Panasonic

The root of Panasonic’s Design goes all the way back to the 1950s. When Konosuke Matsushita, Panasonic‘s founder, first saw the US market, he saw for himself how the design was the key to business there. This, he realized, was the “dawn of a new age of design.” In 1951 he invited Yoshikazu Mano, then a lecturer at the Faculty of Industrial Design of Chiba University, to establish the Product Design Section of Matsushita Electric’s Advertising Department, starting with just three people. That was the birth of the in-house design department, which was rare in Japan at that time.

The design department continued to work to increase understanding of the fact that design was more than just the outward appearance of a product but extends to where and how the product is used.

Panasonic Design continues today with the same approaches and concepts from its beginning.