In September 2007, Apple upstaged rival electronics retailers with a new product available only at its 180 stores. Billed as the world’s smallest laser printer, the SCX-4500 offered all the must-have features of an Apple blockbuster: sleek good looks, buttonless touch controls, and easy set-up. The logo on the front, though, wasn’t Apple’s. It belonged to Samsung Electronics — one of the biggest suppliers of flat-panel televisions, cellular phones, and refrigerators in retailing — which created the stunning, piano-black printer. Intent on toppling industry giant Hewlett-Packard, the South Korean consumer electronics giant spent three years working on its first designer printer before teaming up with Apple for its introduction.

For years, Henry Ford has had nothing on printer manufacturers. Consumers could have any color they wanted — as expanded as it was boring beige or gray. But Samsung principal printer designer Bong Uk Lim wanted a new aesthetic. His goal: to create a printer that doesn’t look like one. “Most companies ask humans to adapt to the product instead of the other way around,” Lim says. “As you see with Apple, design is more urgent than ever before for most products. The same can be made true for printers.”

New Model

Pretty printers? It’s hardly the razor and blade model that has characterized the printer business, which topped an estimated $130 billion in worldwide sales in 2008. Consumer printers tend to be bulky plastic devices, built to sell at the lowest price possible amid expectations that companies can profit handsomely when customers run out of ink and toner and have to rush to Best Buy or Staples to buy replacement cartridges.

In a well-guarded office tower in downtown Seoul, Lim gave his four-person design team new marching orders to create a product design so eye-catching that consumers might be willing to pay additional to…

[Source] dhiram