Smart Design

Smart Design
Company typePrivate
IndustryDesign firm, industrial design, interaction design, branding
Founded1980 (1980)
FounderDavin Stowell
Headquarters
New York City
,
United States
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Davin Stowell, Richard Whitehall, Tucker Fort
Websitesmartdesignworldwide.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]

The company has had offices in San Francisco, Barcelona, and London at various points in its history in addition to its NYC headquarters, 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]

  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. (2005-05-05). 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 – via JSTOR.
  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 (2004-11-23). 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 (2016-01-20). 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 (2008-03-11). 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.