In 2011 we noticed an emerging trend of products being reintroduced and reimagined, building on nostalgia.We recognised that only a few companies had the credentials and previous portfolio to do this, and within the mobile phone world, perhaps Nokia was the only one.The original Nokia 3310 sold in excess of 150 million units. This made it one of the single best selling handsets of all time, and also meant that it was very memorable. It had earned a reputation for reliability and simplicity, which we knew could be a halo for the brand.We reimagined the 3310 with updated touch interface, and fun contemporary looks. Everyone who saw this within Nokia smiled, and there was huge support to create the product. The company was not in a position to invest in the full platform however, and after trying repeatedly to force fit the design onto low cost products the idea was shelved.When we set up HMD and I met CEO Florian Seich I proposed the concept again, raising this was a great time to raise brand awareness, and that the values of simplicity, reliability, and long battery life would offer free marketing for our smartphone portfolio, at a time when marketing budget was limited.Whilst we were unable to implement the touch interface in the time, we did manage to capture the character. I led an activity to ensure the UI of the product was in keeping with the outward appearance, by adapting the exisiting visual UI and introducing new iconography. We also allowed extra budget for quality execution, including a polariser which made the sceen content stand out, and hid the edges of the screen.The new UI for 3310 was distinctive, however we felt too polarising for a whole portfolio, so I led the work to create a more flexible version with impact and colour to roll out across the broader feature phone portfolio.Colour was an important part of the story. Using 2 shot mouldings we were able to get the graphical band around the screen from a single part, reducing cost. We wanted to ensure the chosen resins would be consistently bright, and from quality would not fade. We also spent a lot of time developing the surface finish, where we had two approaches - high gloss for the first products, and a carefully tunes spark erode texture which was more cost effective.The extremely positive market reaction to the 3310 led to many requests for our entire feature phone portfolio being "retro". We wanted to ensure that this approach remained something we could use as a halo, so needed to be more premium. We proposed that the rest of the portfolio take an "essense" of the past and execute in a bold iconic way. This helped differentiate from the many geometric produts on the market today.We did however still look at some other classics, shown here the 8110 which we reimagined around Kai OS bringing google services to feature devices. We retained the curved form. and sliding cover, and added the yellow colour way or a bit of fun.
