Form follows Function - good design

   Everyone knows what this is. Every time you switch the news on you see it. Any company would kill for a brand identity like this. It's a design classic if ever there was one. Purely functional, no frills. So simple that children could use it, and frequently do. Made to do a job, and do it very well.
  The germans invented the assault rifle. Most of the world's armies had realised that battle ranges had been reduced to 400-500 yards  so the standard rifle cartridges were unnecessarily powerful, and what was really needed was a weapon that could chuck out a lot of bullets, really fast, over that distance. It required a cartridge midway in power between the pistol cartrides used by sub-machine guns and the full-power long cartridges used by conventional rifles.
  We can thank Hitler for the name, when he decided that this..
..the MP(maschinenpistole, ie sub-machine gun)44 should be renamed the more aggressive - sounding STG(sturmgewehr, ie storm - or assault - rifle)44. Looks like an AK47, doesn't it? This was the first real assault rifle, and it mightily impressed the soviet soldiers on the recieving end. It wasn't perfect, though. German industry was disintegrating at the time, so the gun was too heavy, poorly made and none too reliable.
 Now reliability is something the russians take seriously. They know how harsh their environment is - horrendous cold winters, baking heat and dust in summer, mud deep enough to drown a lorry in the autumn. They know that their soldiers are usually uneducated, ill - trained peasants. So they make their weapons as simple, reliable and idiot- proof as humanly possible. And they weren't that bothered with copyyright law then, either.
 So when Mikhail Kalashnikov put together his world - beating design, he combined facets of the american Garand rifle and Browning - designed Remington model 8 rifle with the STG44. He engineered the whole thing for maximum toughness,with working parts chrome-plated to resist corrosion. And he wasn't interested in aesthetics - just practicality.
 What he created was the world's premier killing machine. The soviets generously distributed millions of them to anyone who could inconvenience their foes, ie. the west. They are all but impossible to jam, even with no maintainance, so are a godsend to guerrilla groups.They are also very easy to copy: an estimated 100 million have been made, and most will still be floating about somewhere. They are such an iconic image of struggle that they feature on the flags of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and East Timor. When your design ends up on a flag, youu know you've done it right.