Yves Béhar is an industrial designer and founder of fuseproject, the San Francisco-based design and branding firm he established in 1999. He is considered a leading figure in industrial design.
Béhar started his career with frogdesign as design leader and Lunar Design in Silicon Valley, developing products for clients such as Apple Inc., Hewlett Packard, and Silicon Graphics.
Upon founding fuseproject, Behar says his goals are threefold. Firstly, he wants to be a futurist, optimistic about the possibilities of new technology. Secondly, he’s a humanist, in that his designs seek to put the human experience first. And, finally, he’s a committed naturalist, promoting sustainable ways of living and consuming. That fusion, of technology with humanity, of brand and story, of all aspects of design, from product to advertising to online to point of purchase to user experience, is his central message. He states, “We have one foot in the consumer’s space and one foot in our client’s space, so we can act as the bridge, or the glue.”
Béhar’s designs and creative positioning are at work in diverse areas as fashion, lifestyle, sports and technology, for clients such as Birkenstock, BMW’s MINI, haasprojekt, Herman Miller, HBF, Hewlett Packard, Hussein Chalayan, Microsoft, Nike, OLPC, Philou, PUIG and Toshiba.
In 2005, a massive chandelier sculpted by Behar for Swarovski was installed at JFK airport. The piece is a loose tangle of organic curves with 55,000 crystals, and includes a motion detector triggering 2,000 blue light-emitting diodes that react to the movement of passengers.
He is the chief industrial designer of OLPC’s XO laptop, signing on with the project in 2005 and has been with the team since March of 2006.
He designed and holds a stake in the highly acclaimed Bluetooth headset, Jawbone, which he calls a facial accessory.