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This year I'm hosting Thanksgiving for the first time. So, in addition to frenetically stressing over the condition of my apartment, and performing the obligatory "spring" cleaning in autumn, I'm also trying to learn how to cook more than the six items currently in my culinary repertoire (popcorn, toast, Easy Mac, etc)—none of which are apropos for Bird Day. In short, I'm going nucking futs. In fact, after writing this, I'm heading straight back to Whole Foods and returning the wrong ingredients for my cranberry goo, and re-purchasing the shallots that I burned last night in a vain attempt to get a head start on the Thursday chaos.

As someone who is sorely undereducated in the cooking department and obnoxiously over-educated in the design department, roaming the aisles of a supermarket offers me quite the paradox. Rather than looking for ingredients, I'm really shopping for packaging. It's the design whore in me. But ironically, I'm not shopping for the good looking stuff. I want the ugly stuff. I know, I know, that's the paradox.

Why? Well, the way I see it, designers are called in to make stuff look really good. And the stuff that looks gorgeous is the result of a designer getting paid wads of money. The problem with this is that only two kinds of companies can afford expensive, talented designers—a bloated-corporation creating a product in an elaborate assembly line (the byproduct of cutting corners to account for shelf-life, price control, etc, rendering it chock full of preservatives) or a responsible company that's actually made a great product, but the darn designer spent so much money making it look pretty that now I have to pay for his work as a designer in the product's final cost. And that's just nonsense—a designer paying for another person's design. Ptfff.

So, I'm left trolling the aisles for the ugly stuff. The fugly stuff. I know there's a threshold. Shopping in green markets and flea markets throughout my life has given me a keen eye in determining what is just ugly, and what actually hasn't been designed at all, in the formal sense of that word. That's the stuff I can trust. That's the product made by the guy who has suffered and sweat and used his last cents to start his company and get his product out there. That's the guy who believes, "This stuff is so darn good that if someone just tries it I know they will be hooked." This is the guy who can give me a cheaper price because all he's selling is the goods. I'm not buying a commercial, a radio spot, and a graphic designer when I buy his apricot preserves. I'm just buying apricot preserves.

My ex-girlfriend (who was also a designer) lived by this standard when we went out to eat. She trusted the rat-hole dive with poor lighting and packed seats over the gold encrusted arches and velvet chairs. It's ironic that design can be so deceptive that even designers know to avoid it!

"Green" and "Organic" and "All-Natural" phenomenons have penetrated my world so deeply that I'm left looking for the stuff clearly made by a guy in his basement. It tells me it's fresh, natural, and made in small quantities. It makes me think we're in 1820, when packaging your product wasn't even thought of yet.

But when designers realize the value in un-design, and begin making Kraft's "Cheese" look like Clyde's Cheese, we'll all really be in trouble. The aesthetic caste system will break down. And suddenly- when design would reach it's most deceptive (the mass-produced product appearing handmade), design will perhaps be the most honest it has ever been. Suddenly, we'll actually be buying junk that looks like junk.