- Frog design inc.
frog design is a strategic-creative consultancy founded in 1969 by
industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger and partners Andreas Haug and Georg Spreng inMutlangen ,Germany as "Esslinger Design". Soon after it moved toAltensteig , Germany, and then toPalo Alto, California , its current headquarters. The name was changed to frogdesign in 1982, then to frog design in 2000. The company has grown to over 400 employees worldwide, collaborating across nine studios: San Francisco; San Jose; Austin; New York City; Seattle; Herrenberg, Germany;Milan, Italy , Shanghai, China; and as of September 2008, Amsterdam, Netherlands.Evolution
Originally geared towards industrial design, frog design has expanded their capabilities and now consider themselves a creative consultancy, which also incorporates brand, digital, and
user interface design and strategic consulting. Many of their most famous designs are in the area ofconsumer electronics andcomputers .In a press release from August 2004, in what some have characterized as essentially an acquisition, the company announced that Flextronics International, a very large Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider, was taking an equity stake in frog design. Flextronics CEO Michael Marks, in a March 2005 BusinessWeek article, said that Flex was going to integrate their San Jose (CA)-based industrial-design group with frog. [ [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925609.htm Online Extra: "Design Is a Commodity" ] ] The company is now a unit of
Aricent (formerly Flextronics Software), which itself is controlled by investment firmKohlberg Kravis Roberts .Many of today’s design leaders got their start at frog design including Herbie Pfeifer and Paul Montgomery, Tylor Garland, Steven Skov Holt, Jon Guerra, Gadi Amit, Tucker Viemeister, Yves Behar.
Designs and clients
First designs were for
WEGA in 1969, a German TV manufacturer, later to be acquired bySony . frog design continued to work for Sony and designed theTrinitron television set in 1975.Their first designs for computer manufacturers were for proprietary systems by CTM (Computertechnik Müller) in 1970 and Diehl Data Systems in 1979. More prominent are the designs for
Apple Computer starting with the case of the portableApple IIc , introducing theSnow White design language used by Apple during 1984-1990, and continuing with several Macintosh models. In 1986 Sun'sSPARCstation s and in 1987 the famousNeXTcube were designed by frog design.ee also
*
Apple Industrial Design Group References
External links
* [http://www.frogdesign.com frog design - English]
* [http://www.frogdesign.com/inside-frog/timeline.html frog design Timeline - designs since 1969]
*Podcast Interview of Frog's Luke Williams withCreativeXpert titled "Taking Your Design to the Next Level": [http://www.creativexpert.com/enclosure/cx_007.mp3 MP3 Link]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.