How ThinkPad designers gaslit IBM to save the iconic TrackPoint
“It’s not red,” IBM’s design center manager patiently explained. “It’s magenta.”
The safety function officer wasn’t buying it. Between his fingers, he held up a small, rubbery disc that looked like a pencil eraser. “You know it’s red and I know it’s red,” he said.
The design manager didn’t back down. He insisted that what the man held was indeed magenta. The safety officer called his boss. The boss called Tom Hardy, Design Program Director at IBM. Hardy didn’t flinch.
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“It’s not red. It’s magenta.”
It was one of the boldest lies ever told in tech. And it made the ThinkPad iconic.
Years later, Hardy relayed the incident in an interview with Laptop Retrospective, detailing the design origins of the TrackPoint, the input stick resting in a central position of the ThinkPad keyboard since 1992.
Instantly recognizable today, the little red nub remains core to the ThinkPad’s identity. For anyone working in design, its history serves as a lesson on creative control and innovation.
Every designer knows red on black is a classic combination. So, for Hardy’s team, it was a no-brainer choice when first tasked with adding the TrackPoint to the system.
However, at the time, IBM instituted a strict color-code. For control systems like the TrackPoint, the standard was blue. Playing by the rules, the team toyed with that. According to Hardy, “it just didn’t sing like red did.”
They switched back to red. But there was a major problem with that.
Red was reserved for emergency power shutdowns. It’s the kill-switch color. Hardy knew, even then, the safety team had to approve the color scheme. There was no way they’d let it ship with a red cursor control. That simply wasn’t the way it was done.
Rather than fight and inevitably lose that battle, the designers got creative.
They scrapped every trace of ‘red’ in the documentation. They replaced it with ‘magenta’.
“The safety guys,” Hardy explained, “They may not know what magenta is, but they’ll know it’s not red.”
They may not know what magenta is, but they’ll know it’s not red.
Soon, the parts came in, labeled as magenta. No-one looked twice at them until the safety official snooped on a box of TrackPoints and demanded to know who approved the color for non-power related functions. He didn’t get an answer he liked. He threatened to shut down the whole production line.
Hardy got involved shortly after. Corporate on corporate combat ensued, arguing over the subjective difference between magenta and red. “The next stop in the line,” Hardy reminded them, “It goes to the CEO.”
Fighting his corner, he tells them, will be famed industrial designer Richard Sapper who created the classic ThinkPad design, as well as corporate graphic design consultant Paul Rand, the man behind the IBM logo. Both are color experts.
Even as the back and forth continued, Hardy’s team had linked up with the advertising team. The ad agency had poured millions of dollars into a campaign that was ready to launch. “So hot,” the adverts said with a close-up on the new TrackPoint, “We had to make it red.”
It was enough to make the safety team think twice. Later that day, an email was sent. It said: ‘Make them red.’
They’ve been the same iconic color ever since.
It’s no secret I’m a massive ThinkPad fan ever since I got my paws on a T431s, but check out the best business laptops my team and I have tested.
