gravity-cast, hand polished aluminium and gained their nickname because of a passing resemblance to 1950s chrome toasters. Neil Poulton and Christophe Pillet, then Starck employees and both future LaCie designers, ran the projects. A fourth Starck-designed product was completed to model stage in 1992 but was never manufactured. Industrial designer Neil Poulton has the longest running history with électronique d2/LaCie. From 1991 onwards, Scottish-born Poulton designed numerous products for d2, including the "Shark' and "FM Tuner' and the award-winning, phallic "le Coq" hard drive. Poulton also designed d2's graphics, literature, packaging, trade fair booths, and the two électronique d2 logos. When d2 bought out LaCie in 1995, Poulton was brought in to design the current LaCie logo and the company's corporate identity. Poulton is responsible for the design of the best-selling "d2" range, the "Pocketdrive" range, the "Rugged" drive, the "Little Big Disk' and numerous professional and "unsigned" d2/LaCie products dating back to 1991. His funnel-inspired "Firewire Speakers" won the French "Janus de l'Industrie' award in 2007. Christophe Pillet, better known for his high-end furniture, designed products for d2 /LaCie from 1994-96 after quitting Philippe Starck's office. In 2003, Philippe Spruch commissioned an agency to identify the world's "best known" design studio. He then hired the world-famous Porsche Design company to design a product range which would become best-sellers for LaCie between 2003-6. A spate of colorful products released in 2006 included Karim Rashid's "shocking" dayglo products and the popular Brick drive designed by Frenchman Ora-Ito. Never far from controversy, Ito's award winning USB Hub of 2007 had to be renamed to avoid infringement with the original name. In 2007, the French national museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris acquired LaCie products for its permanent collection including Poulton's "le Coq", "d2"," LBD", "Firewire Speakers", "Pocketdrive" and "Rugged", Ito's "Brick" and "USB Hub", and two Porsche Design drives. Poulton and Ito continue to work as designers for LaCie. Innovations LaCie developed the first universal disk formatting software for SCSI drives, Silverlining. LaCie was one of the first companies to include switchable, built-in termination with their Cirrus, Tsunami, and ZFP SCSI drives for Macintosh computers. Competitors Archos ioSafe Iomega LG Western Digital Fabrik Inc. Synology Inc. References External links 1987 establishments in Oregon Companies based in Tigard, Oregon Computer companies established in 1987 Computer companies of France Computer storage companies Display technology companies French brands Seagate Technology 2014 mergers and acquisitions