illy espresso cups

These cups for the illy Art Collection are part of larger project that deals with long term thinking.
Short term media like Twitter and hourly news create an impression of a world out of control, with democracy in peril, ubiquitous conflicts and an overall outlook of doom. Even if you look at pandemics from a point of view of 100 years, you will see that the Spanish Flu killed 45 million people, Aids/HIV about 30 million people. This of course does not mitigate the unbelievable one million humans (and counting) that lost their lives during Covid 19, but it does put the often quoted view that we live in ‘unprecedented times’ into perspective.
Because if we look at developments concerning the world from a long term perspective - the only sense making way - almost any aspect concerning humanity seems to get better.
Fewer people die in wars and natural disasters, more people live in democracies - and live much longer lives - then ever before. 200 years ago 9 out of 10 people could neither read nor write, now it is just 1 out of 10.

The reflections of the saucers into the mirrored espresso cups are visualizations using data of these developments with the goal that viewers might see them as reminders that the latest tweets are just blips in an overall rather good environment.

If you would like to order a set, please go to: https://tinyurl.com/y5gzh9da⁠

If you are located outside of the US, go to illy.com and search for “Sagmeister”.