frog design is a global innovation firm founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger and partners Andreas Haug and Georg Spreng in Mutlangen, Germany as "Esslinger Design". Soon after it moved to Altensteig, Germany, and then to Palo 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 call themselves a "global innovation firm" that creates and brings to market products, services and experiences. Many of their most famous designs are in the area of consumer electronics and computers.
In August 2004, the company announced that Flextronics, a large electronics manufacturing services provider, was taking an equity stake in frog design, a deal some have characterized as essentially an acquisition. 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.[1] The company is now a unit of Aricent (formerly Flextronics Software), which itself is controlled by investment firm Kohlberg 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, Ross Lovegrove, Tucker Viemeister, and Yves Behar.
Designs and clients
First designs were for WEGA in 1969, a German TV manufacturer, later acquired by Sony. frog design continued to work for Sony and designed the Trinitron 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 portable Apple IIc, introducing the Snow White design language used by Apple during 1984-1990, and continuing with several Macintosh models. The firm designed Sun's SPARCstations in 1986 and the famous NeXT Computer in 1987.
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