Frog began as Esslinger Design in 1969 when Hartmut Essslinger and partners Andreas Haug and Georg Spreng opened a studio in the Black Forest of Germany to promote the concept of emotional design. They viewed every act of creation as a small step towards improving the everyday lives of individuals.
Soon after its inception, the company received its first big break: a commission from German electronics giant WEGA. A few years later, when Sony bought WEGA, frog found itself working for a massive corporation. The partnership was a huge success, spanning decades and generating more than 100 products, including the mold-breaking black-box Sony Trinitron TV. Gradually, the young design firm became known for its innovation, risk-taking, and vision.
It was precisely this mix that appealed to top executive Steve Jobs back in 1981, when he began searching for the elusive magic that would give Apple a market edge. Back then, computing was a sea of anonymous beige boxes. Jobs combed the world for a strategy-focused design company—and found it in Esslinger's team. A multimillion-dollar deal was struck, enticing Esslinger Design to establish a California office. A few years later, the Apple IIc was launched with great fanfare. The design was named "Design of the Year" by Time Magazine and inducted into the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of Art. Apple's revenue soared from $700 million in 1982 to $4 billion in 1986.
With the move to Northern California, the company changed its name to frog design, not for its ability to metamorphose—though this would certainly prove the case—but for its international roots: (f)ederal (r)epublic (o)f (g)ermany. The lowercase letters offered a nod to the Bauhaus notion of a non-hierarchical society, reinforcing the company's ethos of democratic partnership, both within the design teams and with its clients.
Hartmut Esslinger now serves as strategic and creative adviser to the company under the title of frog Fellow. His vision has defined frog and his work has helped to develop the modern consumer aesthetic, through revolutionary products like the Sony Trinitron and the Apple Macintosh. Hartmut is founding professor of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has an honorary doctorate from the Parson School of Design, and is an honorary member of the Design Academy of Mexico. In 1992, he received the Raymond Loewy Lifetime Achievement Award. Hartmut's work has been incorporated into the design collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution, and Neue Sammlung, Munich.
Frog design created the successful mylife series for LAUFEN Bathrooms and the matching bathroom furniture series. The design language of this series is one of clarity, timelessness and coherency that tones in with diverse materials, accessories and architectural styles.
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