July 2008: ADEX Awards for both Mansfield bathroom suites
The aim of our work for Manfield Plumbing was to create affordable bathroom suites for the style-conscious homeowner. We are pleased to announce that both the Reo Suite and Essence Suite were honored with 2008 ADEX Awards, receiving gold and silver respectively.
 Mansfield Bathroom Suites

 

Mar 2008: X-Line receives more Packaging Design Awards
Our innovative cases and packaging work for Bosch's X-Line and Mini X-line have been awarded four iF Packaging Awards including one Gold Award which will be presented at Interpak 2008 in April. Late last year we also received the Swiss Star Award and the German Packaging Award.
 Packaging

Feb 2008: New senior staff in Chicago, Clifford Krapfl
We are pleased to announce that Clifford Krapfl, IDSA has joined our expanding Chicago team as Creative Manager. He joins us with over 12 years of professional experience and will fill a key role in our new management structure.
 Chicago office

Jan 2008: Internal Marketing & Advertising department
The Chicago office is working collaboratively with international Marketing Agency Finest/West on a number of projects in order to offer our clients product launch services that go beyond the traditional turnkey 'concept to manufacture'. While TEAMS often creates Product Line Strategies for clients, we can now integrate that into a holistic Marketing Strategy too. Finest/West have moved their US offices to our Hubbard St address.

Nov 2007: Green Environmental Awards
Congratulations to our client Konvecta AG for winning the German Environmental Award presented by German President Köhler. Konvecta is working with their greenhouse gas reduction technology on a number of programs with our Hamburg office, who is also a licensed Environmental Design Partner
 Hamburg office

Nov 2007: New Senior Engineer in Shanghai
We would like to welcome Don Nole to our Shanghai office. Don comes with many years of engineering experience both in the US and in China. He will work in a pivotal role leading our Shanghai engineering services and as a Production Liaison for our worldwide clients.
 Shanghai office

October 2007: New senior staff, Marianne Grisdale
We are pleased to announce that Marianne Grisdale, IDSA has joined our Chicago team as Creative Manager. She has over 18 years of professional experience in Industrial Design and will be serving in a newly created role as part of an ongoing expansion to our teams.
 Chicago office

September 2007: Packaging Awards
A recently designed line of packaging and accessory cases for Bosch has received both the prestigious Swiss Star Award and the German Packaging Award. "The robust cases are absolutely high-tech product with optimal presentation of the innards."
 Packaging

June 2007: Five Red Dot Awards
TEAMS Design is grateful to this year's Design Innovation jury for four Red Dot Awards in the electronics, tools and commercial equipment categories.
 Design Awards

June 2007: Neocon Speaking
Paul Hatch, President of the Chicago branch was speaking on 'Understanding User Perception of Products" as part of a Neocon program arranged by Kendall College. The presentation explained how a designer can manipulate the visual perception of a product through understanding how the human sensory system works.

June 2007: New Senior ID staff, Sergey Muraviev
TEAMS Chicago is pleased to welcome Sergey Muraviev to their team. Sergey brings many years of international experience from working in the Appliance industry and has a unique balance of aesthetic sensibility, creativity and detailed production knowledge.
 Chicago office

April 2007: Seven iF Design Awards
We are proud to have received seven Design Awards at this year's iF Awards Ceremony. Thanks and congratulations go to our partners at Bosch, Karcher, Still, Weishaupt and Siemens.
 Design Awards

March 2007: World´s first solar air conditioning power station gets DESIGN PLUS Award
The award was presented at the ISH show in Frankfurt Germany for our design of an absorption chiller that allows rooms to be cooled using solar energy. Congratulations to the team at Schüco International.
 Design Awards

November 2006: WORLD PARTY! -50 years of TEAMS Design
As part of this year's 50th anniversary celebrations staff from all of the design offices came to Esslingen to celebrate in style. The 54 designers from Chicago, Shanghai, Belgrade, Hamburg and Esslingen took part in presentations, workshops, site-seeing, museum visits and two parties!

October 2006: TEAMS Design featured in Hamburg Design Festival.
TEAMS Design had an exhibition as part of the Design Festival Hamburg 2006. Alongside samples from our portfolio, it also featured an interactive board game about the design process. TEAMS Hamburg also spoke on Market Leadership as part of this years' Design Symposium at the Chamber of Commerce .
 Hamburg office

Sept 2006: Design Means Business -Book
Paul Hatch and Deana McDonagh were coeditors and authors in an IDSA published book 'REALIZE - Design Means Business', which provides case-studies of companies that have leveraged design and design-thinking to drastically increase its market presence. The book was launched at the IDSA National Conference in Austin and is now available on Amazon.

Aug 2006: Winner Still EXU pallet truck
The low lift pallet truck STILL EXU won the prestigious "Hamburger Designpreis", design competition, and was nominated for the 2007 Nationwide Design competition "Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2007". Business Senator Gunnar Uldall gave the awards at the ceremony, held at the Axel Springer Passage.
 Still Portfolio

June 2006: TEAM Expansion
TEAMS Design is pleased to welcome Marcus Bosch in a senior role in the Chicago office, as part of an ongoing growth-driven restructure. Prior to working at TEAMS Marcus has worked within both corporate and consultant offices and will bring a lot of valuable experience to the team.

April 2006: Expanded office space for Chicago
TEAMS Design Chicago hosted a 350-person strong party as part of the IDSA District Conference in their new office. The new office is just one story lower than their current location, but offers more room for the expanding team. The building itself is a former furniture manufactory from the turn of the 20th century.
 teams@teamsdesign.com

April 2006: TEAMS Design opens Shanghai branch
Increasingly more of our US and European clients are manufacturing in Asia, so in order to serve them better we have opened an office near the center of Shanghai. Many of our globally-targeted products have already been successful on the Chinese market and we have also designed for China-based clients since 2000.

April 2006: Safepole Invention a success
As well as working with many global corporations, TEAMS Design also helps a selection of startup companies and inventors bring their concepts to market. Cari Ugent came to TEAMS Design in 2003 with a ideas to improve the age-old IV Pole after being hospitalized for a stem-cell transplant. Following some local onsite testing, Safepole has now been launched and is being hailed as part of "the next revolution in hospital care".
 www.safepole.net

Mar 2006: Presenting the Future at the Appliance Technology Show
TEAMS Design gave a presentation to IATC attendees outlining current and future trends of style, innovation and technology. The presentation included an explanation on how to identify trends and why some technologies have failed despite their technological advancement.
 www.iatc.net

Mar 2006: TEAMS Ranked 2nd in international list
The yearly published "Ranking:Design 2005" put TEAMS Design in 2nd place in their overall top ten 'Trade and Industry' section for 2005 for the fourth year in a row, and 5th place in their overall top twenty, just ahead of Samsung Electronics.
 Top twenty 2005 Trade and Industry
 Overall top twenty list

Mar 2006: 'Best of Show' at the International Housewares Show
Paul Hatch was involved in a discussion panel on the best new trends and products of the Housewares Show, and Tatyana Balte (Visual Branding) was also recruited for a feature called 'Design Defined' that showcased selected innovative products.
 Design Defined

Feb 2006: 'Good Design' Awards
TEAMS Design has just been awarded four Good Design Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum. All four are products that the Chicago office worked on in conjunction with their German counterparts and were designed to be visually compatible with both the US and European markets.
 Design Awards

Jan 2006: TEAMS Design opens new branch in Belgrade
A lot of Western European manufacturers are moving their production to Eastern Europe, where there is a high level of technical education and a more cost-efficient production. In order to better serve our European clients we have opened our Belgrade office to manage production data and manufacture-related issues.

Dec 2005: Design Book on Amazon.com
The IDSA funded book 'Impact -The Synergy of Design Business and Technology' is now for sale on Amazon.com. It features chapters from leading designers such as Karim Rashid and Tucker Viemeister as well as our own Paul Hatch.
 IMPACT book on Amazon.com

Oct 2005: Twenty Five Red-Dot Awards Since 2001
TEAMS Design has now been awarded twenty-five Red-Dot Awards over the last five years from the German 'Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westafalen'. With over 4,000 entries from 40 countries, the red dot design award ranks among the largest design competitions worldwide.
 Design Awards

July 2005: TEAMS Exhibition in Hamburg
A range of work from the last two decades was exhibited in an exclusive exhibition in Hamburg. The exhibition ran through to the end of May and we were surprised at the high number of visitors that came. "It's great to see the sketches and models behind some of the products we know so well" remarked one visitor.

April 2005: IDSA Midwest Conference
Paul Hatch, president of TEAMS Design in Chicago was co-chair at this year's IDSA Midwest Conference held at the UIUC. The conference featured over twenty big-name speakers such as Karim Rashid, Tucker Viemeister (Smart /Springtime), Bruce Nussbaum (Business Week). Paul introduced the speakers and moderated two discussion panels featuring the above speakers.

February 2005: Brand Boom
One particular feature of the last two years' at TEAMS has been the increase in revitalizing entire product lines. Companies facing cheaply produced competition from Asia have found success in approaching the market with a comprehensively designed product-line, rather than individually designed products. We have been contacted by many new clients this year for this type of work, chiefly because of the amount of long-term experience we have in creating and nurturing brands.
 Brand Development

November 2004: IDSA-DVP election for Paul Hatch
Paul Hatch, President of the Chicago office has been elected together with four other design leaders to be the five District Vice Presidents for the IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America). Over the next two years they intend to implement some important structural changes to create a better understanding of the strategic advantages industrial design can give manufacturers and brands.

September 2004: 2nd Place in Design Firm Ranking
The yearly published "Ranking:Design 2004" put TEAMS Design in 2nd place in their overall top ten 'Trade and Industry' section for 1996-2004, and 8th place in their overall top twenty, just ahead of LG Electronics Sony Europe and Philips Design.
 Design Awards

June 2004: Additional staff
The year so far has been busier than ever before, and all three offices have hired talented new TEAMS members. A number of new companies have begun working with us this year, but the biggest workload increase has been from our regular client base.
We're proud of our very high client retention, and will continue to prioritize quality design and project management in our company strategy.

Feb 2004: 'Fight Club' event in Chicago, televised
Together with the IDSA, our Chicago office has created a new debate event for local designers and related professions.
'Fight Club' is raw, no-holds barred debate where two strongly
opposing 'fighters' debate a chosen subject with lively audience participation. The third such event on February 12th debated the
subject of Consumerism, and was televised by ABC.
 IDSA Fight Club Website

Jan 2004: Robot Cleaner launched
A new automated floor cleaner has been launched by Karcher for the domestic market. TEAMS has previously designed robotic floor cleaners for Karcher, but only for the industrial market. This new household product integrates their water-based cleaning technology with state-of-the-art robotics.
 Karcher

Dec 2003: Increasing high-end CAD work
Our Esslingen office has expanded its number of high-end CAD stations by adding several new seats of Pro/Engineer and Unigraphics. We are training more designers in both types of software to supply the increased amount of tooling-ready data we create for our clients.
 Computer Aided Design

Nov 2003: Still RX50 forklift becomes a bestseller
Compared to his predecessor the 'R 50' which was the most popular and most sold truck of its class, the new RX 50 has improved sales by all of 27%. “We see this good development as a result of the best possible solution for the requirements of the market which was developed in close cooperation with our customers”, explains Bert Frisch, marketing Director at Still. The RXX is the first model to incorporate many of the innovations introduced in the concept forklift 'RXX'.
 Still RXX Forklift

Oct 2003: New Real-time Conferencing Site
We have built our own communications site for on-line conferencing with clients and internal design discussions. Here, all participants can view and edit the same designs in real-time. It has already proven to be an essential communication tool between our branches and clients, surpassing regular video conferencing by far.

Aug 2003: Feedback from TV program
We've had very good feedback about the segment on World Business Review, both from existing clients and new contacts. For many, the TV segment brought to light the importance of having a brand-wide philosophy when entering the design and development phase of any product. The TV feature has already impacted the ongoing development processes of some of our clients.
 Brand Development

June 2003: TEAMS on TV
The US business program World Business Review featured our Chicago office in a segment focussing on innovative Brand-wide product development. “TEAMS Design was selected to appear on World Business Review due to its experience and ability to keep US manufacturers at the
forefront of their industries” said Bruce Gaster, the show’s Senior Coordinating Producer. The segment focuses on our “Product Line Revitalization” work, where TEAMS Design creates a homogenous look to a company’s full line of products that promotes their brand as a whole. Product-focused Brand Identity brings substance and recognition to a range of products, which then consolidate to work as a powerful team on the marketplace. You can view a streaming clip (4 mins) here:
  TV clip with 56K bandwidth.
  TV clip with 300K bandwidth

May 2003: Top Ranking in Design Poll
The yearly published "Ranking:Design" has put TEAMS Design in 2nd place in their top ten 'Trade and Industry' selection, and 4th place in their overall top twenty, just behind Sony and IBM.
 Design Awards

April 2003: Industrial Design Sketches featured at exhibition
Sketches and renderings from selected industrial design work are being shown in an exhibition called Domystique at Columbia College in Chicago. Curated by Kevin Henry of Columbia's Industrial Design program, the exhibition is at the 11th St gallery until April 25th.
 Development Process

Mar 2003: Web-site format change
The web-site includes more articles and details about our innovative design process and aspects of TEAMS Design services. A lot of new and interesting products have been released recently, which will gradually be integrated into the on-line portfolio over the next few months.
 Innovation

Feb 2003: Expanding TEAMS
Both Esslingen and Chicago have expanded their industrial design workforce, and are seeking further industrial designers. This is in answer to a recent surge of new clients, despite the current downturn in the industry as a whole.
 Job openings

Jan 2003: Speaker at Housewares Show
Chicago's Paul Hatch was one of the speakers at this year's Housewares Show. His presentation focussed on the importance of creating a recognizable Brand Identity across a product line, and how this can be achieved by the use of styling details on the products themselves.
 Brand Development

Dec 2002: Best Year to date
Through 2002 TEAMS worldwide had their most work to date, and are confident for a further increase in 2003 too. We accredit this to our very high rate of return business and new clients though good word-of-mouth.
Founder Hans Slany's philosophy was that the product (and not the designer) should stand in the forefront, which in turn builds a good reputation. For this reason we have no Sales staff and rarely advertise, and rely entirely on the results of our work. We're glad to see his policy still holds true.
 History: Hans Erich Slany

Dec 2002: Industrial Design Workshops at Chicago offices
Kristian Buschmann and Chris Barmore hosted two workshops at the Chicago offices this month. They demonstrated PC-based sketching and quick-modeling techniques to design students and professionals.
 Concept Sketching

Nov 2002: It's official! 1000 Product Design Awards
A new list was compiled and it was confirmed that the total design awards has now exceeded 1000, which is globally unique. We are very proud to have reached such a milestone achievement, for which we have our quality-conscious clients to thank.
 Design Awards

Sept 2002: New Hamburg Office
In September 2002 we opened a new branch of TEAMS Design in Hamburg, lead by our experienced designer Ulrich Warth. This office is located there to better serve the needs of our clients Still and Claas, as well as some other more recent North German clients.
 Hamburg address

Sept 2002: TEAMS Chicago new location
Also in September 2002, the Chicago office moved to larger premises so please note the new address on the Contact page. Our new offices give us much more space to expand, and have much better facilities including a larger workshop and conference rooms.
 Chicago address

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