Nokia. Connecting People. Words that used to give you butterflies. For some, they still do. I still have a Nokia N9. A phone like no other before or since.
But let’s leave aside the eternal lament of “What if…”. Let’s enjoy what already was.
Finland’s Aalto University has created a website that presents, in a way I’d call original and pleasant, the history of Nokia’s design concepts. I quote from the presentation of the Nokia Design Archive:
This is a graphical and interactive platform that allows you to explore the design processes behind the scenes at Nokia. Nokia Design Archive uses visualizations to help you navigate through decades of design-related materials that have been documented by Nokia employees.
The information is presented in a network of nodes (Network) or as stories (Stories) laid out chronologically (Timeline). That’s how we also find out the period covered by the archive: from 1984 almost up to the present day.
If we choose Timeline, we can search by keywords or sort by start or end year, duration, or person’s name.
If we choose Network, in addition to filtering by keywords, we can also filter by product, aesthetics, design process, or design strategy.
Clicking on a node opens the article about that particular topic; at the moment there are 722 nodes and 202 stories.
I’ll let you explore this archive yourselves. It’s worth it even if you’re not a Nokia fan. It’s nice to see that others have also thought outside the “rounded-corner rectangle” cage.
Sources: Nokia logo
