Design Icon Shuts Down (But Yet Lives On)
In 1994, Nose was a small agency with just seven employees. And so the assignment from Deutsche Telekom shaped the design understanding of the young team. Chris Harbeke remembers: “Even back then, the design was all about finding a sustainable solution – although nobody called it that at the time. The open steles were of course exposed to wind and weather and were potential targets of vandalism. So from the start many had to technical boundary conditions are taken into account. Details on production and maintenance always had to be considered in the design.” Another aspect was decisive for Ruedi Müller: “The brand color magenta was discussed extremely controversially in public at the time, including in the media. Because we provided the telephone pillar with a magenta tip, it became an extremely visible brand ambassador for the new appearance of Deutsche Telekom.” The time of the brand ambassador is up. The spread of mobile telephony makes public payphones superfluous. They haven’t paid off for a long time. For several years they have only been operated because Deutsche Telekom was legally obliged to do so. This rule has now been removed.
But the story isn’t quite over yet. If you want to indulge in nostalgia again, you can take a look around the Museum for Communication in Frankfurt. Here the telephone stele is exhibited together with its approximately 150 predecessors.In 1994, Nose was a small agency with just seven employees. And so the assignment from Deutsche Telekom shaped the design understanding of the young team. Chris Harbeke remembers: “Even back then, the design was all about finding a sustainable solution – although nobody called it that at the time. The open steles were of course exposed to wind and weather and were potential targets of vandalism. So from the start many had to technical boundary conditions are taken into account. Details on production and maintenance always had to be considered in the design.” Another aspect was decisive for Ruedi Müller: “The brand color magenta was discussed extremely controversially in public at the time, including in the media. Because we provided the telephone pillar with a magenta tip, it became an extremely visible brand ambassador for the new appearance of Deutsche Telekom.” The time of the brand ambassador is up. The spread of mobile telephony makes public payphones superfluous. They haven’t paid off for a long time. For several years they have only been operated because Deutsche Telekom was legally obliged to do so. This rule has now been removed.
But the story isn’t quite over yet. If you want to indulge in nostalgia again, you can take a look around the Museum for Communication in Frankfurt. Here the telephone stele is exhibited together with its approximately 150 predecessors.
