The Designer Who Inspired Intel and Apple

Design guru Naoto Fukasawa's philosophy of sleek simplicity and user-friendliness has influenced many top design firms with blue chip technology clients

by Reena Jana

Fukasawa designed this humidifier (2003) for his home accessories line, Plus Minus Zero. The simple, rounded shape is intended to be soft and attractive.

The designer created this prototype for an LED watch for an exhibition 'Without Thought, e-fashion' held in Japan in 2001.

Fukasawa's elegant design for a wall-mounted CD player (1999), for Ryohin Keikaku (MUJI), is reminiscent of an everyday fan; the visible CD spins like a fan's blades.

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When Meral Middleton, a senior industrial designer at Portland (Ore.)-based Ziba Design, faced the challenge of designing a concept computer for client Intel (INTC) in only three months last year, she looked to a collection of photographs posted on a board near her desk for quick inspiration. Among them were numerous pictures of ultra-sleek, minimalist personal electronics—including phones, a CD player, and a humidifier (as seen to the right)—with simple, intuitive interfaces by the Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa.

Fukasawa, who is based in Tokyo, might not have the "rock star" status and widespread recognition of Apple (AAPL) designer Jonathan Ive, the name that most C-suite executives drop when discussing the power of design as a business strategy. But among industrial designers at top design firms across the U.S. who have created popular products for leading companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and, yes, Apple, Fukasawa is the guru of spare, elegant product design.

Influential Strategies

His influence among the current generation of industrial designers is unmistakable. Lunar Design's Principal and Director of Design Ken Wood, for example, says Fukasawa's work inspired his team when designing the Apple PowerBook 100, released in 1993; Smart Design's Director of Insights and Strategy Tim Wallack says Fukasawa's focus on simplicity and ease-of-use influenced designers at his firm when working on the Photosmart 375 printer for Hewlett-Packard, which the company says outsold its expectations fivefold after it was launched in 2004.

Managers at corporations looking for models of inventive, user-friendly products would be wise to familiarize themselves with Fukasawa's design strategies. (Fukasawa is the subject of a just-released and lushly illustrated book from Phaidon Press, Naoto Fukasawa, a rich resource for those unfamiliar with products he has designed—many of which are only available in Japan.)

"He is quite passionate about the seamless integration between industrial design and interaction design, and the idea of simplicity and magic," says Ziba's Middleton. "He focuses on creating objects that are in harmony with the environment around them. His overarching effect on design is really about shifting design from being object-centric to an approach of creating dialogue with object and user."

The Déjà Vu Hook

Middleton took these Fukasawa-influenced ideas and applied them to her PC design for Intel, and devised a concept computer that is inspired by the traditional Japanese shoji screen. The hard drive is housed in a spare, white casing, which is slightly angled to balance when standing upright on a desk. It's designed to provide privacy for workers in an open-plan office—like a shoji screen. And the ventilation system is provided by small holes that form the pattern of bamboo stalks, a decorative and practical touch. It's an example of innovative design that balances aesthetics and usability in a powerful and original way. (At this time, Intel does not have plans to manufacture the Shoji PC, as Middleton named her project, but the company is presenting it at internal meetings and events.)

The Shoji PC illustrates one of Fukasawa's key strategies of incorporating traditional elements in the design of new products. He says that evoking another, perhaps even unrelated object helps to breed a sense of déjà vu among potential customers, and therefore instant familiarity with new and innovative products. "When I work on something, I tend to extract the essence from existing relationships between people and objects," Fukasawa explains via e-mail from Tokyo.