Hartmut Esslinger

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Hartmut Esslinger (born 1944) is a German-American industrial designer.

At age 25 Esslinger finished studies at the Fachhochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd in Germany and started his own design agency, later renamed frog design. For his first client, German avantgarde consumer electronics company Wega, he created the first "full plastics" color TV and HiFi series "Wega system 3000". His work for Wega won him instant international fame. In 1974, Esslinger was hired by Sony - Sony also acquired Wega shortly after - and he was instrumental in creating a global design image for Sony, especially with the Sony Triniton and personal music products. The Sony-Wega Music System Concept 51K was chosen by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

As of 1976, Esslinger also worked for Louis Vuitton, helping them to become one of the world's leading luxury brands.

In 1982 he entered into an exclusive $1,000,000 per year contract with Apple Computer to create a design strategy which transformed Apple from a "Silicon Valley Start-Up" into a global brand. Setting up shop in California for the first time, Esslinger & frogdesign created the "Snow White design language" which was applied to all Apple product lines from 1984 to 1990, commencing with the Apple IIc and including the Macintosh computer. The original IIC was acquired by the Whitney Museum of Art in New York and Time voted it Design of the Year. Soon after Steve Jobs departure, Esslinger broke his own lucrative contract with Apple and followed Jobs to Next Computer.

Other essential client engagements include Lufthansa's global design and brand strategy, SAP's corporate identity and software user interface, Microsoft Windows branding and user interface design, Siemens, NEC, Olympus, HP, Motorola and General Electric.

In December 1990 Esslinger was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek the only living designer thus honored since Raymond Loewy in 1934. Esslinger is a founding Professor of the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany and since 2006 he is a Professor for convergent industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. In 1996, Esslinger was awarded a honorary doctorate of Fine Arts by the Parsons School of Design, New York.

Esslinger is also the owner of the American minor league soccer club, the San Jose Frogs, who play in the USL Premier Development League.