The freebie that became a design icon
I couldn’t resist but buy myself this beauty: a Miram 100 by Olivetti, complete with its original box. George Sowden designed it in the late 80s, and it challenged something nobody thought to question: why should phones be gray?
Here's what happened. Olivetti was making telephone switchboards and threw in these phones as freebies with each purchase. They looked like toys—bright, geometric, playful. People loved them. Employees started sneaking them home. When people want your product even though they're not supposed to have it, you know you've done something right.
The vibrant colors and geometric shapes make the Miram a postmodern icon. Sowden co-founded the Memphis Group with Ettore Sottsass—a collective that rejected cold functionalism in favor of kitsch, pop art, and futurism mixed together. Objects with personality, color, and humor.
The Miram is everything corporate phones weren't: playful, approachable, meant for the home. Cylindrical forms, saturated primary colors, geometric details—pure Memphis language. It doesn't hide the technology or show it off. It just dresses it up with joy.
This phone captures Olivetti's experimental spirit, a company that never feared taking risks in design. Sowden turned something as ordinary as a telephone into a conversation piece.
"The Memphis movement was an eruption of latent energy" — George Sowden
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