February: Designed to provoke
Creating things you want to touch
Do Not Touch! Hands Off! Do Not Press! No Entry!
We’ve all seen the warnings, whether it’s in a museum, a gallery, a boujee jewellery shop, someone else’s husband*
We know the rules.
(We’re not to touch)
Naturally, we do it anyway.
Humans, we’re like that. We’re nosey little fu(K$rs
There’s just something about a huge red “DO NOT PRESS” button that feels physically impossible to ignore. Surely, it’s not just us, but the second we see it, every cell in our body aches for us to touch it.
*I was joking about the husbands; they are safe. You don’t need to worry about them.
But art, sculpture, artefacts… those, they’re a different story.
Wild horses couldn’t drag us away.
We brush fingers over resin. Test weight. Press a thumb where we probably shouldn’t. We want to know what something is, not just how it looks.
This is rarely about ownership.
It’s about curiosity.
Which, if we’re honest, is how humans tend to work too.
There’s a familiar pull towards people we’re not meant to get too close to.
(Take Hot Priest in Fleabag, need I say more.)
Not to possess.
Just to understand them.
To work out their edges. To see if what you sense from a distance holds up at closer range.
We want BAG&BONES objects to behave in much the same way.
To register before thought arrives.
Texture, temperature, resistance. These things tell you quickly whether something feels solid or fragile, reassuring or unsettling, worth your attention or best left alone.
Good objects invite touch.
Great ones introduce hesitation.
We like objects that make you pause. That leave you wondering, can I touch it? What will it feel like?What even is it?
We inhabit increasingly abstract lives.
Screens everywhere. Everything weightless. Everything scrollable. So when an object has presence - real mass, real gravity - it stops us.
We notice.
Design that understands this doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t perform. It simply is. Like a person who doesn’t need to fill the silence to hold attention.
Some objects are polite. Others misbehave slightly. They droop. They melt. They lean. They appear caught mid-action, as if interrupted.
We’re drawn to that slight defiance. Not because it’s impractical, but because it refuses to be purely functional.
At BAG&BONES, this is where our interest sits. In the in-between.
Objects that make you pause. Things you return to without quite knowing why. Pieces that invite interaction, even when you try not to.
Not loudly.
Just persistently.
Because living with objects isn’t really about filling space.
It’s about what draws your hand when you’re not thinking. What you reach for absent-mindedly. What stays with you.
That’s usually where emotion enters.
Quietly.
Through touch.
And once you notice it, it’s hard to stop.
