Scandinavian Design

A lot of people think of Ikea and cheesy teak furniture and light brown colour-schemes from the 70s when they think of Scandinavian design. Holy point-missing, Batman. Those people have completely missed the boat.
I sit here in my cold Canadian summer and think how my country used to have these great similarities with Sweden. I wish they could be re-gained. No, I am not talking about this supposedly flawless social net, like when one friend (a wobbly as I recall) said "y'know Sweden has an incredible support system, there's virtually no homeless in Sweden, for example." !. I answered: "y'know, it gets to be -70 in Sweden so Of Course there's no homeless because they all freeze to death." Idiots.
No, Canadian social care has it's issues, but if one looks at our neighbours, they seem rather small.

I don't know if any of you saw the story of the Avro Arrow. Avro Arrow!, Canada was developing what (at the time) was the best combat aircraft in the world, bar none. Unfortunately some hack politicians and America got in the way. The aeronautics industry is limited to making shuttle arms in this country now. Impressive.
Sweden, despite being much smaller in land area and natural resource And having between one third and one quarter of our populace, still manages to make beautiful aircraft.

Now I have no idea at all about the automotive industry in Canada, but I can attest to its state in Sweden. Stunning, beautiful, immaculate. Saab being one creator of excellent design and Koenigsegg being - well, King.


Alright, in the interest of not taking All your time while I rant about someone else being in a posish that I would like to see Us in, I shall finish up with some exemplary design in cutting edge electronics and media. My favourite purveyor of media goods for a long time standing has been a company called Bang & Olufsen.