In 1997, Nokia designed a children’s phone shaped like Winnie the Pooh. About 12 years later, the company dreamed up a phone that could fit around your wrist and even change the look. These concepts never made it into human hands, but are now available for you to see in the Nokia Design Archive. Launched today, the Nokia Design Archive was developed by Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. The online portal hosts around 700 exhibits. The full scope of the archive, there are 20,000 exhibits, so what is currently available on the website is “only the tip of the iceberg,” said Anna Valtonen, principal researcher at the Nokia Design Archive. Valtonen previously spent 12 years at Nokia, including holding positions as head of design research and foresight. Most of the exhibition dates from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, when electronics became smaller and smaller, and the internet made mobile computing technology possible in this new era of interpersonal communication, which led to wild experiments at Nokia, where designers were encouraged to consider how this new technology can fit into people’s lives depends on their age. groups, interests, and culture “If you were a teenager on the East Coast of America, what would you want or if you were a grandmother in India, what would be important to you?” Valtonen said. The archive contextualizes many favorites like “The Brick,” or Neo’s “banana phone” as seen in The Matrix, or even the Nokia 5110, where the Snake game first appeared. It also has an interesting concept that has been forgotten or remained invisible until now. Here are some highlights from the collection.
Crazy Nokia Designs That Never See the Light of Day
