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See strange Nokia products and concepts in this new digital archive

17. 01. 2025 Friday / By: Robert Denes / Generic / Exact time: BST / Print this page

The Nokia Design Archive captures the visions that transformed the way we connect. Through never-before-seen sketches, photos, videos and interviews from the mid-90s to 2017, online visitors can get a glimpse into the inner workings of Nokia mobile phones to see how design ideas shaped our world.

Wednesday 15 January 2025, Helsinki, Finland – In the 1990s and early 2000s, around the globe, millions of people bought their first mobile phone. These devices weren’t smart. We couldn’t take photos, share content or instantly answer any question. But for the first time, everyday people could chat on the go, send a text and play Snake. The impact on the way we lived would be transformative.

Aalto University in Finland, birthplace of Nokia Mobile Phones, today launches the Nokia Design Archive, offering unique insight into the inner workings of a technology company that changed how we connect with the world. At a pivotal point in our relationship with technology, the archive provides a unique opportunity for understanding how we got where we are, and how we should move forward, says lead researcher Professor Anna Valtonen.

"Every large global company is trying to understand what drives people, how we see the world around us — but you don't want to let anyone else in on this thinking. It's so important, but it just doesn't leak,"says Valtonen. "The archive is one of the first opportunities we have to see the work that every organization does behind-the-scenes."

Although the name "Nokia" may not mean much to those under 20-25, those older than that will certainly think back with nostalgia to the devices they owned or used around the turn of the millennium. For them in particular - although others may also be interested - is a newly launched website, the "Nokia Design Archive".

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Valtonen was herself involved in archiving design processes at the company over 20 years ago, working in design in what was then a burgeoning new tech company. Original presentations, sketches and renderings, including her own, now comprise some of the fascinating entries that can be explored by the public.

The aim of the site is to collect almost all the information about the devices that the iconic manufacturer has released, or even dreamed of, over the past three decades. The site features Nokia’s most well-known models, as well as photos, drawings, and descriptions of phones—even smart bracelets, smartwatches, smart glasses, and other unclassifiable gadgets—that were either planned for release or were toyed with by the company’s designers but never actually made it to market.

The Finnish company, of course, no longer makes phones, but its legacy lives on in many ways. Fortunately, the Nokia Design Archive is now open to the public, preserving and sharing not only the company’s historic products, but also its design processes and strategies, not to mention some ideas that never came to light. Ironically, this comes at a time when Nokia-branded smartphones are starting to disappear, which makes the monument to its legacy all the more poignant.

“What we had at the time were phones with black and white screens that could take calls and send a text message. At the time, we were asking: Could the mobile phone be something more? What are our wildest dreams for what a phone could do?” she remembers. From inbuilt cameras, to primitive QR codes, location sharing and video calls, much of what designers dreamed up, and concretely opened up for discussion, has become a reality — for better or worse.

"The archive, and the research going on around its contents, challenges the idea that technologies and their formulations are hidden away in black boxes, only accessible to experts or the powerful. At the moment, there is not enough creative exploration around our options — like they were doing at Nokia — or discussion that really considers people's different needs and concerns, not just the interests of global corporations or governments,"he says.

As debate on the impacts of social media as well as developments in artificial intelligence take center stage, Julier hopes that the project will inject some much needed imagination into global discussions. "The archive reminds us that technologies don't magically come into being, but are explored, envisioned, prototyped and tested not just by designers, but as part of an enormous professional operation,"he says.

"In the early ages of Nokia, there was a genuine desire to understand people, how they live, what makes them tick,"she says. "Now we're at a similar point of societal transformation with AI. Nobody has concretised what it is yet, but we need to get people thinking about what could be.”

“The Archive reveals how designers made visions concrete so that they could be properly explored long before they became reality,”says Valtonen. “It reminds us that we do have agency and we can shape our world — by revealing the work of many people who did just that.”

The Nokia Design Archive, a digital portal that will be freely accessible to everyone from January 15, 2025, is being made available by Aalto University in Finland. This has been made possible by donations from Microsoft Mobile Oy and the designers.


Nokia Design Archive

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