Tactile

Recreating the joy of physical buttons View the project Sometimes you find a design that strikes a chord of wonder and nostalgia. As we race to put glossy, glassy touch screens on everything around us, there is a rising wave of desire for actual engineered mechanisms. Touch, it turns out, must also include a physicality in order for us, as humans, to be satisfied. Buttons, toggles, switches, knobs, levers, handles, pulls — all are designed to connect with our most basic and arguably most important tool, our hands. Car manufacturers are reverting from touch interfaces to go back to physical buttons. People are building and customizing mechanical keyboards. Even the kids are feeling the nostalgia and the bite of monthly streaming subscription fees and going back to dedicated MP3 players with physical buttons. One notable company who has been designing and building stylish products even before this latest nostalgia wave, is Teenage Engineering. I first came across them when they released…