Hartmut Esslinger
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.