About Us
We integrate design and engineering into structured development processes.
Gabor Lengyel
Gabor Lengyel
Industrial designer and mechanical engineer
Diplom-Designer and Diplom-Ingenieur (German university degrees)
Owner and managing director
Former member of the executive team at frog design
Industrial designer and mechanical engineer
Gabor Lengyel unites three competences that rarely meet in one person: the design expertise of a Diplom-Designer, the technical grounding of a Diplom-Ingenieur in mechanical engineering, and more than twenty years in management and executive leadership with a focus on markets and design strategy. The result is what no designer, engineer or manager achieves alone: design quality that is technically realisable and economically viable – whether for an individual object or a global product system. In complex development processes he works at eye level with specialists from engineering, manufacturing and supply chain.
Gabor Lengyel unites three competences that rarely meet in one person: the design expertise of a Diplom-Designer, the technical grounding of a Diplom-Ingenieur in mechanical engineering, and more than twenty years in management and executive leadership with a focus on markets and design strategy. The result is what no designer, engineer or manager achieves alone: design quality that is technically realisable and economically viable – whether for an individual object or a global product system. In complex development processes he works at eye level with specialists from engineering, manufacturing and supply chain.
Origins
Gabor Lengyel began drawing at the age of three, encouraged by his father, Prof. Stefan Lengyel. By twelve, he was building ship models from construction drawings he had developed himself. In this way the early foundations were laid of the design thinking from which, in Stefan Lengyel's teaching, numerous designers rose to leading positions in major industrial companies and renowned design studios. In his first years at frog design, Gabor Lengyel was then shaped by the strategic thinking of Prof. Dr. Hartmut Esslinger HonRDI, the founder of the globally operating design studio, who has accompanied him as a mentor ever since.
On Prof. Dr. Hartmut Esslinger HonRDI
On Prof. Stefan Lengyel
Academic background
Industrial design under Richard Sapper and Hans Erich Slany at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.
Mechanical engineering under Hans-Jörg Bullinger at the University of Stuttgart – then director of the Fraunhofer IAO, later President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
Design Approach
The design approach of Lengyel Design lies in translating the design philosophy instilled by Prof. Stefan Lengyel into design practice. It combines form, technology and business objectives into an integrated development process, which Lengyel Design continually refines and applies to current industrial challenges and international markets.
Work at frog design
As a member of the executive team at frog design, now part of Capgemini Invent, Gabor Lengyel led international design and innovation projects for leading industrial and technology brands – with strategic-creative line authority over the Heads of Industrial Design and Corporate Design, and as Design Director for frog design Germany. He structured complex product developments from the concept phase through to series production, integrating design, engineering and brand strategy into viable product architectures. The project portfolio spanned technology products, tableware, sport, medical technology, seating, office technology and workplace design.
Four projects from this period – each taken from initial concept through to series production, with full creative and client responsibility, in interdisciplinary teamwork at frog design:
Performance product
frog design | HEAD
Tennis racket
Two innovations in one product: the trapezoidal frame head maximises the sweet spot while making the marketing claim "Pyramid Power Profile" visually self-evident – geometry as brand argument. This was also the first tennis racket in the world whose grip cross-section transitions organically and without tapering directly into the frame, improving both handling and structural integrity. Design that performs and communicates simultaneously.
Brand design
frog design | HILTI
Tool case
A tool case that is instantly recognisable as Hilti – before the logo is even read. The ribbed surface translates robustness and construction craftsmanship into tangible product language, making brand values physically experienceable. Brand character as the generative principle of form.
System product
frog design | Rosenthal
Hotel tableware system
A hotel tableware system that communicates its context of use through form alone. The flowing contour evokes a tablecloth falling in soft folds – the laid table as the generative metaphor. The technically necessary stacking edge is formally integrated into this logic, not added as an afterthought. The result: a system in which brand identity and functional requirement share a single design source.
MedTech product
frog design | Biedermann
Knee brace
A medical device that athletes choose to wear. The formal language references the muscular definition of classical Greek sculpture.The result is an orthosis with the visual character of high-performance sports equipment – precisely positioned for the high-impact sports market.
Gabor Lengyel developed a 15% reduction in the joint mechanism's volume – full range of motion within a minimal structural envelope.
