design. Apple designers threw out the internal floppy drive—a much-
criticized decision—and installed a trackball mouse. It was new territory.
Yet even at a $2,500 price point, this stripped-down PowerBook was a hit.
“Apple Computer realized that their goal was not to design a ‘small
computer,’ ” the booklet claimed. Apple learned “a lot about portability and
the value of the product during the design process of the PowerBook.” This
was at odds with Samsung’s affinity for feature-heavy devices.
Samsung was learning more about itself through the study of others.
And ironically, a group of American foreigners at the lab were closing in on
a South Korean design ethos.
Gordon Bruce wasn’t satisfied with Samsung’s design slogan, “Smart
and Soft.” Its products were highly logical and counterintuitive. The
designers began pondering the concept of yin and yang, the juxtaposition of
light and dark, east and west, heaven and earth, representing the
simultaneous unity and duality of all things.
Bruce convinced Samsung to hire former IBM designer Tom Hardy, an
outgoing and likable southerner from Georgia who bore a physical
resemblance to Ernest Hemingway.
The Tao was Chinese; Samsung needed to draw on its Korean roots.
“I decided to use the taegeuk,” Hardy told me. The taegeuk, which
means “supreme ultimate,” is the Korean variation of the emblem that
appears on the national flag, the circle of blue and red interlocking spirals.
It’s placed on the center of the national flag, surrounded by four trigrams
used in divination and symbolizing quatrains like spring, summer, autumn,
and winter.