Design Burger Has Made a Book – The Product Design 100
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A Snapshot of Industrial Design Today
Posted - 17 February 2026
For nearly a decade, Design Burger has followed contemporary product and industrial design as it unfolds. Through exhibitions in Milan, London, Shanghai, and San Francisco, along with interviews, studio visits, intimate dinners, and daily publishing, we have kept a steady focus: to highlight work that is thoughtful and culturally aware.
The Product Design 100 continues this effort, brought together in a physical form. It is our first book and represents an attempt to turn years of observation, research, and curation into a format that lasts beyond the fast pace of the digital world.
Pre-sale is now open via designburgershop.com.
Digital publishing has let industrial design reach a global audience quickly. Projects can be shared instantly and seen across continents within hours. For over a decade, we have worked in this environment, using our platform to support designers, studios, and manufacturers in the industry. We also contribute to discussions about contemporary product design.
Our commitment remains unchanged. The book is not a shift away from digital publishing but a different expression of it. While quick access has increased visibility, it has also made it harder to step back and understand the broader landscape. Work appears, attracts attention, and is quickly replaced by the next release.
In the past year, we began to ask a different question: what does industrial design look like today when viewed from a distance instead of in real-time? Not speculative concepts or purely digital images, but real products that have been made, released, and put in the hands of users.
The Product Design 100 is our way of celebrating the industry we have long supported, this time in a format that allows for a slower pace and gives projects a more permanent, thoughtful, and curated platform.
The book was developed gradually through ongoing research. We sourced projects mainly from established editorial platforms and design week events, with Instagram serving as an additional tool to find smaller studios outside of the mainstream.
Each project had to meet specific criteria. The work needed to exist in the real world, whether commercially available or developed to a high level of detail. It required strong documentation and clear intent. Beyond that, the selection was guided by relevance to the broader conversation about industrial design and its changing priorities, not by trends or style.
What emerged is not a single aesthetic or unified movement but a wide range of approaches. Variations in material use, manufacturing logic, sustainability strategies, and user experience reflect the diversity of modern practice. The book does not aim to define this landscape but to document it.
Alongside the one hundred featured projects, The Product Design 100 includes a series of written contributions that frame the selection within a broader cultural and industrial context.
The publication opens with a foreword by Benjamin A. Pardo and an introduction by Maria Cristina Didero, whose curatorial and editorial work has significantly influenced discussions about contemporary design.
Contributions in the form of short essays come from Alastair Curtis, Julie Rochez, Norman Teague, Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd of Pearson Lloyd, and Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay of Raw Edges. Together, these voices represent a range of views in design leadership, studio practice, and critical reflection. Their texts do not try to define a single direction for the field but offer different perspectives that enrich and complicate the snapshot presented through the projects.
From the beginning, we envisioned the book as more than just a collection of images. It needed to reflect the standards of the work it showcases, both materially and visually.
We collaborated with Jon Cefai of Collaborate London as our design partner. Jon approached the project with care and precision, creating a typographic system and layout that emphasises clarity and readability. The design avoids unnecessary graphics, allowing each project to keep its own identity while fitting well within a cohesive structure.
The format is intentional: a 230 x 300 mm trim size across 360 pages, produced as a hardback with a linen cover. The proportions let you experience the images at scale while keeping a sense of balance. A controlled grid system supports the entire book, ensuring rhythm across chapters and providing each project the space it needs. Captions are direct and factual, reinforcing the book’s role as both a reference and a visual document.
The book is produced in collaboration with KOPA, established in 1991 and known as one of Europe’s top quality-focused printing houses. Production has prioritized material integrity, color accuracy, and long-term durability, ensuring the physical book reflects the precision of the projects it contains.
KOPA operates with a strong commitment to the environment. Their production facility is partly powered by a 450 kW on-site solar plant and meets ISO 14001 environmental management standards. They are FSC certified for responsibly sourced paper and recycle all production waste, including paper, aluminum plates, plastics, and ink containers. The goal was to create an object that is both well-made and responsibly produced.
The Product Design 100 will officially launch during London Design Festival 2026 in partnership with Shoreditch Design Week.
The presentation will take the form of a pop-up store and curated display in Shoreditch, bringing the publication into a setting that reflects Design Burger’s broader exhibition history. Visitors will have the chance to interact with the book, explore selected featured products, and engage with the projects at a slower pace than what digital platforms typically allow. The focus will be on proximity and thoughtful engagement rather than scale.
Pre-sale is now open via designburgershop.com.
After years of documenting the design landscape in motion, this book represents a chance to step back and observe it in context.
