ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 focuses on the aura or magic that surrounds certain things, as well as the emotional tie we often establish with magical things. The experience of aura is associated with the sublime aesthetic experience, and hence marked by a sudden insight into something immeasurably great or distant. The auratic experience can be triggered by a sensuous phenomenon or a (magical) thing.By analyzing the concept of profane aura and “thing-magic,” the chapter establishes guidelines for how these can be incorporated into product design. Magical things can comfort and satisfy us aesthetically; moreover, they can saturate our minds, almost spiritually, with aesthetic nourishment. Understanding the part elements that make apparently ordinary items or places seem special or magical, or that make the owner of a thing form an emotional attachment to it, is key to planning, strategically, the integration of similar elements into the creation of new products and objects.
