BA Graduation Project 2025
World’s Best Mug
A familiar object becomes the subject of questioning in this exploration of the mug — what it is, what it represents and how language shapes our engagement with it. Beginning from a resistance to creating something ‘new’, Astrid Vagner Thomsen challenges how we justify design in a world full of objects. The work unpicks the relationship between familiarity and individuality, questioning how we express ourselves beyond the limits of preconception.
In the monotonous corporate office, where uniformity reigns, the mug become a rare tool of personal expression. Using the basic cylinder-and-handle as a base, ‘World’s Best Mug’ is a series of self-proclaimed mugs that play with recognition and expectation. Some handles lack function; others distort familiar references. Influenced by social constructivism, the project suggests that shared definitions shape meaning and limit possibility. Through text, form and context, it reflects on how language frames objects, and how objects reflect our values.
World’s Best Mug
A familiar object becomes the subject of questioning in this exploration of the mug — what it is, what it represents and how language shapes our engagement with it. Beginning from a resistance to creating something ‘new’, Astrid Vagner Thomsen challenges how we justify design in a world full of objects. The work unpicks the relationship between familiarity and individuality, questioning how we express ourselves beyond the limits of preconception.
In the monotonous corporate office, where uniformity reigns, the mug become a rare tool of personal expression. Using the basic cylinder-and-handle as a base, ‘World’s Best Mug’ is a series of self-proclaimed mugs that play with recognition and expectation. Some handles lack function; others distort familiar references. Influenced by social constructivism, the project suggests that shared definitions shape meaning and limit possibility. Through text, form and context, it reflects on how language frames objects, and how objects reflect our values.
left image by Femke Reijerman,
Design Academy Eindhoven 2025
Design Academy Eindhoven 2025