Dell Bets Splashy Design Will Sell Its New Laptops

A new laptop designed by Nigerian artist Joseph Amédokpo

Hanging on a wall at Dell's (DELL) consumer design lab in Austin, Tex., are neat rows of what look like abstract paintings. There's a splashy watercolor in turquoise, black, and green, and a mosaic pattern of white and red dots and geometric shapes. Another is covered with hand-drawn sketches of olives in green, purple, and orange. These aren't works of art, though. They're dozens of prototypes for future laptops. Look closely and you see the Dell logo on each one.

The man behind this effort is Ed Boyd, one of Dell's most unusual hires in recent years. Boyd is an industrial designer who used to dream up new sunglasses and shoes for Nike (NKE). Now the 43-year-old is trying to make design an integral part of Dell, the personal computer maker long known for cranking out boring gray boxes. "I was skeptical it could be cool," says Boyd, who joined the company last year. "I took the job when I heard the design lab would function like a startup for consumer [products]."

LET THE BUYER DESIGN

Dell plans to roll out the first three laptops with these colorful designs on Nov. 11, in time for the holiday season. Customers will pay an extra $75 for the designs, on top of the basic $699 price tag for the company's budget-line portables. The designs are from Nigerian painter Joseph Amédokpo, South African graphic artist Siobhan Gunning, and Canadian designer Bruce Mau.

For Boyd, this is just a start, though. Next year, Dell will let buyers customize laptops in a dizzying number of ways, mixing scores of colors, patterns, and textures. The options will go far beyond the handful of choices available from most of its rivals. In essence, Boyd is taking the Nike approach of letting people design their own sneakers, and trying to apply it to the world of computers. "We're pushing the idea of [made-to-order computers] to the next level," says Boyd.

Dell could certainly use a change in fortune. The once-mighty PC maker has stumbled in recent years: Its stock is off by more than 60% since 2005. Even after founder Michael S. Dell returned as chief executive in 2007, the company continued to lose ground to Apple (AAPL) and the resurgent Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). "We had higher expectations for Dell's turnaround by now," says Clay Sumner, senior analyst at FBR Research (FBR). Dell's market capitalization is now $24 billion, compared with $93 billion for Apple and HP's $87 billion. The net cash on Apple's balance sheet is about the same as Dell's market cap.

Michael Dell contends that the company is making progress. He says Boyd's efforts have helped Dell get back on track, particularly with consumers. "We've got the most exciting new products ever from Dell coming in the second half of this year," Dell said during a speech in June. "That's fundamentally what brings new customers in."

RISKS AND REWARDS

Still, Dell's timing is awful. With the economy headed into recession and consumers cutting back, it will be difficult to charge any sort of premium for cool design. Analysts say that's especially true for companies such as Dell that don't have an established reputation for design. "Price will be more important for consumers because of the economic deterioration," says Mika Kitagawa, an analyst with the market research firm Gartner (IT).

Boyd is used to taking risks. Last year he hired an obscure graffiti artist named Mike Ming to create images for Dell products, a move that worried some of Dell's straitlaced staff.