HTC’s VP of HTC’s VP of Industrial Design, Jonah Becker, has announced he is leaving the company – making him the second designer to leave the company in a short period, after Scott Croyle left just under a year ago.
Becker announced the move in a tweet, which was then responded to by another designer, Scott Croyle, who also previously worked for HTC. Becker and Croyle were two of three designers who joined the company when they acquired design firm One & Co, back in 2008, leaving Claude Zellweger as the last remaining principal designer from the company.
@JonahABecker Best of luck. Nice work at HTC and One & Co.
— Scott Croyle (@scroyle) March 27, 2015
HTC supplied Engadget with a statement on the departure, confirming it and advising the succession of the role of designer, announcing Daniel Hundt had taken over the role:
We can confirm that Jonah Becker has left HTC; he had been with the Company since HTC acquired One & Co over six years ago. We would like to thank Jonah for his work with HTC, and wish him all the best in his future endeavours. He has been succeeded by Daniel Hundt, based in our San Francisco design office
It’s been a fairly big week for HTC’s personnel department after Cher Wang stepped in as CEO of HTC, with former CEO Peter Chou stepping back into a more product focused role in the HTC Future Development Lab just last week.
What design changes we’ll see next time around won’t be apparent for a while, but we’ll probably see the first taste in the HTC One M10 if that’s what it will be named next year.
Damn that sucks. Maybe HTC should do what Samsung does and get Jony Ive to design their phones.