Richard Sapper

Richard Sapper (born 1932 in Munich) is a German industrial designer. He received a Compasso d'Oro industrial design award in 1959. Sapper partnered with Italian designer Marco Zanuso and were hired in 1959 as consultants to Brionvega, an Italian company trying to produce stylish electronics that would compete with products manufactured in Japan and Germany. They designed a series of radios and televisions that became enduring icons of an aesthetic known as techno-functionalism. One of their more notable designs was the rounded, compact and portable Doney 14 (1962), the first television to feature completely transistorized construction. Using the aesthetic of sculptural minimalism, the pair designed the compact folding Grillo telephone for Siemens and Italtel in 1965. The Grillo was one of the first telephones to put the dial and the earpiece on the same unit, and today is a featured display at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Sapper also created the Tizio lamp for Artemide and 1983 the Melodic kettle for Alessi. He started designing portable computers for IBM back in 1981, including the ThinkPad 770, and he continues today to influence the iconic ThinkPad brand design with Lenovo since it acquired the IBM PC Division in May 2005.