Nokia Design Archive launched by Aalto University

Aalto University in Helsinki has launched the Nokia Design Archive, a digital portal preserving some 20,000 objects and 959 GB of digital files dating from the mid-1990s to 2017. The project, created in collaboration with researchers and designers, will be freely accessible from January 15, 2025. Users can explore mostly unpublished content including sketches, designer interviews, historical advertisements, unique prototypes, and design concepts for iconic products like the "brick phone" and "banana phone." Researcher Kaisu Savola noted that Nokia in the 1990s held a position similar to Samsung or Apple today, with its ambitious aesthetics and utopian technological ideals making it popular among young Millennials and Generation X. Savola added that the archive prompted deeper reflection on the relationship between technology and society, shifting focus from objects to the people behind them.