A shot of frustration at espresso machines

It wasn't the fact that Gorgeous George had stooped to smirking in an advertisement that irked me, it was what he was selling. I am aware that the espresso capsule doesn't score highly in the ever-lengthening list of contemporary evils, but those tiny pods with all of their packaging, and the neurotically over-styled espresso machines that make coffee from them, sum up so much of what can go wrong in design today, when opportunism is dressed up as ''innovation.''

Not that I have anything against innovation. Post-post-modernist though my generation of design obsessives may be, one opinion I'll never drop (unlike the Clooney crush) is an old-fashioned modernist belief in the power of design to change our lives for the better. But you can only improve the design of something if it needs to change; and not everything does, including lovely old espresso machines.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when espresso machines were things of beauty. Not all of them, I admit. Some were plug-ugly. Others didn't do their job properly. But there were some great ones. Take those gorgeous old Gaggias - spartan in style and unapologetically mechanical, with no superfluous details. They were proud, purist exercises in engineering, in which every component seemed to have been designed solely to fulfill its designated function (and what a noble function) of producing a delicious cup of espresso topped with bubbling crema. One glance at them reminded you of early Fellini movies, and lovely old cafés along Via Veneto in turn-of-the-1960s Rome.

Yes, those machines were heavy. Yes, they were expensive. Yes, they were messy. Yes, they took ages to crank out the coffee. Yes, they belched out scary noises and scalding steam. And yes, despite all of the above, they were worth it.

Can you buy them now? If only. Whatever's possessed Gaggia's design team in the past few years, it can't have been pleasant, judging from the ungainly Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great old machines. And the competition's no better. Whoever designs and manufactures them, the current crop of espresso machines seems doomed to be blobby, bulbous and infuriatingly over-complicated.

What went wrong? In a word - Starbucks. It's already been blamed for so many things - from the death of the neighborhood coffee shop, to serving dodgy muffins - but I reckon it's guilty of this too. Starbucks's relentless expansion in the 1980s convinced the coffee industry that, if so many people could be persuaded to splash out on latte, macchiato, frappuccino and other fancy forms of caffeine outside their homes, they'd probably be willing to invest in swanky new machines to make them back at home too.

At around the same time, Nestlé came up with a way of making espresso without the mess by introducing the use-it-once-and-throw-it-away Nespresso system in 1986. Illy followed suit by launching the E.S.E. (that stands for Easy Serving Espresso) pod in 1989. Cue a flurry of design activity as manufacturers dreamed up new espresso machines to make coffee from them. Why didn't they stick with the old designs? Maybe they took them for granted? Maybe they suspected they wouldn't be promoted for doing the same as their predecessor? Who knows? But they seized upon the introduction of the new capsules and pods as an excuse to change the style of their machines.

Now, Nespresso and E.S.E. taste O.K., not least because the coffee is fresh from the throwaway packaging. But there is a downside - in fact there are three. One is the packaging. How can you justify chucking away so much junk for a single cup of coffee? The paper in most E.S.E. pods is biodegradable, but not the tin packaging they come in, nor most of a Nespresso capsule. Then there's the irritation of buying a nouveau espresso machine only to realize that you can only use it with a particular capsule or pod, and they're not inexpensive. Why else would Illy run so many ads for discounted Francis Francis! (E.S.E. pod-only) machines if not to hook us into years of pod-purchasing? It's the kitchen equivalent of games consoles, which are sold relatively cheaply in the confident expectation that we'll spend lots of money buying expensive games to play on them. And last but not least, the new espresso machines don't look as good as the old ones.

Lots of people may disagree, in fact they almost certainly do, because the nouveau espresso machine has become one of the best-selling, must-have kitchen accessories of the early 2000s. Just think of all of the kitchens you've seen it in. But it's the culinary equivalent of the SUV. Too big. Too fussy. Too bad for the environment. Like cars, cellphones (the iPhone honorably excepted) and paper shredders, the espresso machine is a product category where design standards are so low that you end up settling for the model you dislike least, rather than falling for one you really like.

That's what I did when my old Gaggia died. Having tried - and failed - to find a worthy successor, I settled for a decent imitation, in the Francis Francis! X1. It didn't have much competition, although La Pavoni's Europiccola Lusso came close. The Francis Francis! is a tasteful parody of the dead Gaggia. The design is too chi-chi to be as purist as the original, but it was the sprucest, unfussiest espresso machine I could find, and you can fill it up with old-fashioned ground coffee - not just nouveaux pods.