Dr. Esslinger is the designer behind the sleek sophistication we see with Sony’s television series by Wagas and Apple’s “Snow White” design language. During the 1970s, early on in Esslinger’s career, designers did not have a prominent role when it came to producing a good. Now, however, they have become more important players with new responsibilities. Dr. Esslinger shares his views on how a designer can incorporate sustainability concepts within a capitalist system of production and what he has done so far in his own company frog design (not capitalized for the Bauhaus concept of nonhierarchical relationships) and at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with his students.

Below is an outline of two separate talks given by Professor Esslinger on Friday September 19th, 2008.

The Next Apple and Sony
There was a panel of three people talking about design using the case studies of Sony and Apple while trying to answer the question of what it takes to become the next heavy weight brand today. The two supporting speakers were Mr. Sydney Chun from Kohler Kitchens and Lorraine Justice, Head of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The main speaker was Dr. Hartmut Essliger, founder of frog design and Professor for convergent industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Sydney presented on what made Sony and Apple successful in terms of using design as a tool for solving business problems and achieving leadership. Lori, on the other hand, was interested in exploring design differences between East and West. She made an interesting argument about how Sony’s layout corresponds with the East’s visual pattern in terms of being more holistic and viewing objects in a relational manner while Apple represented the West in terms of being punctual with focused detail areas. Stemming from these presentations, Professor Hertmut got into the meat of the discussion on Sony and Apple, remarking that Sony was and is a very undisciplined company, while Apple is on track now that Steve came back to lead the company in the right direction. The reliance on the charisma of a leader makes the industry unsustainable in terms of pushing the envelope for environmental sustainability.

Dr. Esslinger then got onto the topic of his role as the “leader” of frog design. He doesn’t see himself as the main guy; the company operates on a democratic principle and he said, “They don’t have to listen to me. I have to shut up sometime.” This makes the work at the office incredibly dynamic and creative. He also went on to upcoming designers in China. He thinks that there is a huge potential for Chinese designers to bring product back to the center. He cited the example that, in Western countries, designers work on software, the “virtual” design components. Since the factories are in China, they can do more work with the actual material. His example was the iPhone. He thinks the iPhone has great software but crap for telephone design because you are still using a telephone pad to access texts. It’s also awkward to carry and handle. This could be where Chinese designers could really step in a make a difference.

GIGA v5: Green Creative Leaps

Part I The Designer’s Role in Sustainability

Dr. Esslinger opens the GIGA hosted event with global warming and the role designers play in its creation. The proper role of a designer is to “create objects which are useful art, inspirational and use as few atoms and materials as possible.” He criticizes the role of capitalism and its relationship to the designer by saying, “Today’s business mania about ‘shareholder value’ and ‘pleasing Wall Street’ results in more and more incorporate[d] behaviors that promote ‘financially safe’ and ‘politically correct’ conformity [and] stifles creative thinking….” He goes on to say, “As of today, we designers are systemic players in a financially aggressive, economic model which depends on multiplying products into thousands and millions.” In the end, design-like marketing is still about driving mass consumption and that is something a designer needs to acknowledge and address.

So how does a designer begin to address this paradoxical relationship between design and consumption? Esslinger goes through the production process of a good:
1.    Product Genesis (strategy and design)
2.    Production and Operations (applying materials, consuming energy, emitting pollutants)
3.    Usage and Consumption (consuming materials, consuming energy, emitting pollutants)
4.    Recycling (re-using materials, management of disposal waste)

He then goes through how to improve each step starting with 4 (recycling) and working his way up to product genesis. This clip plays cuts off after step 3.

Part II ELF and Open Source Design