13/07/1999

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Bob Brunner is a design guru at Pentagram

First off - "Starck" - Brilliant, nice, wow.

Yeah, that was [art of the initial activity to look at not just what the next generation Amiga will be, but looking ahead at what they could turn the Amiga platform into.

Tell us about Pentagram and yourself.

Out here in the San Fransisco office we deal primarily in two areas - Industrial Design and Graphic Design disciplines. I'd been a consultant for a while, then I joined Apple in 1990 and ran the Industrial Design department there for about six years.

Is there anything we can see that's out in the market that you designed at Apple?

Well, yeah, everything that came out between 1990 (the Macintosh LC), all the way up to the 20th Anniversary Macintosh were all products of the development group. The reason I went on board was to develop the Powerbook family, from the original Powerbooks up through the 540. We developed Newton, All the original Power Macintosh products (the A/V products, A/V monitor and so forth), Colour Classic....there were probbly about 25 - 30 products in my time there.
Most of my work tends to be in high technologies. I left Apple and decided to join Pentagram, to continue that information technology design for the consumer and business sectors.

Is there anything you've concepted that you're particularly proud of?

Well, lately it would be the watch we did for Nike - the NikeTechno, a watersports watch. In a way it was an information technology product, but turned into this fashion icon, and voted "Watch Of The Year" by Elle France....along with a product belt (laughs), which is interesting.
And there is a product just coming out - Command Audio, which is a hand-held audio-on-demand service.

Did you have anything to do with the Toshiba'sthat are shown on your website?

Yeah, I did the ToshibaInfinia. That was my first client after leaving Apple, and did a whole series of computer desktop products of which the Infinia was the first one out on the market.

Has Amiga given you that same kind of brief and freedom where you can push things, be experimental and funky?

Well, I have to be careful about what I talk about in the programme, but there's two aspects to it:
1) Near-term generation Amiga.
2) And longer term...what it might become.
We're trying to find this balance of - is it a computer? Is it an A/V product? What is it? I wouldn't call it funky, but it certainly has a very strong audio/video quality, and does share some architectural attributes to a personal computer...but from the look and feel, it's more like something you'd feel comfortable with in your home entertainment centre, as opposed to just putting it in the office. It's strong, sophisticated, with just a little bit of playfulness - it's actually turned out very well, and we're working on finishing materials right now.

The "Audi TT" concept design for Amiga was quite nice as well.

Yeah, that one was probably the second-place version of what we're going to continue with. One of the challenges of Amiga (at least today) with the volumes of products they're looking at, is that it's tough to warrant the level of tooling that would be required for the "TT" product, and so that's one of the balances for them to figure out, whether they should invest more for tooling than normal.

By 'tooling', do you mean basically the moulds required?By 'tooling', do you mean basically the moulds required?

Yeah, the steel moulds that make the plastic parts, or stamp the sheet-mateal parts. The "Audi TT" is really a high-volume design approach where you have a fair amount of tooling. When you're making millions of something you can write that off easily, but when when your down in the thousands (at least initially) for this product, you start saying 'Well gee, if I have to spend $3 million on the tooling, then it starts to become an issue', and that was one thing about the "TT"...to pull it off y'know, it would have to be entirely injection moulded, and it starts scaring people a bit.

So it looks like what you've come up with at the end of the day is a hybrid between the "Kyoto" and the "Frame" concept designs, as the "Jetson" and (my personal favourite) the "Starck" (which look like the Star Trek logo) aren't meeting those practical issues.

Yeah, actually that's a pretty good description. There was some 'like' in the "Frame", although we felt when we did the sketch it was a little bit dated, there were some idea's on how the monitor and the cpu might be together that we carried forward.

That sounds like the connection between the monitor and the computer might be on the top of the "Frame" (for instance) and the bottom of the monitor (like one of those cordless kettles that just plug into the dock).

Yeah, that's one way you can do it.

The limitation of that is when people want to upgrade to a bigger monitor - how would that fit (sic) into the equation?

Well you'd have to duplicate the ports...a plug-in-port on top of the computer, and a traditional video port at the back.

You haven't gone for something too similar to the "Frame" have you? 'Cos that looks too much like the dead 3D0.

Yeah (laughs, it's interesting that the Amiga community really remembers the 3D0....y'know I actually had forgotten about 3D0. You're the second person to mention that. But y'know, it's gone away from that aesthetically.

There were some really cool features you mention on your website of a concept computer

Not in the first generation. One thing that could be possible is an additional structure underneath to create that appearance, but we're trying to get down to a width that would allow it to fit easily into not only ato get down to a width that would allow it to fit easily into not only a desk-top scenario but also an A/V scenario, where you can put it with your VCR and so forth. So we're trying to focus on the form-factor to be very Flexible.
The concept computer was something we actually developed for Samsung about three years ago. They'd asked us to contribute idea's to a conceptual programme.

Yeah, so it's quite versatile and you can stick it in your litchen, Hi-Fi set up, and also as a computer on a desk.

Yeah.

That sounds like it's going to be the same basic shell, with different bits and pieces inside depending on what you want to use it for. You would put different connections on the back to fit each purpose.

Sure, yeah. I think there'll be different iterations of this product. I think initially we're looking at supporting as much I/O as possible, depending on how people want to configure it (different monitors, different input devices and so forth). A longer term goal (a few generations down the road), is to have the box really be an engine able to drive a variety of appliances off it, and that's where alot of thos sketches with tablets came from. Y'know, you put the main unit in your home entertainment centre or wherever you want to put it, and then you have different points of interface throughout the home via a wireless network, so that's where we're really going with this idea - the scaleable interface which could be as small as a Palm-Pilot or as large as a widescreen TV, depending on what you're doing, and what kind of applications that you're using...and that's where it's heading with these products. So initially you'll be able to use different sizes of display and different types of input devices, but we're heading towards being able to put the interface in your hand, or wherever you want it to be.

Yeah, obviosly it will be handier in some ways to control things via a tablet.

Yeah, and I think that's one of he big opportunities for the Amiga community...is that Amiga is really looking for this really dedicated installed base of users to grab a hold of the concept and begin to develop applications to facilitate some of this activity. That's one of the things that really interested me about this programme, 'cos you know I (like alot of people) thought "Well you o know Amiga, that's dead...it had some impact years ago but drifted off", and I never realised there were so many out there active on the platform and developing applications, and that it really had this very interesting, really dedicated pool of developers that they could leverage to begin building something new.

What you're aiming for now with the new Amiga, isn't going to be a traditional computer at all, but more like a multi-purpose machine. This has a downside (aesthetically speaking) of needing to not stand out too much in any particular environment, so that it can fir in anywhere.

Yeah, there's alot of things that drive it, and in terms of the cost restraints they're gonna need to leverage alot of what's out there, and I think that creates some things that have to be a little more traditional. But again, I think the goal is to get the platform increasingly working with other different things. We looked at more readical concepts then put them aside and said 'maybe second generation'. The first generation wants to be interesting, and is somewhat computer-like in it's configuration.

Is there anything that's going to make it stand out from the crowd?

Yeah, I think the look and feel of it is very different in that it's less like a pc, and more like an audio/video device, and so the properties of the device are quite a bit different than what you're used to seeing, in that the way the monitor looks and integrates with the product is quite different.

Because you have the connection between the computer and monitor on the top and bottom of the respective units.

That's still up in the air whether that'll happen, but they'll definitely look like they're connected like that.

Like a Lego set that connects together.

Yeah.

How did you get started on this?

Well, we've been doing (on and off), some conceptual work for Gateway. Jim Collas accepted the Amiga challenge and gave us a call to see if we were interested in taking a look at this.I certainly knew about Amiga's past history at the times when it was flying, but I hadn't known much about Amiga in the last three or four years.

Have you ever actually used an Amiga?

Way way back, but not for years now.

Would it be useful for you to actuallu use a current PPC Amiga?

It'd probably be good, and I've been looking and am surprised at the wealth of applications available. It's something I'd like to do but we're in such a rush to get this stuff done here.

Is there anything (material wise) that's interesting for the new Amiga that you've finalised?

It's metal and plastic, but we're looking at finishes and trying to develop some new finishes which you've probably seen popping up in the audio/video markets. If you follow the A/V market, the rage has been more metallics...we're pushing beyond that and looking at more coloured and tinted metallics.

I'll definitely go for that, 'cos I'm so sick of chrome this, cream that, and grey things everywhere. My favourite things are metallics (black and blue), with minimal chrome features (like buttons).
How are you thinking of integrating the separate units into a cohesive whole?

It's kinda interesting. Amiga's plan (if successful) would really be to have a variety of people developing devices for the platform. I don't think their plan is to produce a range of twelve different products....but at the same time to jump-start it, they've asked us to develop idea's. So right now, we're taking what we call 'design language', of forms and details, and pushing them out to a suite of four different appliances that work in the home, in order to communicate these scenarios to licensees what the vision is. And part of this is a line up of what may look like Amiga products, although if they are successful that's not what they want to do.... they want to develop a few core products and get people on board to develop many different things.

In the Amiga's history, names of chips (Agnes, Denise etc) and quirky things like signatures on the inside of casings (Amiga 1000) and wild messages from certain key-presses are prevalent. Anything like this included in the new Amiga's?

Yeah, they wanna do that again (signatures). We did that a few times at Apple (I think they were the first). We actually did that on the Toshiba Infinia (inside the front door), so yeah, it's a fun thing to do.

When was Apple's first time? Because the Amiga 1000 was released in the early 80's.

I know they did it on the original Mac ('84), where thay signed the inside of the case. There were a few products after that too, before someone decided it wasn't a good idea anymore.

Boring.

Yeah (laughs). .

Well, maybe the Amiga was first then.

Yeah.

It also has a dog's paw inside it, did you know that?

No.

Yeah, Jay Miner's dog "Mitchy". He was a Border-Collie, and he used to make some decisions as well - they'd give him a choice, he'd choose for them, and they'd go with it.

When I was at Apple, there was a programmer who buried an image into the ROM of a pop-star he was in love with. You had to know how to get to it. Well, she ended up sueing the company, and the guy was fired.

Which singer was it?<

Paula Abdul.

Paula Abdul?? Who would be in love with her?

What about names for the Amiga?

We haven't gotten that far, but it's something I wanna push. I think it's important to give products a character and personality. As you've suggested, just calling it the 2Xi doesn't do it. What's fortunate about this product is that it will be an icon for Amiga for some time.

What do you think of the iMac?

I think it's great, it's kinda interesting.
I mean the reality is that iMac's been great for my business, 'cos just about everyone in the pc sector has just woken up to design.
But an appraoch like that's not gonna work for any company other than Apple, on a variety of levels, from the way it looks to the effort it takes to manufacture. One of the things I point out to people is that part of te iMac is the design, and the other part is the amount of money and brains which have gone into promoting the product. You can't drive through a city here without seeing them on buses and billboards and things like that.
I like the product alot, but whether I'd put one in my home or not...
From an appearance point of view, the bold colours don't work in our home - you drop this glowing orange or blue thing in there and it just doesn't work. It looks great on a white seamless, but youtry and drop it into another environment...

So I suppose the new Amiga will have to take people's decor into account (to a certain extent)) and not be too funky.

Yeah.

Have you seen the new Amiga's architecture/design yet?

Yeah, but that's something I couldn't talk about.

Do you have any reactions about it then (good/bad/indifferent)?

Oh good, good.
I think they're going at it the right way. I think they're looking at it (from my perspective) in a way that's going to facilitate two things that are important...
1) A very useful product that can do alot of things from the simple to the more sophisticated.
2) I think it's done in a way that's going to facilitate an ease of development for others. It's not gonna take an arm and a leg to develop applications and hardware for the platform.

Will the keyboard be wireless?

Uh, that's still up in the air too. I mean, it's possible. There will be USB, but it's still up in the air, the keyboard. Alot of it's going to come down to decisions like cost and so forth.

Thanks Bob.

That's all the time Bob had on the phone, but what he did say sounds very interesting (if not as wild and funky as I personally would have liked, but I understand the constraints).
Whether the units are all based around the same shell does'nt matter to me...it only makes sense, and it sounds like that shell will be an up-to-date smooth-and-lively metallic take on the A2000/A3000/A4000 anyway, that you can stick wherever you want it, to do whatever you want it to do (DVD/CD-player/Computer/Web-TV/whatever).
Power, looks and versatility in the first wave.....sounds fantastic.

Good luck to you and the other 13 visionaries in the Industrial Design Team, Bob. Can't wait to see what you have to show us at WoA '99 and Amiwest.

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