Hans Erich Slany
Encyclopedia
Hans Erich Slany is a German
designer that is considered by many to have been the first industrial designer to design plastic housings for power tools. Slany is also thought of as one of the icons of design in Germany
. He founded TEAMS Design
GmbH, was a Professor of Industrial Design
(ID) for more than 20 years and helped found the Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer
e. V. in 1959 (VDID - Germany’s version of the Industrial Designers Society of America
(IDSA)). He then helped the VDID with their entry into the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
(ICSID).
in World War II
. After the war, he graduated in 1948 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering
from Hochschule Esslingen, University of Applied Sciences. Out of school he obtained a position as a product developer and assistant technical manager at Firma Ritter Aluminum GmbH Esslingen am Neckar
. He then went on to the styling department at Daimler AG Sindelfingen
in the Mercedes-Benz
studio where he worked for 2 years. While at Daimler, he worked on the distinctive gull wing Mercedes-Benz 300SL
. He also collaborated with Heinrich Loffelhardt on the Ikonette Compact Camera for Zeiss-Ikon.
GmbH with his ideas for power tools housed in plastics. He was convinced that plastic housings would make the tools lighter, making the workers using them less prone to repetitive use injury. Also, it would reduce problems with electrical shocks. Robert Bosch GmbH even went on to publish a book called “The Influence of Ergonomics on the Design of Power Tools” based on Slany’s recommendations to share with all their engineers and to follow up a traveling exhibition (Europe
only) they sponsored called, “Making work easier: Ergonomics for power tools”. He believed that the designer should be the advocate of the user of the equipment they are called upon to design .
Slany was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Berlin University of the Arts
in 1985. He also founded the industrial design program at the Stuttgart
State Academy of Art and Design which was the first intensive ID program in Germany.
Slany desired to infuse the company with a strong team based mentality. He said, "Früher arbeiteten Gestalter oft isoliert und mit künsterlischen Gestaltungskriterien, beeinflußt durch untershiedliche kulturelle Anschauungsterndenzen. Der Industriedesigner heute arbeitet systematisch. Er analysiert, vergleicht, prüft und gestaltet erst dann... Ein kreatives, lebendiges Designteam bringt die besten Voraussetzunge für innovative Anregungen, die in den bereichsübergreifenden Entscheidungsprozeß einfließen." or translated into English, "Formerly designers often worked in isolation and with artificial design criteria, influenced by different cultural views and tendencies. Today's industrial designers work systematically. They analyze, compare, examine, and design only after that... A creative lively design team provides the best conditions for innovative stimuli that flow into the overall decision-making process."
to the public
. Around that same time they joined the ICSID as a full member. VDID also works closely with the German Fashion and Textile Design Association (VDMD) under the umbrella of the German Designer Association (DDV).
by then Federal President
Roman Herzog
. In accordance to Slany's ten-year plan, Renner and Schoen then removed Slany's name from the company name leaving simply TEAMS Design GmbH. A lot of Slany's founding philosophies are at the heart of the firm today, now expanding across 4 countries (Germany, Serbia
, United States and China
) with 5 offices in Esslingen, Hamburg
, Belgrade
, Chicago
, and Shanghai
. TEAMS Design continues to win awards and lead in the field of design while maintaining some of Slany’s original clients like Robert Bosch GmbH, Karcher
GmbH, Silit, and Leifheit.
1985 Honorary doctorate by the Berlin University of the Arts
1986 Became the Academic Director and a professor at the newly founded industrial design program for the Stuttgart
State Academy of Art and Design. Founded the first study program leading to the degree, "Dipl. - Ingeniuerdesigner" in Germany (Diploma Designer)
1990 Awarded Design Team of the year award by Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen
also known as the Red Dot Design Award
1996 TEAMS / SLANY Design was ranked as the top design firm in Germany by Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen (Red Dot Design Award) and second place worldwide
1996 Received highest order award in Germany, the Bundesverdienstkreuz
for lifetime service
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
designer that is considered by many to have been the first industrial designer to design plastic housings for power tools. Slany is also thought of as one of the icons of design in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. He founded TEAMS Design
TEAMS Design
TEAMS Design is a multinational industrial design firm headquartered in Germany founded in 1956 by industrial designer Hans Erich Slany. As of July, 2009, TEAMS has five design studios on three continents. They have been ranked second by the International Forum Design , or 14th in an international...
GmbH, was a Professor of Industrial Design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
(ID) for more than 20 years and helped found the Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer
Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer
Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer e.V. or VDID is a professional organization for industrial designers based in Germany that was founded by 7 German designers in 1959...
e. V. in 1959 (VDID - Germany’s version of the Industrial Designers Society of America
Industrial Designers Society of America
Industrial Designers Society of America is an organization of professional industrial designers primarily in the United States. Recently IDSA has started chapters in Canada and in China...
(IDSA)). He then helped the VDID with their entry into the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
International Council of Societies of Industrial Design was founded in 1957 from a group of international organizations focused on industrial design. Today Icsid is a worldwide society that promotes better design around the world...
(ICSID).
Early years
Slany was born in 1926 in Esslingen, Germany and served in the armed services. He was POWPrisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. After the war, he graduated in 1948 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
from Hochschule Esslingen, University of Applied Sciences. Out of school he obtained a position as a product developer and assistant technical manager at Firma Ritter Aluminum GmbH Esslingen am Neckar
Esslingen am Neckar
Esslingen am Neckar is a city in the Stuttgart Region of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, capital of the District of Esslingen as well as the largest city in the district....
. He then went on to the styling department at Daimler AG Sindelfingen
Sindelfingen
Sindelfingen is a German town near Stuttgart at the headwaters of the Schwippe that is the site of a Mercedes-Benz assembly plant.-History:* 1155 First documented mention of Sindelfingen...
in the Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...
studio where he worked for 2 years. While at Daimler, he worked on the distinctive gull wing Mercedes-Benz 300SL
Mercedes-Benz 300SL
The Mercedes-Benz 300SL was introduced in 1954 as a two-seat, closed sports car with distinctive gull-wing doors. Later it was offered as an open roadster...
. He also collaborated with Heinrich Loffelhardt on the Ikonette Compact Camera for Zeiss-Ikon.
SLANY Design Years
In 1956 Hans Erich Slany founded his own design consultancy called SLANY Design. Soon after the founding, he approached Robert BoschRobert Bosch
Robert Bosch was a German industrialist, engineer and inventor, founder of Robert Bosch GmbH.-Biography:...
GmbH with his ideas for power tools housed in plastics. He was convinced that plastic housings would make the tools lighter, making the workers using them less prone to repetitive use injury. Also, it would reduce problems with electrical shocks. Robert Bosch GmbH even went on to publish a book called “The Influence of Ergonomics on the Design of Power Tools” based on Slany’s recommendations to share with all their engineers and to follow up a traveling exhibition (Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
only) they sponsored called, “Making work easier: Ergonomics for power tools”. He believed that the designer should be the advocate of the user of the equipment they are called upon to design .
Slany was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Berlin University of the Arts
Berlin University of the Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a public art school in Berlin, Germany, one of the four universities in the city...
in 1985. He also founded the industrial design program at the Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
State Academy of Art and Design which was the first intensive ID program in Germany.
Slany desired to infuse the company with a strong team based mentality. He said, "Früher arbeiteten Gestalter oft isoliert und mit künsterlischen Gestaltungskriterien, beeinflußt durch untershiedliche kulturelle Anschauungsterndenzen. Der Industriedesigner heute arbeitet systematisch. Er analysiert, vergleicht, prüft und gestaltet erst dann... Ein kreatives, lebendiges Designteam bringt die besten Voraussetzunge für innovative Anregungen, die in den bereichsübergreifenden Entscheidungsprozeß einfließen." or translated into English, "Formerly designers often worked in isolation and with artificial design criteria, influenced by different cultural views and tendencies. Today's industrial designers work systematically. They analyze, compare, examine, and design only after that... A creative lively design team provides the best conditions for innovative stimuli that flow into the overall decision-making process."
Professional Community Involvement - VDID
Slany along with six other professional industrial designers that later were referred to in publications and in the media as the "7", joined together to found the VDID in 1959. The six other designers are Professor Arno Votteler, Hans-Theo Baumann, Herbert Hirche, Kupetz Günter, Rainer Schütze, and Peter Raacke. They believed that designers needed an association to promote professional advocacy, support them in both legal and educational issues, and to represent the professionProfession
A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....
to the public
Public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...
. Around that same time they joined the ICSID as a full member. VDID also works closely with the German Fashion and Textile Design Association (VDMD) under the umbrella of the German Designer Association (DDV).
Later years - TEAMS Design
As Slany Design grew, Slany realized that the firm would have to evolve. He sold part of his shares in the company to two of his managers, Reinhard Renner and Klaus Schoen and changed the firm's name to Slany Design TEAMS. Finally when he retired in 1996, he was awarded the highest honor in Germany for lifetime service, the BundesverdienstkreuzBundesverdienstkreuz
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
by then Federal President
Bundespräsident
Bundespräsident is the German language title for:* The President of Austria * The President of Germany...
Roman Herzog
Roman Herzog
Roman Herzog is a German politician as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, and served as President of Germany from 1994 to 1999...
. In accordance to Slany's ten-year plan, Renner and Schoen then removed Slany's name from the company name leaving simply TEAMS Design GmbH. A lot of Slany's founding philosophies are at the heart of the firm today, now expanding across 4 countries (Germany, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, United States and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
) with 5 offices in Esslingen, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
. TEAMS Design continues to win awards and lead in the field of design while maintaining some of Slany’s original clients like Robert Bosch GmbH, Karcher
Karcher
Karcher may refer to:* Kärcher, a German manufacturer of high-pressure cleaning equipmentPeople with the surname Karcher or Kärcher:* Alfred Kärcher, German industrialist...
GmbH, Silit, and Leifheit.
Awards and Distinctions
1973-78 Awarded “Gute Form” awards also known as the German Design AwardGerman Design Award
The Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany is the nation's official design award and is presented by the German Ministry for Economics and Technology. The award was given for the first time under the name 'Federal Award for Good Design' in 1969 and thereafter every two years. Moreover,...
1985 Honorary doctorate by the Berlin University of the Arts
Berlin University of the Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a public art school in Berlin, Germany, one of the four universities in the city...
1986 Became the Academic Director and a professor at the newly founded industrial design program for the Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
State Academy of Art and Design. Founded the first study program leading to the degree, "Dipl. - Ingeniuerdesigner" in Germany (Diploma Designer)
1990 Awarded Design Team of the year award by Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen
Essen
- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...
also known as the Red Dot Design Award
Red dot design award
The Red Dot Design Award is an international product design prize awarded by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. There are prize categories for product design, design agencies, and design concepts. Since 1955, designers and producers can apply for the prizes with the winners...
1996 TEAMS / SLANY Design was ranked as the top design firm in Germany by Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen (Red Dot Design Award) and second place worldwide
1996 Received highest order award in Germany, the Bundesverdienstkreuz
Bundesverdienstkreuz
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
for lifetime service
External links
- Red Dot Design Hall of Fame
- German Wikipedia Entry on the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design
- Spanish Biography Site
- Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer e.V.
- Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)
- Who's Who in German Design
- md Moebel Interior Design
- SLANY Design
- TEAMS Design