While consumer tech’s main talking points would almost always be the latest chips powering them, design still plays an important role in making the latest and greatest processors and other internal components work efficiently.

We’ve seen how design can make an impact on smartphones and tablets for the past few years, and the same can be said for laptops as well. We got to talk to Lenovo Vice President of Design Brian Leonard on how the brand’s approach in designing its laptop and tablet portfolio, on the ThinkPad being part of their fundamentals in designing products, and on foldable laptops being the next big thing.

The ThinkPad is (still) ahead of its time

Whether we are talking about the IdeaPad, Yoga, or Legion laptops, Lenovo employs a near-consistent design language. Recently, Lenovo employed a variation of its TrueStrike keyboard–which is the keyboard tech used exclusively on Legion laptops–to the Yoga Slim 7 series, and Leonard explained to me that the keyboards on all of their laptops are based on the ThinkPad’s keyboard. “What we like to do is to take all the technologies were always working on the ThinkPad and let them trickle down [to the rest of the line],” Leonard said. “Design is not just about the way things look, but it is about the quality, the experience that people have.”

Being one of the oldest laptop lines (the first ThinkPad came out back in 1992), Leonard still thinks that the ThinkPad line still sets the standards for laptop design, particularly with its keyboards. With the Legion and select Yoga models inheriting the fundamental design of the ThinkPad keyboard, Leonard said that they aim to offer the same across the whole Lenovo laptop portfolio.

“No matter if it is a premium product or an entry-level or mainstream product, we want to make sure that the fundamentals of making a great notebook are very much the same.”

Thermal management is important

With internals becoming more powerful and demand much more power than ever, managing thermals is a herculean feat–especially with powerful gaming laptops. With the Legion line, Leonard said that they designed it in a way that it has an adequate number of vents to dissipate heat while keeping a design that is well-balanced for both work and play.

“One thing that we learned was people game on them but they also do everything else.”

In the overall design of the Legion line, Leonard explained that they designed it in such a way that there is airflow on the sides and back of the laptop to keep the overall performance stable even at high loads. In addition, Leonard adds that in designing Legion laptops, thermal management is their main priority and they revolve the overall design language with it.

Tablets also share the same design language as Lenovo’s laptops

Put a Tab P11 Pro side-by-side with the Yoga Duet 7i, and you’ll notice they look similar. This is no coincidence, as Leonard explained to me that in designing their products, they also aim for synergy across all different sub-brands under Lenovo while catering to the needs of their customers. “We want all of those devices to look and feel like they came from Lenovo, but they speak to different audiences”.

As for making their devices speak to different audiences, Lenovo is no stranger in coming up with unique designs like Yoga Pad Pro 13 with its built-in handle or the ThinkPad X1 Fold that brought foldable displays to a bigger laptop form factor.

Laptops with foldable displays are the next step

With foldable smartphones slowly becoming mainstream, Lenovo is one of the few (if not the only) brands that reimagined the laptop form factor as one with a foldable screen inside with the ThinkPad X1 Fold. Leonard acknowledges that foldable devices will be the next trend.

In the case of the X1 Fold, Leonard and his team took them almost 5 years before launching it as an actual product as they were focused on getting it right. After all, no one has thought of laptops with foldable displays back in the mid-2010s. “Foldables is a better direction as screens get larger, and that’s why we did the larger version with the X1 Fold.”

With their approach to the X1 Fold, Leonard said that it has brought in new possibilities on how you can work with such a device thanks to its flexibility. While devices like the X1 Fold are very pricey, Leonard is optimistic that foldable laptops will be more accessible to everyone in the near future, and it is up to the industry to make it a reality.

“We will see more and more adoption of the foldable (form factor) because it is a really exciting space.”