You hear rap artist talk big money all the time but here is the true meaning of big money talking, The Vertu Signature Constellation Diamond. The designer of the masterpiece Frank Nuovo talks with the Robb Report about the design.
The lifeblood of a designer is to keep things moving,” says Frank Nuovo, creative director and designer for Vertu, the high-end mobile-phone brand he launched in 1998 when he was head of design at Nokia. For the last decade, Nuovo has kept Vertu and its product line moving forward, both creatively and relentlessly. His latest effort is the revamped Signature cell phone ($12,600 to $39,000), which combines stainless steel, white or yellow gold, and sapphire crystal in one technologically advanced device.
“I wanted our flagship phone to be confident—an upright creation that represents success,” Nuovo says. “Like a beautiful high-rise or bridge, the structural elements and interlocking details exhibit strength in line and form. It’s classic and timeless.”
Much like a master watchmaker might put together a limited-edition mechanical timepiece, a craftsman working in Vertu’s headquarters near London assembles each Signature handset from start to finish and signs it upon completion. The man-made sapphire crystal (reminiscent of a watch crystal) that protects the cell phone’s display is highly scratch-resistant—so hard, in fact, that diamond-tipped tools must be used to cut, grind, and polish it. “We chose sapphire for what it does, its performance,” Nuovo says. “I have used my phone every day for two years, and [the sapphire] is still flawless.”
