The common or garden picnic table is something that has been ripe for reinvention for a while.

As anyone who has ever enjoyed a scotch egg in the park in company of friends and family (or maybe your sworn enemies, I don’t know how you picnic) can testify, the picnic bench is a strange contraption. Convenient but never really comfortable, it forces those using it to engage with it in prescribed ways. There is no true opportunity for lounging on a picnic bench, no way to loll and dream your time away in the hazy days of summer. Well not until recently that is.

It’s hardly going to turn up your lounge as a replacement for the sofa but it’s definitely an improvement. Designed by Wouter Nieuwendiijk and Jair Straschnow they’ve named it Another Picnic Table, a simple name for a simple concept. But one that nobody else managed to come up with, one of the hall marks of great design and something that it shares with the cat flap (supposedly invented by Isaac Newton). As Nieuwendiijk says on his website “While there are numerous benches for public space, easy chairs are never to be found in parks and leisure areas, where one would expect them the most”, and Another Picnic Table is an elegant solution to this problem.

It also serves as a metaphor for the stage that the picnic present for family dramas. By starting off with everyone facing each other it demonstrates the unity that can be present, but as events develop arguments can break out. People will turn their back on each other, form brief alliances and break them, and the easy mechanism of the bench will enable them to demonstrate their feelings at a moments notice. I expect to see these benches springing up all over the place.

And in other news, GIFs are making a comeback, check out these beautiful designs from Pavel Paratov.

If you need something designed then why not submit a brief to the Creative Services Exchange.