The ThinkPad’s answer to Johny Ive has died. Richard Sapper, a German industrial designer who orchestrated the look of the iconic laptop for IBM, was 83 years old.

He designed lots more stuff - you can read his obituary here.

We shall focus our commemoration on the IBM ThinkPad, which hit the business world in 1992 and quickly became a design favourite.

The clamshell-styled black laptop was apparently modelled on a cigar box and famously incorporated a tiny red nipple joystick - officially called a Track point - for navigation around the screen.

IBM sold the brand in 2005 to Lenovo and today, almost 25 years on from its launch, the ThinkPad is still black and still features the red nipple - a somewhat retro feature in 2016. ®