A joke about the Soviet design.

I saw a funny joke about the soviet design.

Here it comes: http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/23/12607986/ussr-soviet-union-design-font-apple-samsung-mercedes-benz?yptr=yahoo

What I would say? Guilty!

I can find your many examples of weird, awkward and ridiculous design.

Design it's not about us. If you want a refined, elegant thing, please, don't look for it among our productions.

The Soviet (or Russian) design is about different things. I'll try to explain.

The thing may looks alien, it can be funny and totally ugly, nobody cares!

How we evaluate our design? It's simple.

If you can repair it with duct-tape, axe and screw-driver in the middle of nowhere during the winter under the snowstorm, without instructions, any qualified personal and using only one hand -  then this thing might be good enough.

If you can't  - there is no place for it.

Look at our cars, guns, everything. They are ugly, but they will work while you have a bit of duct tape.

What to color, shapes, etc. It's simple. Square, green. Good enough.

That is an example of Russian gps (glonass) navigator:

Doesn't looks fancy? But it will survive and continue working after a nuclear war.

Once I read an excellent book "Cryptonomicon" by American author Neal Stephenson, and I was surprised how much did he feel this thing.

Let me show you a small quote from the book:

There turns out to be not much fiddling necessary. An unlettered tundra
farmer with bilateral frostbite could get this thing up and running in ten
minutes. If he'd stayed up late the night before celebrating the fulfillment
of the last five year plan with a jug of wood alcohol maybe fifteen minutes.
Shaftoe consults the instructions. It does not matter that these are
printed in Russian, because they are made for illiterates anyway. A series
of parabolas is plotted out, the mortar supporting one leg and exploding
Germans supporting the opposite. Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of
shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the
shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he
turns into Thomas Fucking Edison.

Of course it is a joke, partially. But as we like to say there are much of truth in any joke.