“Everyone remembers the first Nokia,” says Mark Mason, who joined the carrier’s design team during its heyday in the 1990s. “When you say that name, it brings back memories.”

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. In 1998, the Finnish consumer electronics manufacturer was the world’s best-selling mobile phone brand, accounting for 40% of the global market and 70% of the UK market.

Nokia’s cultural influence will be properly recognized for the first time in January, when the company’s design archive will be on display. Finland’s Aalto University has acquired the archive and will make it available through selected portals online as well as displaying it on its campus in Espoo.

Nokia’s influence on Finland is indisputable, but the Finnish Institute for Economic Research (Etla) reports that Nokia has contributed A quarter of Finland’s economic growth from 1998 to 2007 – The brand’s international pop culture value is also undeniable.

“Nokia was one of the first telcos to truly emphasize design and difference, offering everything from very affordable phones to the latest cutting-edge phones.” says technical editor Jonathan Bell. wallpaper* magazine. “In the world before Apple, Google, and even Samsung, they stood above all the other players.”

Nokia’s factory ringtone – Gran Valse from 1902 by Francisco Tarrega – became very popular in the 1990s and 2000s. the bird learned to sing it. In 2009, it was reported that the song was listened to an estimated 1.8 billion times a day worldwide. This equates to 20,000 times per second.

The Nokia 8110 handset (better known as Banana) starred in the 1999 film. matrix. The brand quickly became endowed with cultural prestige.

Style journalist Murray Healy face He was a magazine editor during Nokia’s heyday in the 1990s, and currently serves as the editorial director of a fashion magazine. perfection. “In the late ’90s, when cell phones were boring, serious, precious, expensive mini-monoliths associated with yuppies, here came this cheap, curvaceous, happy-looking, slightly toy-like device,” he says. says. “It’s pocket-sized, the battery lasts forever, and it doesn’t seem to break down.”

Healy says the Nokia 3210, launched in 1999, was key in ushering in a culture of complete customization with its colorful, changeable chassis. “You can also print the name of your favorite band on it.”

Nokia was also the first mobile phone manufacturer to support SMS texting, and its mobile keypads were perfectly designed for it.

“All of these factors made the product immediately appealing to a youth market that was already adept at avoiding exorbitant call charges with text messages,” Healy says.

Mason, who spent 20 years at Nokia and is now a design expert at the British Design Council, says it was a great time for creativity. “We created a design language early on that put humans at the center. Our slogan was ‘Human Technology’ and Nokia’s slogan was ‘Connecting People.’ Everything we did was centered around that. The keyboard was also curved like the Mona Lisa’s smiling face. When you looked at it, it smiled back at you. “

Aalto University’s archives contain marketing images, sketches, market profiling and presentations that provide new insights into what was once one of the world’s most innovative companies.

Anna Valtonen is the lead researcher at the Nokia Design Archive and a former designer at the company. Her favorite piece on the record is an audiotape in which the designer explains what she’s been working on. “Combined with visual material, it creates a more human story. It not only gives color to the document, but also outlines what the designer was trying to achieve.”

By 1999, Nokia’s operating profits reached $4 billion, but the good times didn’t last long.

Ben Wood, Chief Analyst and Head of Marketing at CCS Insights, said: “This is the sad story of a once-great company that not only defined but dominated an industry for more than a decade, but was forgotten sooner than anyone imagined.”

Nokia’s decline was due to a combination of factors. Complacency played a big role. The company could not accept the competitive threat posed by new approaches, especially more powerful touchscreen smartphones such as the iPhone.

Since 2007, Nokia’s market value has fallen by about 90% and it was acquired by Microsoft in 2013.

Nokia’s design archive is a window into an optimistic era, when personal devices and technology were seen as purely positive additions to family life and well-being. But the clunky, bulky phones are finding a new audience among young people whose parents grew up with the brand and now want their children to have less access to social media.

Nokia devices are manufactured by Finnish independent mobile phone manufacturer Human Mobile Devices (HMD), which has been in production since 2016 and whose staff is mostly made up of former Nokia employees.

Valtonen said working with the archives gave him a sense of more than nostalgia. “It gave me a feeling of optimism and forward-looking thinking more than anything else. There are so many changes happening in technology at such a fast pace that it’s important to take a moment to pause and take a look behind the scenes. It’s great to get a glimpse of all the work being done, and I hope this material inspires people and makes them realize the potential for innovation.”

Mason’s hope is unashamedly nostalgic. “I can’t be too excited about my time at Nokia. It’s like a family and I’ve created a design icon. I hope people dig their old phones out of their drawers. – You’ll probably still be able to use it. If you cut me, you’ll have bright blue Nokia blood.”