The Aesthedes was a computer graphics or computer-aided design (CAD) system designed and developed in the 1970s and 1980s by Claessens Product Consultants (now Cartils) in Hilversum, Netherlands.
The Aesthedes was introduced to the market in 1984 by D.P.G. Claessens (1922–2019) who, after studying monumental art at the State Academy of Art in Amsterdam, studied Industrial Design.
He started a Product Development company in 1960, Claessens Product Consultants (now Cartils) in Hilversum, with clients such as Heineken, Amstel, Bijenkorf, Philips, Douwe Egberts, Friese Vlag, Bols, etc. In the mid-1960s, he started experimenting with electronic equipment to support his design work.
A growing need within his company for such equipment that did not exist before led to the development of the Aesthedes. The vision of Dominique Claessens was that a designer should be able to start immediately, without knowledge of computers. Meeting the need of designers to be able to use their creative brain, without being hindered by switching to the cognitive part of their brain, a keyboard was developed that matched the layout of the creative designer's desk. Everything had to be within reach and no overlapping of windows, for example. For that reason, the Aesthedes has 6 screens. 3 Data screens (below) showing project data, RGB values of the layer and the last 10 commands executed.
The computer was launched commercially in 1985 from Aesthedes offices in Hilversum, London, Cologne and Los Angeles. The first version was equipped with ten Motorola 68000 microprocessors, three 20” full colour, high-resolution screens and three small data display screens.