#harmut esslinger

Sony Walkman Pro Concept by Harmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design

Via @grailed

Frog Design’s Harmut Esslinger: Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography is ‘disappointing’

“Harmut Esslinger was already a big name in the field of industrial design in 1982, when his firm, Frog Design, bid on a secret project to help Apple become the company that would transform computers from ‘business machines’ into consumer goods,”…

“Harmut Esslinger was already a big name in the field of industrial design in 1982, when his firm, Frog Design, bid on a secret project to help Apple become the company that would transform computers from ‘business machines’ into consumer goods,”…

“I explained that to make design a core element of Apple’s corporate strategy, it would have to be seen as a leadership issue; world-class design can’t work its way up from the bottom, watered down by the motivations and egos of every layer of management it passes through.”

Their conversation also touched on areas they had in common.

“Steve didn’t really know much about design, but he liked German cars. Leveraging that connection, I explained that design like that has to be a complete package, that it must express the product’s very soul; without the excellent driving experience and the history of stellar performance, a Porsche would be just another nice car—but it wouldn’t be a Porsche.”

Before long, Jobs had signed an exclusive, $1,000,000 a year contract with Frog, guaranteeing that the firm would only design computers for Apple. [...] Esslinger insisted on being in charge of all product design at Apple. All of the company’s internal designers would answer to him; and Esslinger himself would be answerable only to Jobs.

It was a direct implementation of what Esslinger insisted upon, in his first meeting with Jobs: Designers couldn’t simply be at the table: They had to be in charge. This leads to Esslinger’s central lessons for all companies aspiring to be like Apple: Beautiful design requires designers in charge.

“…bottom-up design never succeeds, because even good efforts by departments within such systems remain insulated within the layers of the company’s organizational structure and everything really new, courageous and potentially game-changing is destroyed by its passage through ‘the gates of rejection.’”