Design
Previous Canon cameras had been wholly in-house design projects. For the T90, Canon brought in German industrial designer Luigi Colani in a collaboration with Canon's own designers. The final design was composed of Colani's ideas by Kunihisa Ito of ODS Co. Ltd., incorporating Colani's distinctive "bio-form" curvaceous shapes. Canon considered Colani's contribution important enough to present him with the first production T90 body, engraved with his name. Computer-aided design techniques were introduced to Canon for the T90, as well as the use of computer controlled (CNC) milling machines to make the molding dies for the shell.
Much work went into human factors engineering to create an ergonomic user interface for the camera. The form of previous cameras was largely dictated by the required locations of mechanical controls on the body, such as the film advance lever, rewind crank, shutter speed dial, shutter release, etc. On the T90, the film transport control is no longer required, while the others are no longer mechanically linked. This gave the designers more freedom to shape the camera to make it easier to control and hold, and to place controls in a way that suited the user rather than a mechanical design.
The T90 introduced features still used on SLR cameras today. While the use of a LCD screen on the top of the camera's right hand side was not new for the T90 – it was introduced on the T70 – the T90 refined it to show even more camera information. A control wheel is located behind the shutter release and convenient for the right index finger was used to adjust most camera settings in conjunction with other buttons located for the right thumb and on the left-hand side of the camera; again, this design is still used in Canon's digital SLRs in current production.
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