Smart Design

Last updated
Smart Design
Company type Private
Industry Design firm, industrial design, interaction design, branding
Founded1980;45 years ago (1980)
FounderDavin Stowell
Headquarters
New York City
,
United States
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Davin Stowell, Richard Whitehall, Tucker Fort
Website smartdesignworldwide.com

Smart Design (or Smart) is a design consultancy based in New York City. [1] Smart was founded in 1980 by industrial designers Davin Stowell, Tom Dair, Tucker Viemeister, and Tamara Thomsen, with Stowell serving as CEO. [2] [3] [4] The firm has been a prominent presence in the design industry since the late 1980s, as design competency increasingly came to be seen as "key to industrial competitiveness". [5] [6] [7]

in addition to its NYC headquarters, the company has at various times had offices in San Francisco, Barcelona, and London, and has worked with clients including HP, Johnson & Johnson, Gillette, BBVA, PepsiCo's Gatorade, and Pyrex. [8] [9] In 2012, the company worked with the City's Taxi and Limousine Commission to redesign NYC's iconic taxis as part of a collaboration with Nissan titled the Taxi of Tomorrow, [10] [11] [12] and also developed the now ubiquitous logo and decals found on the city's yellow taxis and green boro taxis. [13] [14]

The firm is best known for its design of the original Oxo Good Grips line in 1989, and longstanding relationship with Oxo, which continues to this day. [15] The Good Grips potato peeler, the first in what would become a large range, was designed with OXO founder Sam Faber's wife Betsy in mind, who suffered from Arthritis. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] The Good Grips range of products is often cited as an archetypal example of an approach to industrial design involving user-centered prototyping and iteration, and where considerations of human factors and accessibility make a product better for all users. [21] [22] [23] [24] The Good Grips line is represented in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and New York's Museum of Modern Art. [25]

In 2010, the company won the National Design Award for product design from the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt. [26]

References

  1. ↑ "Smart Design - About". Smart Design. Archived from the original on 2021-10-17. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  2. ↑ "Davin Stowell". Industrial Designers Society of America – IDSA. 2011-03-28. Archived from the original on 2019-03-08. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  3. ↑ "Interview with Davin Stowell, founder of Smart Design". designboom. 2014-08-29. Archived from the original on 2017-06-13. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  4. ↑ "Tucker Viemeister American Product Designer". Encyclopedia of Design. 2021-01-18. Archived from the original on 2021-10-17. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  5. ↑ Meikle, Jeffrey L. (2005). Design in the USA (Oxford History of Art). Oxford University Press. p. 187. ISBN   978-0-19-151802-7.
  6. ↑ Nussbaum, Bruce (11 April 1988). "Smart Design: Quality is the New Style". Business Week . pp. 102–168.
  7. ↑ Giles, David; Maldonado, Cristina; Aaron, Susanna; Candu, Lucia; Dolan, Seamus; Mason, Kevin (2011). "Growth by Design: Snapshots of NYC'S Design Fields". Center for an Urban Future: 14–22. JSTOR   resrep14848.
  8. ↑ "Smart Design – Clients". Smart Design. Archived from the original on 2021-10-17. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  9. ↑ Green, Penelope (2010-11-03). "Erica Eden of Smart Design on Pyrex". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-01-16.
  10. ↑ "Taxi of Tomorrow". Design Trust for Public Space. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  11. ↑ Grossman, Andrew (2011-05-03). "New York's New Taxi Will Be a Nissan". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  12. ↑ Blint-Welsh, Tyler (2018-06-12). "It Was Billed as the 'Taxi of Tomorrow.' Tomorrow Didn't Last Long". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  13. ↑ Dunlap, David W. (2012-08-22). "In the City, 'T' Stands for Taxi". City Room. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  14. ↑ Johnston, Garth (2012-08-23). "New Taxi Design Will Kill Last Vestige Of Checkered Cabs". Gothamist. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  15. ↑ Molotch, Harvey (2004). Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come To Be As They Are. Routledge. pp. 37, 42, 215. ISBN   978-1-135-94635-7.
  16. ↑ "Smart Design, New York. Good Grips Peeler. 1989 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 2021-04-23. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  17. ↑ Kanbar, Maurice (2001). Secrets from an Inventor's Notebook. Council Oak Books. ISBN   978-1-57178-099-7.
  18. ↑ "Good Grips Prototype For A Peeler Handle". Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Archived from the original on 2021-10-17. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  19. ↑ Wilson, Mark (2018-09-24). "The untold story of the vegetable peeler that changed the world". Fast Company. Archived from the original on 2021-07-26. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  20. ↑ King, Simon; Chang, Kuen (2016). Understanding Industrial Design: Principles for UX and Interaction Design. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN   978-1-4919-2036-7.
  21. ↑ "OXO International – Case – Harvard Business School". www.hbs.edu. Archived from the original on 2021-02-03. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  22. ↑ Baisya, Rajat K.; Das, G. Ganesh (2008). Aesthetics in Marketing. Sage Publishing India. ISBN   978-93-5280-096-4.
  23. ↑ "Good Grips Prototype For A Peeler". Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Retrieved 2022-01-16.
  24. ↑ POV. "Freedom Machines | POV | PBS". POV | American Documentary Inc. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  25. ↑ Nicholls, Walter (1999-10-27). "Getting a Grip". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2022-01-16.
  26. ↑ "2010 National Design Award Winners | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum". www.cooperhewitt.org. 2019-09-05. Retrieved 2022-01-16.
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