Seis Empleados Y Un Pastel

This work questions the criteria that define what we consider good design through fiction. Set in a fictional work environment, it narrates an investigation (whodunit) to judge a workplace incident: six junior designers —each with different creative practices and personalities— are accused of breaking the rules of the company they work for by developing unusual products.

Seis Empleados y un Pastel raises a reflection on the judgment of what is “right” through the transgression of rules that, far from being absolute, respond to conventions about functionality. This suspicion —combined with the vertigo of entering the professional world— drives the narrative, which emerges as an exercise in intentional bad design. Constantly oscillating between extremes, the project presents itself as a chaosmos that invites further questioning of the discipline.

“Although the goal is to provoke a smile or spark debate, the fiction was created seriously. This is an attempt to portray the collapse one feels when they begin to contradict themselves within their own discipline, where, if you dig deep enough, nothing seems logical. This project is made with the delicacy of wanting to take seriously a profession that, today, leaves many open enigmas for a person who feels fear, who feels the vertigo of plunging into the professional world. Will we do it right?” (Poy, 2025, p. 12).

As the book The Manual of Design Fiction states: “it embraces the real world, with all its messiness” (Bleecker et al., 2022, p. 14).

This perspective fits perfectly with the way the project was conceived, taking the form of an editorial piece. It is written as if it were an audit, aiming to reconstruct what happened from a judicial point of view. It is essentially an investigation built around “absurd” products that never appear explicitly.

“Before thinking of them, I decided they would take the opposite form of what we would consider an ideal industrial product; in this way, they would be worthy of triggering a situation deserving investigation within a commercial entity. [...] Being able to present a situation where these structures collapse from within innocently is a beautiful revolution. No plans, prototypes, or renders. [...] We see strange, hard-to-understand utensils that seem random, and after inspection within the context of the narrative, they make sense” (Poy, 2025, p. 10).

After reading it, we can understand the products through archived evidence, testimonies, and even the evaluation matrices used by the company. In fact, it becomes clear that the company is the one that hasn’t understood anything, because these products fall outside their grids. These matrices, which evaluate products according to 10 different rules, are called the “Matriz de Evaluación Del Good Design,” directly referencing Dieter Rams’ 10 rules of Good Design. With their unrounded scores, they constitute the material that most clearly demonstrates the absurdity behind the entire judgment: the absurdity of trying to measure functionality or aesthetics as mathematical values.

“Among the archived documents and evidence —used to investigate these juniors— are texts, illustrations, artworks, and short essays on various topics that, although seemingly disconnected, form a network that supports the narrative fiction; quotes from works such as $ell Your$elf (2024) by Pippa Garner, The Politics Of Design (2016) by Ruben Pater, Lost In Translation (2003) by Sophia Coppola, or Rams (2018) by Gary Hustwit. You’ll also find references to current pop culture through memes, making the work non-timeless. Some projects that inspired me, even if not explicitly referenced, include Zima Blue (2006) by Alastair Reynolds, Happy Victims (2008) by Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Your Best Is Not Enough (2020) by Max Siedentopf, the magazine THE ORDINARY (2021) also by Max Siedentopf, and the story Preocupaciones de un padre de familia (1919) by Franz Kafka, among others” (Poy, 2025, p. 10-11).

“There is also an approach to Duchamp’s ready-mades, not only in how they are conceived but because behind them lies a core reason for existing: to transgress rules” (Poy, 2025, p. 10).

“The result of all this: a story that aims to provoke a first impression of humor and tenderness with the juniors’ objects and ‘fixes,’ but that wants you to end up holding your head in disbelief at the ‘Comité Superior de Excelencia’ and their subjective evaluations” (Poy, 2025, p. 11).

“In the end, this question of good or bad design, the central axis of the project, turned out not to be so central. If the essence of a product is to fulfill its purpose, I believe this fiction ultimately reveals something deeper. [...], precisely, asking about the purpose of things” (Poy, 2025, p. 175).