In 1997, Nokia designed a children’s phone in the shape of Winnie the Pooh. About 12 years later, the company came up with a phone that could extend over your wrist and even change its appearance. These concepts never made it into people’s hands, but are now available for your viewing pleasure on the Nokia Design Archive.
Released today, the Nokia Design File It was developed by Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. The online portal hosts around 700 exhibitions. The total scope of the archive, however, amounts to 20,000 exhibits, so what is currently available on the website is “just the tip of the iceberg,” says Anna Valtonen, senior researcher at the Nokia Design Archive. Valtonen previously spent 12 years at Nokia, including as head of design research and forecasting.
Most 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 based on their age group, interests, and culture. “If you’re a teenager on the east coast of the United States, what do you want? Or if you are a grandmother in India, what is important to you? Valtonen says.
The archive contextualizes crowd favorites like “The Brick” or Neo’s “banana phone,” as seen in The matrixor even the Nokia 5110where the game Snake appeared for the first time. It also presents intriguing concepts that have been forgotten or remained invisible until now.
Below are some highlights from the collection.