Core77

Lately we've noticed design (both good and bad) has crept into an unexpected place: commercial bathrooms. Remember when paper towel dispensers were just a tin box with that minimal handcrank? And if you've ever worked in a restaurant and had to refill one, you hated that they were opaque, meaning you'd have to open it to see if it was due for a refill or not.

Nowadays most paper towel dispensers are translucent, and many lack that germ-retaining crank. Some are sensually shaped while others have a clinical, hospitalized aesthetic. There's also a new batch of dispensers coming out of China that seem rather complicated; were we forced to design those, we'd walk away from the project and announce "We wash our hands of this whole thing."

Sources after the jump.

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