On the left, the beautiful Olivetti Valentine, a portable typewriter from 1969. On the right, a modern-day re-imagining of the portable typewrite as laptop.
Some of the carry-over features look genuinely useful, even today: The carrying handle on the back and the slide-out keyboard for instance. Other design cues from the original are cute, like the cooling slots which fan out and look like the spokes of the typewriter’s hammers.
And still others slavishly follow Ettore Sottsass’ original design at the expense of function — the tiny nipple and mouse-buttons instead of a proper trackpad, and the big wheel on the side.
Where is the display? The suggestion is that that wheel would be used to roll a flexible panel in and out. This might be fine for a tiny, pocket-sized handheld, but if your box is bigger and thicker than a folded laptop already, there is no excuse for not including a flat-panel. Sure, have a cute roll-out screen as a second display, but make sure you have a proper screen in there first.
The irony is that the product’s page over at the Yanko concept design site quotes Sottsass, who apparently said that “design should not merely be functional but additionally be attractive and emotionally appealing.” The Valentine Notebook manages to miss out the functionality entirely.
Product page [Yanko. Thanks, Radhika!]
