As executive director the 3,300-member Industrial Designers Society of America in Dulles, Va., Frank Tyneski is head of the world's largest professional society of product designers. He assumed the post in fall 2007.
Formerly the San Diego-based senior director of design for Kyocera Wireless Corp., Tyneski established design teams not only in southern California, but also in Bangalore, India, and Shanghai, China. Before Kyocera, he was the director of design integration for RIM BlackBerry. There he was responsible for expanding Research In Motion Ltd.'s line of BlackBerry products into the prosumer/consumer market with the 7100 series, the first wireless products to use RIM's SureType keyboard technology. He also helped to design the Blackberry Pearl smart phone.
Tyneski has made a career of bringing new category-creating products to market. At Motorola Inc., he designed the first generation of award-winning, ruggedized, mobile data products for its Commercial & Government Solutions Sector. He also designed the first Nextel products and was later responsible for Motorola's TalkAbout series of award-winning consumer two-way radios.
Tyneski, who said he aims to take industrial design beyond product styling by developing products that change the way we work, play and communicate, also has designed products for General Motors Corp. and toy maker Fisher-Price, and was sponsored to develop groundbreaking medical devices for the National Institute of Health.
A recipient of numerous industry awards for design excellence, including BusinessWeek's Design of the Decade award, he holds more then 50 U.S. and foreign patents. His work has been displayed in the Smithsonian and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museums.