Apple picker In his new book "Design forward", German designer and designer Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frogdesign, clearly describes strategic design and how the advancement of innovation has created creative changes in the consumer market, especially for one of the most successful American companies ever built: the apple company.
The official launch of the book took place on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition "Standards of German Design - From House Building to Globalization", held in Hong Kong as part of BODW 2012 (editor's note: Business of Design Week 2012 - Asia's largest design innovation exhibition). The exhibition was a collaboration between the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI), the International Design Museum in Munich "The neue Sammlung" and the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen, Germany.
A representative of Designboom met Hartmut Esslinger shortly before his book launch in Hong Kong and received the first copies of the book on that occasion. They talked about Apple's strategic planning and their friendship with Steve Jobs. In this article, we look back at Esslinger's designs from the early 80s, photographing and documenting prototypes, concepts, and research for Apple's tablets, computers, and laptops.
I want Apple's design not just to be the best in the computer industry, but to be the best in the world. Steve Jobs
When Apple was already on the market for the sixth year, that is, in 1982, co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs was twenty-eight years old. Steve - intuitive and fanatical about great design, realized that society was in crisis. With the exception of Apple's aging, products haven't fared too well compared to IBM's computer company. And they were all ugly, most notably the Apple III and the soon to be released Apple Lisa. Apple's CEO - a rare man - Michael Scott, created different business divisions for each type of product, including accessories such as monitors and memory. Each division had its own head of design and created products as anyone wanted. As a result, Apple's products share little in the way of a common design language or overall synthesis. In essence, poor design was both a symptom and a contributing cause of Apple's corporate woes. Steve's desire to end the separate process gave birth to the strategic design of the project. It was supposed to revolutionize the perception of the Apple brand and their product lines, change the trajectory of the company's future, and ultimately change the way the world thinks about and uses consumer electronics and communications technology.
The project was inspired by an idea from Richardson Smith's "Design Agency" work (later taken over by Fitch) for Xerox, in which designers worked with several divisions within Xerox to create one high-level design language that the firm could implement across the company. Jerry Manock, the Apple II product designer and head of design for the Macintosh division, and Rob Gemmell, the head of the Apple II division, came up with a plan where they could invite all the world's designers to Apple headquarters and, after interviewing everyone, hold a competition between the top two candidates. Apple would pick a winner and use the design as a concept for its new design language. Little did anyone know at the time that Apple was in the process of transforming into a company whose strategy based on design and financially supported by innovation would mean global success. After many conversations with Steve Jobs and other Apple executives, we identified three different directions for further possible development.
Concept 1 was defined by the slogan "what would they do at Sony if they made a computer". I didn't like it because of potential conflicts with Sony, but Steve insisted. He sensed that Sony's simple design language was "cool" and could be a good example or benchmark. And it was Sony that set the direction and the pace in making "high-tech" consumer goods - smarter, smaller and portable.
Concept 2 could be named "Americana", because it combined "high-tech" design with the classic American design standard. Examples include Raymond Loewy's work such as aerodynamic design for Studebaker and other automotive clients and Elektrolux home appliances, then Gestetner's office products and of course the Coca-Cola bottle.
Concept 3 was left to me. It could be as radical as possible - and that was the biggest challenge. Concept A and B were based on proven facts, so Concept C was my ticket to sailing into the unknown. But he could also become victorious.
Who is Hartmut Esslinger?
In the mid-1970s, he first worked for Sony on the Trinitron and Wega series. In the early 1980s, he started working for Apple. During this time, their joint design strategy turned Apple from a start-up into a global brand. He helped create the "snow white" design language that began with the legendary Apple IIc, including the legendary Macintosh, and reigned supreme at Cupetino from 1984 to 1990. Soon after Jobs left, Esslinger terminated his contract and followed Jobs to his new company, NeXT. Other major client work included global design and brand strategy for Lufthansa, corporate identity and user interface software for SAP and branding for MS Windows along with user interface design. There was also cooperation with companies such as Siemens, NEC, Olympus, HP, Motorola and GE. In December 1990, Esslinger was the only living designer to appear on the cover of Businessweek magazine, the last time Raymond Loewy was so honored in 1934. Esslinger is also a founding professor at the University of Design in Karlsruhe, Germany, and since 2006 has been a professor of convergent industrial design at University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Today, Prof. Esslinger a recognized teacher of strategic design in cooperation with the Beijing DTMA and multidisciplinary, application-oriented higher education institutions in Japan in Shanghai.
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