Anyone interested can now see how Nokia became the world’s leading cell phone manufacturer in the 90s and 2000s. The new digital archive How to explore Aalto University in Finland reportsThe Nokia Design Archive contains over 700 curated entries from the mid-90s to 2017, including sketches, photos and interviews. There is an extensive repository with about 20,000 additional objects.
“The archive offers one of the first opportunities to see what each company does behind the scenes,” explained project leader Anna Valtonen, according to the university’s blog article. This illustrates the zeitgeist of Nokia designers in the 90s: “Then we asked ourselves: Can the cell phone be more? What are our biggest dreams about what a phone can do?”
Everything the Nokia team dreamed up – from cameras to QR codes to video calls – is now commonplace Professor Guy Julier sees this as a lesson for today’s future technology: “The Nokia archive reminds us that we must have an influence on the design of technology. Right now we need a more creative exploration of possibilities.”
The freely accessible online archive now invites you to browse Nokia’s design history – and fascinatingly shows how Finns once paved the way for the modern smartphone. According to the announcement, the project was made possible by grants from Microsoft Mobile, Nokia Designers and funding from the Finnish Foundation.
Hed Valtonen sees parallels between Nokia’s rise and today’s AI boom: “There was a real desire at Nokia to understand how people live and what moves them. With AI we are at the same point again.”
The project has certainly been in the works for some time, but the timing could hardly be better to end HMD Global’s brand name.
through Gizmochina
