Production Design: Depicting the Future

As a Production Designer you are always challenged, that is beyond the usual 'time and money'. One is even more challenged when you have to predict/depict the near future (in your designs). Near future is always more difficult for many reasons, than a total fantasied future. One reason in particular: depicting technology. Sometimes you really nail it (at least get really close). A few days ago while browsing the web, I came across a chair entitled 'The Surf Chair'. This was chair was actually designed in 2000.

design Lylover/Sorensen

This brought to mind  an AT&T Commercial Campaign I designed in the mid 80's. The entire commercial chronicled AT&T advances since 1876 and concluded with a brief glimpse into the future. This glimpse was a 'futuristic workstation'.

AT&T World's Fair 1986

The concept behind this was a swiveling/collapsable 'work station'. An office in a box, so to speak, multiples could be used to create an office pool area. The slightly concave flat screen monitor (well ahead of its time) would retract, while work surface would pivot from horizontal to vertical for storage. Incidentally the monitor was intended as a touch screen. A little crude in construction, but then it had to be assembled in about a day. At that time I had just purchased my first Mac (the Mac Plus), which bore no resemblance to what I had designed. 

Link to Actual Spot

And as a footnote, I purposely designed the environment to re-inforce the logo of AT&T.