Apple director for Pentagram

Pentagram’s US offices are looking to set up a product design arm with the appointment of Apple’s former director of industrial design.

Robert Brunner, best known for his work on Macintosh products and Powerbook lap-top computers, joined Pentagram in San Francisco last week. (DW 12 January).

He becomes Pentagram’s fourteenth partner – the first with responsibility for product design in the US – and joins graphic designer Kit Hinrichs in the West Coast office.

Pentagram London partner and product designer Kenneth Grange says of the appointment: “We have waited a long time to establish our product design capability in the US because experience has taught us that we can only succeed in sophisticated markets when the principal players are at the very top of their profession. These people don’t commonly become available.”

Brunner says he was tempted away from Apple because “the opportunity is unique – it will give me a chance to use my experience and skills as an individual, and to work on a wider variety of design and business problems”.

Brunner joined Apple in 1989, five years after founding Lunar Design in Palo Alto with Jeff Smith and Gerard Furbershaw.

Apple declined to comment on the appointment of a successor for Brunner.