Personality of the Year 2013

Hartmut Esslinger

Hartmut Esslinger challenged and shaped how a whole generation thinks about design. With his belief that design should follow emotion, he laid the groundwork for a new design era early on. For his visionary contributions to global design and his influence on companies like Apple, the jury of the German Design Awards 2013 names him Personality of the Year.

Jury Statement

Hartmut Esslinger, and the jury were unanimous on this point, has excelled in all of these areas.The image of the rebel with a cause and with a clear objective, an image Business Week once created for him, is still as fitting as it was back then. He has over time quietened down somewhat, but so have his critics. His theory that “form follows emotion” may have rocked the boat in 1980’s Germany, dominated as it was by functionalist design, but today this is one of the fundamental principles of design and our enhanced understanding of it. Without it one could barely explain Apple’s colossal success (it is the most successful company in the world) or design’s present-day importance for an emerging third industrial revolution.