Human Point
Buildings should work from the inside out, but too often they’re designed for the street, not the people inside.
There are exceptions: the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, where sweeping roof gardens blur the line between sky and ground; or the Lloyd’s Building in London and the Schröder House in Utrecht, where form follows experience.
Interior design isn’t just colouring the inside of the outside. It’s about shaping spaces people belong to. We may design for clients, but it’s the public who lives with the outcome. And the planet? It picks up the tab.
6 | Waste: The World’s Worst Design
When I was six, my mother told me, ‘Never drop litter, always put it in the bin.’ I asked where it went. ‘A man takes it away,’ she said. ‘Where to?’ ‘Landfill,’ she replied.
So…official litter dropping, then? Even as a child, that seemed absurd.
Decades on, we’re still filling holes in the ground with waste. This has to be my ultimate design pet peeve. Yet every day, we have the opportunity to rethink how we use materials – to make what we need without harming everything else.
Read the full article on Mix Interiors