Products We Love: Penguin Press

Andrew Neyer likes wordplay. One of the Cincinnati designer’s signature pieces is a candelabra shaped like a giant hair comb—a Combdelabra. Get it? Do you? Neyer’s puns are life-sized and they’d be as groan-worthy as your dad’s if they weren’t so darned earnest. "There’s a childish joy to a lot of the work I make," he told us last year.  

Penguin Press is the purest expression of Neyer’s bookish sense of humor yet. The design is simple: It’s a vinyl decal that can be applied to any 34-ounce French press to make the pot look like a penguin. That’s it. Functionally, it’s as useless as a penguin’s wings are for flying. Yet it trades on Neyer’s most endearing quality, his unselfconsciousness. The only thing sillier than a sticker of a bird named after a British publishing house is the stiff neck who rolls their eyes at it. 

Which is probably why Neyer designed the decal for French presses. Coffee has become a deathly serious hobby and no object represents amateur brewers’ monk-like devotion to making the perfect cup more than the coffee plunger. By slapping a goofy sticker on this holiest of symbols, Neyer reminds us, hey, it’s just caffeine water. If comedy kills pretentiousness, the Penguin Press decal is kryptonite. And at $6.95, it barely costs more than a cold brew. 

For more ways to improve your morning ritual, watch us test out a double egg cup from Alessi.