Yves Béhar

Yves Béhar, IDSA | fuseproject

“Designers need to be trusted and [treated] as equals by CEOs,” says the Switzerland-born industrial designer. “Unless they’re elevated to a point where they are peers to people in marketing, good design will not happen.” The Wall Street Journal

Yves Béhar is the founder of fuseproject (1999), a San Francisco based design agency contributing to areas that include technology, furniture, sports, lifestyle and fashion. Béhar brings a humanistic approach to his work with the goal of creating projects that are deeply in-tune with the needs of a sustainable future, connected with human emotions and which enable self-expression. See the recent CNN segment on Yves's work.

Examples of fuseproject’s diverse projects include the world’s first $100 “XO” laptop for Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization, which aims to bring education and technology to the world’s poorest children. fuseproject is now working on the laptop’s successor, the “XOXO”. Other recent projects include a partnership with “Jawbone”, a leading edge mobile phone headset company; “LeCube”, a set top box for France’s premier digital TV brand Canal +; a recycling project for Coca Cola; a new identity and strategy for iGoogle’s home page; “MINI-Motion”, a new brand for BMW’s MINI Cooper; the LEAF light and other furniture projects for Herman Miller and the NYC Condom for the department of Health of the City of NY.

Béhar was born in Switzerland and studied industrial design in Europe and the U.S. Fifteen years ago he moved to San Francisco at a moment of immense technological innovation; “those innovations were a part of everyday culture here and became an additional tool-set for my work as a designer,” Béhar says. He credits his design ethos in part to growing up in Switzerland with a Turkish father and East German mother; “I have a triad personality,” he explains. “There’s the warmer, expressive, story-telling culture of Turkey combined with an ethic of quality that comes from Switzerland, and the California tech-causal culture mixed in.”

The combination of technological innovation and design, or the notion of design ‘from the inside out’ is a hallmark of Béhar’s work. “I see design less from a style standpoint than in terms of innovative experiences,” Béhar explains. fuseproject considers not just the outer shell, but the relevant functional purpose and emotional connection of the product itself.

In addition to fuseproject’s commercial projects are many not for profit clients which underline Béhar’s core philosophy that, “Design is a real agent of change. We need to initiate an emphasis on the notion of ‘Design for Good’; we have a responsibility to the world around us.”

Ironically, perhaps, it’s his work which has been developed purely for a developing world audience, the XO and the XOXO for OLPC, which has generated some of the most dramatic innovations in computer design in recent years. A laptop which has been designed to cost 100 euros, which can withstand knocks and even be dropped, whose screen must stand up to intense daylight, whose keyboard has to cope with damp and dust, which should be light enough for a small child to carry on long walks to school, and whose appealing design is bright and playful, has all the qualities many consumers in the developed world would find immensely desirable, and yet which conventional manufacturers have barely considered until now.

Yves Béhar’s innovative designs have garnered more than 150 awards and his work is in the permanent collections of museums including the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou, the MOMA, the Munich Museum of Applied Arts and the Chicago Art Institute.

In 2009 Yves Béhar was the one of two industrial designers invited to speak at Davos.

Yves Thinking.

DESIGN IN THE WORLD: "Designers need to develop a new relationship with the world," says Yves Béhar. He sees a bigger role for design in the future, and the opportunity for designers to be true participants in both for profit businesses, but also non-profit important causes...

"Designers need to develop a new relationship with the world," says Yves Béhar. He sees a bigger role for design in the future, and the opportunity for designers to be true participants in both for profit businesses, but also non-profit important causes. "Humanistic design must tap into the "giving" element of our profession. It must be deeply in-tune with the needs to create a sustainable future, deeply connected with emotional needs, and deeply self-expressive."

INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP: Author Kevin Kelly says, "In recent years, Yves Béhar has emerged as one of the most important industrial designers on the contemporary scene. Through his San Francisco-based design and branding company fuseproject, the Swiss-born Béhar has shown that a futuristic, hi-tech approach to design can be deeply humane. The fluid forms and innovative function of his products are impressive enough, but it's Béhar's interest in the human experience and positive social change that give his objects real meaning."

DESIGN VENTURES: "We are changing the way we engage clients, less vendor, and more partner. I dislike the mentality that puts design in the self-defeating position to be a "vendor" to enterprises... I think this demands change on both sides of the equation: for clients to realize that designers are partners to their success, and for designers to put themselves in the place of both stake-holder and risk-taker. Big company or small company, corporation or start-up... it doesn't matter...

"We are changing the way we engage clients less vendor, and more partner. I dislike the mentality that puts design in the self-defeating position to be a "vendor" to enterprises... I think this demands change on both sides of the equation: for clients to realize that designers are partners to their success, and for designers to put themselves in the place of both stake-holder and risk-taker. Big company or small company, corporation or start-up... it doesn't matter."

fuseproject partners with companies large and small on long-term engagements: "a long-lasting impact on our client's brands, means that the work is never done... it is constantly evolving to keep our client's brands relevant."

While this notion of partnership is a great fuel for change in our engagements with the world's best known brands, fuseproject also develops actual business partnerships, called design ventures, working with early stage firms for an equity or royalty stake, and creating shared risk and shared reward.

When appropriate, Yves Béhar takes on outsider-insider roles, redefining the role of design and brand leadership at companies such as Coca-Cola, and Jawbone where Yves is CCO and VP. "Yves is our creative compass, his vision has shaped this company's products and brand since day 1" Hosain Rahman, CEO and Founder, Aliph Jawbone.

EDUCATION: Helping raise the next generation of designers is a duty, a creative stimuli, and simply a question of continuing to build a profession he loves deeply. Yves Béhar is the chair of the industrial design department at the California College of the Arts.

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