How Close Is Too Close?

A small Australian designer, a global echo - and the question of how close is too close.

A line designers learn to read early is the line between influence and authorship. It is never perfectly straight. It shifts with culture, with category, and with the blunt pressures of scale.

Rakumba’s Hangman was designed by Adam Goodrum and launched in 2021, its concept and engineering developed through a long process of prototypes, tolerances, and refinements. Conceived as a drawn line in space, Hangman is a lighting object that behaves like a gesture. It takes its cue from the analogue game of Hangman - simple marks that accumulate into a character - and translates that nostalgia into articulated arm sections that can be repositioned into myriad configurations. At the end of each arm sits a refined light source: a polished, glowing tip that reads less like a bulb and more like punctuation.It is, in other words, a product designed to be used as much as it is to be seen: a lamp that invites people to participate in the composition.IKEA’s new PS 2026 floor uplighter, designed by Alexander Pott, operates in a similar register. A vertical spine carries multiple adjustable joints that can be bent and twisted to direct light as uplight, reading light or wall wash. It is pragmatic, deliberately playful, and priced for ubiquity.

This is where the story gets interesting…
We’re not interested in turning design culture into a courtroom in public. We’re also not interested in being naïve about what it means when something feels close.

‍It is a mark of success when a design language originating from a small Australian designer becomes legible enough to appear at global scale. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when an idea is strong, resolved, and culturally readable. However, success does not erase responsibility. Not for designers. Not for brands.In the design world, recognition is complicated. Objects are public. Typologies are shared. The same constraints steer different studios toward similar solutions: joints exist because arms must move; cylinders appear because tubes are efficient; uplighters stand tall because rooms do.But there is also such a thing as proximity. And when proximity becomes the story, it’s worth asking: How close is too close?‍

The due diligence question

If two brands are targeting the same archetype - an articulated floor light with multiple joints - then similarity alone is not proof of anything. But it does raise a practical obligation: due diligence.Designers and brands should ask, early and honestly: what already exists in the world? When a solution starts to look familiar, the responsibility is to interrogate that familiarity - not rationalise it away.Because the stakes are not just legal. They’re cultural.If an object is presented as new - marketed on novelty, framed as a fresh idea - then it must earn that claim through a contribution that moves the archetype forward.Which brings us to a simple, uncomfortable proposition:When you enter an existing design territory, a new interpretation can’t just be louder. It needs to be clearer. Better resolved. More generous. More specific. Otherwise, it risks reading as repetition rather than progression.The echo testWe often describe moments like this as an echo.An echo can amplify a sentence. It can help it travel. It can introduce it to new rooms.It serves as a reminder that design is a long dialogue conducted through objects. Sometimes your sentence is quoted back to you. Sometimes the quote circulates further than the original text.But an echo also tests integrity: does it add clarity, or is it simply louder?That is the debate we think the design community is ready for - because it sits on both sides of the fence. It doesn’t deny that ideas travel. It doesn’t demand the myth of total originality. And it doesn’t let scale become a free pass.Hangman launched in 2021. Designed by Adam Goodrum and made in Australia, its authorship is real, documented, and embodied in the object. The design's excellence has been widely recognised, winning a Good Design Award and a WILD Design Award, as well as being longlisted for a Dezeen Award in 2022.We can be proud that an Australian design language is resonating globally, while also insisting on a more mature conversation about proximity, process and responsibility.Not in the sense of a verdict, but in the sense of a question that remains open. When the distance feels narrow, the conversation should widen.Because in the end, the question isn’t whether a global brand can make an articulated lamp. Of course it can.The question is subtler, and more enduring:How close is too close?If the answer is not obvious, that’s precisely why the design community should debate it.