In 1997, Nokia designed a kids’ phone that was shaped like Winnie the Pooh. Some 12 years later, the company dreamed up a phone that could stretch over your wrist and even change its appearance. These concepts never made it into people’s hands, but they are now available for your viewing pleasure at the Nokia Design Archive.
Launching today, the Nokia Design Archive was developed by Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. The online portal hosts about 700 exhibits. The full scope of the archive, however, amounts to 20,000 exhibits, so what is currently available now on the website is “just the tip of the iceberg,” says Anna Valtonen, lead researcher on the Nokia Design Archive. Valtonen previously spent 12 years at Nokia, including holding a position as the head of design research and foresight.
Most of the exhibits date from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, when electronics became smaller and smaller, and the internet made mobile computing technology possible. This new era of interpersonal communication ushered in a decade of wild experimentation at Nokia, where designers were encouraged to consider how this new technology could fit into people’s lives depending on their age group, interests, and culture. “If you’re a teenager on the American East Coast, what do you want? Or if you’re a granny in India, what’s important to you?” Valtonen says.
The archive contextualizes crowd favorites like “The Brick,” or Neo’s “banana phone” as seen in The Matrix, or even the Nokia 5110, where the game Snake first appeared. It also features intriguing concepts that have either fallen into oblivion or remained unseen until now.
Here are some highlights from the collection.
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