Frank Zebner: A Life in Design

It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Frank Georg Zebner, who died on 9 August 2026 after a serious illness. Over the course of a distinctly international career, Zebner moved between design practice, industry and education, working across product design and technology.

Born in 1962, he belonged to a generation of designers whose careers reflected the transformation of industrial design towards interaction and complex product systems. Zebner studied in Munich, Schwäbisch Gmünd and Offenbach. His early professional career took him to Munich, London and San Francisco, including positions at frog design, Moggridge Associates and ID TWO, later IDEO. Working with Bill Moggridge contributed to his focus on interaction design. In the mid-1990s, he joined Siemens, where, as Head of Interface and Transportation Design, he worked on infrastructure and mobility projects for public transportation.

In 1997, Zebner became Professor of Product and Communication Design in Schwäbisch Gmünd. From 2008 onwards, he taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, focusing on technical products and product systems, and later industrial design. Through the Design Institute of Technology, which he founded, he developed projects with companies including Audi, Lamy and Lufthansa.

His professional career was notably international. Alongside his work in Offenbach, he taught as a visiting and honorary professor in Taiwan, China and Australia and served on the juries of international design awards. At HfG Offenbach, Zebner also took on institutional responsibility. He served as Dean of the Design Department from 2010 to 2016.

His career brought together several strands of design: product development, the experience of international design consultancies, and teaching. It was this combination of professional practice and education that defined much of his work.

With Frank Georg Zebner, the design community loses a designer and educator who experienced and helped shape important shifts in the discipline — from industrial and product design to interfaces, mobility and increasingly complex systems.