When Steve Jobs declared in 2000 that the new Mac computer would launch with on-screen buttons that “look so good, you’ll want to lick them,” he may well have revealed the impact of a design philosophy like Sottsass’s on the company’s design aesthetic. Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of Memphis, with reissued pieces being sold for prohibitive price points, and the group’s ethos has found its way into the work of contemporary designers and artists.Sottsass developed a series of iconic objects that transcended their physical characteristics: They were full of symbolism, global and historical references, and had the ability to appeal to their users’ emotions. In a recent biography, Sudjic describes Sottsass’s life-long project as an exploration of “the tension between the ostensible commercial purpose of an industrial object, and its ability to be shaped in such a way as to call into question the values and the culture of the society that brought it into being.”Perhaps the biggest gift Sottsass gave us throughout his varied career was the ability to think more deeply and in different ways about the material world we live in.