Still, they're preferred by consumers by a wide margin, said Tim Alessi, LG's director of product development.

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In August, HarperCollins chief digital officer Chantal Restivo-Alessi told me that she expected digital growth to slow.

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"We think, at a certain point, thinness doesn't matter anymore, " said Tim Alessi, LG's director of new product development.

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It was once part of the collection of Valda Virginia Vaughn Scott, the daughter of an English diplomat and a member of the Alessi family.

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It's impossible for TV makers to completely eliminate that border, Alessi said, but that's the longterm goal of TV manufacturers, said Gary Merson, editor of HDGuru.com.

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Those icons compare with products from Fiat, Armani, and Alessi, which are conceived as signifiers and aspirational objects of desire, in terms of the way they look.

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Mr. Graves and I were sitting in the glass-roofed room just off his kitchen, which boasted an Alessi kettle, toaster, tray, cream set and pitcher a kind of Michael Graves product show.

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"I don't know why everyone says that about my work, " replied the 77-year-old Mr. Graves, who famously decorated the Walt Disney headquarters with a frieze of seven dwarfs and topped an Alessi teakettle with a red bird that tweets an alert when the water boils.

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