It is the creator behind the object with his diligence, creative mind, thoroughness and precision which make the end user feel the uniqueness of the object.
I care for those objects that stand out as more likeable, those you want to own, keep for years and are unwilling to throw away. Those you still remember and refer to many years after you saw them first. Common for them is that they are not just the solution of a need or value for money. They are something more. It is all the abstract material that surrounds the object. It’s the idea, the creator, the culture and the producer. It’s the human behind the object and the world around it.
At my wedding years ago, we got a pineapple made purely of carefully folded one fen notes. I love it. It is a small sculpture built by adding equal elements together to a complete form, just like Lego bricks. It is an intelligent piece of handcraft. You can see the time spent in making it and the diligence put into the work. We feel the kindness of our friend who made it for us. She has devoted time and energy to us through the object. And this is the first thing you sense from likable objects, the passionate creative mind of the human behind it. Mass produced objects can also give you this sense of the human behind it, when every part of the design, from physical shape to graphic user interface, is so integrated that it looks like one passionate man’s creation.
People are sensitive to the effort which is put into the creation and the production of an object by the creator and the producer. They value diligence not sloppiness. I believe that people can value the effort which is put in when creating and producing an object. When they meet the opposite, carelessness and indifference, they do not value the product and would never dream of paying more than a minimum price for it. The world has too many of these easy throw away objects.
Diligence shows when all details are solved, no spots are left unsolved and you get a feeling that all aspects are taken care of. The chair has no ugly bottom, the shelves have a clean back and the mobile is well thought all way around. I try to work profoundly with the design in order to have a solution for all details. An important part of designing is collaborating with the engineers to solve it all. The result must be an object with no unwelcoming details. When there is a need for a split line, it is integrated with a contrast in the shape composition, so it seems that it was due to intension but not necessity. A shape is not seen as made for the ease of production but purely for the end user. A shape that complicates the production process but does not benefit the end result has to be changed. Designers and engineers have to keep on working until all is solved. The opposite is carelessness which equals indifference.
I put a lot of effort in making the product appear created and produced with diligence. If you look at Beolab 12 and Beovision 12, for instance, you will find it looks like a piece of handcraft. The details like the hole pattern in front of the speakers in aluminum are precise and with a strong crafted feeling. All holes fit precisely in a pattern no matter from which angle you look at the pattern. They are produced with strong care and look as precise as if they were crafted by a watchmaker.
Diligence is also about the consideration of all the aspects of the user’s interaction with the object. You have to understand not only the obvious need the user has but also the latent needs. In his daily use of the product he will be happy that there has been taken care of all what he does with the product. He senses strongly that the object is made for him by someone who really understands him. It is like when you switch on your television, it automatically turns towards your favorite viewing position, or when the speakers in the dashboard in an Audi car becomes invisible when they are not used. Or a gas top where you even from a distance quickly can see if the knobs are turned off or not. Or a speaker that can be placed anywhere thinkable in a living room, and still look neat.
When I design, I intend to put in that sense of personality but being aware of that it should not conflict with the product itself or the product family and the brand it has to fit into. When giving shape, I do not have a formula or philosophy that I follow but try to be guided by the projects’ own logic and need. I try to meet the objectives I have both in general and for each particular kind of project.
The aim is timeless design by means of finding the true identity of an object. True identity is: original and new; being logic and understandable while breaking consensus; showing strong iconic stance while being unobtrusive; being minimalistic while making sense.
Another common thing of the likable objects that stands out from the crowd of indifferent object is the timeless design they have. I believe this is the most important aspect of a desirable object. My aim is to make an object live as long as possible with a timeless design with enduring appeal. An attractive object is something you want to keep forever. A user who is falling in love with an object and buys it must keep on adoring it every day, feel that it is a joy to own and use and never think it looks old and boring. The design should stay visually fresh regardless of time and that is why I try to stay away from fashion or trends. Trendy cool objects will be forgotten easily and loses value when the next trend arrives. Timeless cool objects will stay forever as your companion.
You cannot make timeless design by copying classic design or taking the style from the past. Instead you have to focus on creating the unique identity of the object itself. It is common to these timeless objects that they all have a very strong iconic identity which does not refer to the time it was created but to its own identity. Often it is only the time of the technology inside that dates that product. Designs with that strong identity are icons that stay on for long, even after their technology is dated and the general need has shifted. The identity is the object story that describes the idea and reason behind the object. Identity is the thing you recognize and remember. Finding the true identity of each object is perhaps the most important step of the design process and I put a lot of effort in finding that true identity. It must be an original and strong iconic identity giving the object its own unique reason to exist. I design according to its own unique idea instead of designing according to trends.
The identity of the design must be strong, easy to recognize and remember. It is about giving the design attention and create stance. I do not try to please everyone with my design as it would end up pleasing no one and just be indifferent. The same counts for the gender issue. Instead of making it either male or female or avoiding a gender direction, you have to make it absolutely masculine and absolutely feminine at the same time.
When the user looks directly at the design it will drag attention and the user can enjoy and take stance to the form, because of the strong presence and attitude of the design. But at the same time, it should blend into the surroundings in an unobtrusive way when you do not focus on the object. It should adopt the surroundings like a chameleon. It should mentally disappear. That is equally important. I intend to avoid any kind of visual noise and make it harmonious. It can be done by giving it a form that is logic to the environment it is going to be placed in, or I can try to make it appear much smaller than it is. I can make it light by letting it flow in the air above a surface, or I often try to make it more two dimensional in shape letting the eye stop at the corners and edges. I separate elements and play with the air in between.
The identity must be new and original. One should not be able to foresee the next design before it is there. You present a new solution to a problem, a solution not seen before. I avoid copying existing designs but focus on finding the potential not yet seen solution within the problems I am dealing with. The creation process is driven by experiments and curiosity. The question is first “why not”, then “why”.
A fundament of getting acceptance and success with the new design is that the design must be logic and understandable even though is new and different. When you look at the object, it should be immediately understood, so obvious that you should think “why has nobody thought about that before”. Our ways of achieving that is to make the solutions as visually straight as possible and use the huge base of shape vocabulary. That shape vocabulary is a library of form meanings we all have in our heads. Functional shapes and shapes from the cultural evolution of products. Being aware of this shape vocabulary makes it possible for you to understand what kind of associations people will get from your design.
Breaking consensus of how a design solution is essential when you search for a new solution. But it can be dangerous. When your designs break consensus, two things could happen. If you do it right your design is genius. If you do it wrong or do not execute it well, the design is just believed to be weird and stupid. Breaking consensus gives your objects its own time and reason. If you follow consensus you will get immediately acceptance of your design but it may be short lived. If you break consensus rightly, you will end up with a product that just keeps on selling years after years in an almost constant growing numbers. The success also depends on the category that you are breaking consensus. Some categories are easier to accept new ways. Some categories have a strong consensus that a design can only be in a certain way. It can take time for users to accept new ways and you are depending on that the technical hardware behind your concept stays relevant. If the category is based on fast changing technology it may run out of relevance before it is generally accepted.
And at last it is about triggering your emotions. Sometimes I refer to other directly or indirectly relevant objects putting your object in a desired group. Or I give objects personality, a soul, with the hint of humans and animals. This must be done very subtle otherwise it will not be authentic. This soul is a way to make an unbreakable tie between an object and a user. This might be why project often has its own nickname in the project group engineers during the creation and development process.
While working on the form I keep testing what strengthens and what weakens the overall identity. There is a hierarchy of elements in the composition. Otherwise the object will not get a strong identity. Typically one form element is the king and all other elements are related to that king and support the king. I often play with contradictions and clashes of two form elements, either by the form element itself or by the color and surface. If there are more than two elements, it tends to be messy and unclear. Sometimes it is more like a tone in tone with a group of almost similar components. The curvature of a surface is also defined by a main direction or an edge and has a defined border. Then it is easier to understand the form and the idea.
To let the idea stand out our design are often very minimalistic. Not done in the cold schematic way as when minimalism is a style, but because we reduce and reduce the shape until the essential idea is expressed obvious. This also adds to the timeless because the shapes then are related to the idea and not to the time of creation. You can only do that if your idea is strong. If you minimize the shape on a slurred idea the object would just become boorish. Beosound 9000 that David created before I joined the office, stands for me as an important example of this.
We can do what we need with the form you give an object. Make it appear heavy or light, complex or simple to look at, aggressive or anonymous, differentiated or indifferent. We have many possibilities, but we have to make sure what we do and understand what we do. That is why we spend a lot of time building full size sketch models to get the best feel of what we do, not just interpreting what our intentions are but see how it actually appears. The form can support and highlight the concept and the story you want to tell with the object. Keep on until you feel sure that it is completely solved. This process is much in common with other creating processes.
A brief description of some of our product designs from our portfolio that exemplifies the concepts of: visible and invisible at the same time; making magic experiences; to be eye-catching, elegant, flexible, sculptural, artistic and in harmony with the surroundings.
To make the above more understandable I would like to tell the stories behind some of the designs I have been deeply involved in during the last two decades. The explanations are quite straight forward. In short, it is about the idea behind the designs and the reasons behind the ideas.
When joining David Lewis Designers in the mid-nineties, the first project I worked on was Beocom 2. It was a cordless phone for the homes. I ended up making a standing stick, easy to grab and occupying only a tiny space on your shelf or table. The inspiration for this was the table top accessories like writing tools that is standing ready to be used. A slim tube also has the advantage: you can easily hold it in many different ways and make long phone conversations more comfortable. Here I was inspired by a Japanese wood cutter. It has a long stick handle and you hold it differently depending on what you are cutting and the cutting process. Design is depending very much on a strong collaboration between designers and engineers, a fact which is far too often not understood properly. With Beocom 2 the wish was for a clean surface with high quality and had strong wear resistance. The way to achieve that was by using hydroforming aluminum, a process that can shape aluminum tubes into a new form but with high restrains on the form possibilities. We had to twist the design so these restrains was not seen at all.
Beocom 2 is a phone not like any other; it is an original with a design that refers to its own. When you look at it directly, it has a strong attitude with a clear statement. At the same time, it can almost disappear into the surrounding milieu when you do not look at it. This double wish of both boldness and invisibility is a thing I have intended to bring to all my works.
The latest piece is the surround speaker set Beolab 14. Here I also try to bring in a strong identity and the ability to integrate the speakers easily in your living room. The satellites are small speakers which can be placed everywhere in the living room and fit in visually nice. The subwoofer has the smallest footprint so it can be placed anywhere on the floor, in a corner, on the wall or behind a furniture dragging as less attention as possible. But it does not have to be hidden, the design is clean enough.
My sources of inspiration evolve from the search of the real identity of the actual object. A round slice is the arch type of the speaker and also a form that is easy to place in your living room. A round slice is light and floats in the air since there are no straight sides it can rest on. So I imagined small colored round slices spread around your living room, floating like the Chinese spinning plates on the iron threads performed by circus artists. Much time was spend in sculpturing Beolab 14 satellite to get it small and floating in the air. The aluminum ring is angled in two directions to visually halve the thickness and reduce the perceived visual diameter. There is a floor stand that lifts the speaker up to clear listening height but not more because I did not want it to dominate. There is a shelf stand that lifts the speaker up slightly from the shelf, it looks like a dressing room mirror. This makes it melting better into the other things on the shelf and creates lightness by the visual use of the free air around it. This stand can also be used upside down so the satellite can hang down from the ceiling. The two stands carry the satellites angled to make them appear like fresh flowers and direct the sound towards your face. There is also a wall bracket that holds the satellite speaker on the wall angled a little so it appears floating on the wall. You only see a little finger holding it.
The satellite speakers are small but serious speakers. The look demonstrates the exclusive quality and craftsmanship. All surfaces show the strength and all details are solved. There are no parting lines and no ugly back and all the wires and connectors are completely hidden.
It is important to take care of the product itself and give it the entire stance it can take, meanwhile, to take care of the surroundings the product has to fit in. This can be exemplified with the television Beovision 11. Our earlier television designs was born as floor standing designs, but Beovision 11 was born on the wall as a fulfilling of an old dream of the live picture on the wall, seen already at the early science fiction movies. That dream has been so powerful that people even integrated picture tube televisions in the wall, a complicated and expensive solution. With the first generations of flat screen televisions people were often hanging them on the walls even though it was not that flat and nice looking, typically hanged out from the wall in an ugly way in which you would never hang a painting.
We wanted to see the television as an integrated part of your living room instead of just a piece of technology on the wall. By framing it as a square it will be much more in familiar with the posters on the wall modern peoples have, therefore, more friendly to the living room interior. By this, we could also get space for the hardware and sound underneath the panel which would make the television slimmer. We had to wrap much sound and hardware into the television because good sound makes you feel the picture quality better and raise the overall user experience. By integrating all this into one television we could avoid all the cluster of extra speakers and wires just near the television, things that definitely are not interior friendly.
The bracket used to hang the Beovision 11 is made to let the television hang as flat on the wall as possible and hide the wires, but still be able to automatically turn out from the wall to optimize the viewing comfort and placement flexibility of screen and furniture. It is a way to offer the user a bit magical than the obvious.
Every detail is supporting this idea of a live poster. The aluminum frame is mechanically polished and angled in a way to make it almost disappear. When looking at the television from the front you only see the outer part of the frame and it adopts the colors of the wall behind it. When looking at the television from the sides, the inner part of the frame takes the colors from the wall behind it and the outer part takes the colors from the room. In this way, you are visually hiding the dimensions of the television and it becomes almost just a sheet of glass. This wish for lightness is also why the picture and the speaker area are not going to the edges of the glass sheet floating on the glass surface.
A clear example of taking the surrounding environment as the driver for the design idea can be seen in the Scholtes Attitude kitchen appliances. Build-in ovens tend to leave almost no room for the drawer underneath. Within traditional oven mechanical architecture, there is an interface plate above the oven room, making the space it occupies higher than needed. By moving the interface panel to the oven door and integrate it in the handle we could reduce the height and give room for a decent drawer under the oven.
The angled interface surface of the handle is carried over to the induction top, gas top and the other parts of the series. The gas top looked like a floating work plate of die cast iron without borders. It has the professional look and a homely clean look at the same time. From a distance you can see if the knobs are turned on or not.
Beovision 12 has a much bigger screen size than Beovision 11 series. Therefore, the aim here is mainly to focus on creating the cinema experience. Films in cinemas are framed wider than normal wide screens you are surrounded by the picture and the sound. The front of Beovision 12 is framed with black areas on each sides and a narrow black area on the top and below the picture. This makes it more like a letterbox format and drags you better into the movie you are watching. The center speaker underneath is horizontal in design and shaped to support the horizontal picture. The slight extruded curve makes it long and narrow and gives space enough for the speakers and the calibrating camera arm that pops up to measure the panel.
Because it is a rather big television, it was important to make the overall look of the television as light as possible. It appears as two flat surfaces. The outer is black and contains the live picture and the inner is aluminum with the almost weightless ambient polished surface. I use the air between the two sheets to create the illusion of two sheets but not a box. The elements are detached from each other and floats.
Beolab 12 is born as a wall speaker. It is also shaped of curved sheets detached and giving the illusions of purely flat sheets. We started with a new bass driver that was revolutionary flat. It could be placed facing the wall and let the sound be reflected from the wall. Now we could hide it all behind a sheet of metal and making the speaker rather flat and invisible. However, the middle range driver was deeper and it had to face directly towards the listener. The solution was to give the sheet an extruded shape from a sinus curve giving sufficient depth for the middle range unit and still have it appear as flat as possible. The hole pattern for the middle range is integrated with the treble acoustic lens making it be a small piece of sculpture on a plate. Your eyes are caught by this and the rest gets out of focus.
The cave inside the acoustic lens lights up when the speaker is turned on. It adds a little magic to the speaker.
Beolab 4 was started with a recipe from the engineers of two drivers and a needed volume that would be ideal for a speaker placed on a table. Two things triggered the design. Firstly, the speaker was for the table, therefore should not have a back side. Secondly, it had to appear as small as possible for better visual placement on the table and for better surprise when playing better than it appear in size. I started with a round volume which theoretically is the optimum shape when it comes to volume versus size, but it appeared rather big. After many experiments I ended up with a pyramid shape that appeared quite small, because your eyes were dragged to the top and perceiving the total size there. It also gave the right listening angle to the speaker units. The problem was that the pyramid had very sharp corners that drew a lot of attentions. Blowing up the form by changing the flat surfaces to spheres made the corners less aggressive. We ended up with four symmetrically fabric covered surfaces, giving it a clean look and no back sides.
Sometimes a design is started with one given piece of hardware only. For the ASUS NX90 notebook, it was the size of the screen. 18.5 inch is very big for a notebook and with that in mind we understood that this was not a laptop as such, but more a lean back experience in your living room. When the laptop is open, all is designed to emphasize the lean back experience. All shapes are horizontal. The picture panel is surrounded by black area widest at both sides in order to visually enlarging the picture. We gave the notebook a never seen before sound quality and placed the speakers on each side of the panel so they were facing directly towards the viewer. The part with the keypad was also designed to support the lean back experience. The keys are black and in front of the keypad is a clean sheet of polished aluminum which almost disappears when you look at the screen. Therefore, you have less to distract you when looking at the screen. To keep that sheet of aluminum without details we had to move the touchpad from the front center where it is typically placed. I got the idea of placing a touchpad on each side of the keypad instead and that made it possible to fulfill our visual wish. It gave also the ergonomic benefit of being able to use keypads and touchpads with the same position of your underarm, and it was also possible to use both hands at the same time. That all made it much more relaxed to use. However, that idea cannot be transformed to a notebook with a much smaller screen because there would not be space enough for the touchpads.
The form factor of the notebook is wider but much less deep than normally. This was intended to give it a better standing on your living room desks or shelf. When it is closed, the upper part is bigger and covering the lower part totally making only one curved sheet of aluminum visible with a polished surface which adopts the colors of the surroundings. It has that simple look which does not disturb your living room when it is closed and not in use. Once again, the result is a product design with full attitude when in use, almost disappearing when not in use. This design broke consensus.
Today the consensus about how a mobile phone is designed is very narrow, they are all following the same recipe. Before that there was a bigger freedom though the lifespan of each mobile generation was very short. Beocom Serene was a mobile phone by which we wanted to use the clam shell principle to make maximum difference between in use and not in use. When not in use, it is a completely closed shape without any visible part-lines or unwelcome mechanical details. Two almost symmetrically slightly curved sides are bound together by a crafted genuine aluminum hinge completely symmetrical in form. The phone can be placed standing on the table standing proud and easier to find. A little air gab between the two parts indicates that there is more inside.
When you open the phone it becomes much bigger with a display that goes from side to side horizontally giving best room for text and names. The keys are placed around a central wheel which is used for your phonebook. When you hold a small thing in your hand and want to touch it with your thumb, it is easiest to touch the upper part of the ting. That is why we placed the keys at the top part and the display at the lower part. This made it also possible to place the speaker in the center of the part so you could cover your whole ear with the surface and get a better sound reducing unwanted noise. The screen would not touch your skin either and it would stay clean without any grease on the surface.
The shape is solid centered at the hinge and with clean smooth shapes. The phone became both a very male and a very female object. Some people thought it was absolutely a masculine phone while others were sure it was a totally feminine phone. When you reach that it is 100% male and 100% female at the same time you can be sure that it is not an indifferent product.
It is important to be aware of the mega. They differ from short-lived trends that only refer to fashion and taste. The mega trends are related to technology and our perceptions of what the technology can do and how we use it. When designing products that are mending for a long life we have to be aware of these movements, be in time with them or in front of them visually.
The remote Beo5 differs from the earlier remotes like Beo4. The project started with the wish of a remote with more dynamic functionality through the use of a touch screen. Initially, we worked on a remote that integrated the screen in the familiar stick formula, and we came with a proposal of a very slim stick with an integrated custom made screen, but that proved to be very difficult to achieve. At that time, smart phones appeared and we got used to have the world in our hands. Instead of using the remote to literately point at the televisions we could use the remote to select what we want and then throw it up to the large screen. The remote became a ball in your hand just like the orb symbol of power. The ball has the physical buttons that can be used blindly. Above is attached the screen that is like a mirror of the entertainment available.
Another example of a design related to the phenomenon mega trend is the Beocenter 2. It came after products like Beosound 9000 and Beosound Ouverture that played visually with the CD. It was obvious that this story was told and now we needed to hide the disc and tell another story. The notebooks were getting popular at that time. We expected that the mega trend would be that soon there would be no center master for audio but a portable device you could sit with in your sofa and find content, audio and video, and either enjoy this personally or throw it up to your big speakers or screen. At that time, the technology was not ready for wireless transmission or giving sufficient battery time. What we could do was shaping the Beocenter 2 as a free floating unit. An oval shape has no sides it can rest on and is therefore floating above the surface, table or wall, as an almost non wired object. The whole front was made to an operating panel, not with glass but with clean sheets of aluminum. Touching the aluminum created a bit of magic feel and was previously unseen. Mechanically, it was a very difficult solution with aluminum cut razor thin at the touch area. Behind the aluminum sheet was the disc and we had to find a nice way to get access to the disc. It became two doors that opens like the ladybug wings, just taking up a little more space when open and creating a little magic.
We went on with different concepts exploring this user experience, but all of them ended up being heavy dependent on software to a level that does not fit for a relatively small company. Eventually, the Ipad and arrived and fulfill that role together with the smart phones.
Beoplay A8 is an example of the music systems that is born in the smart phone era. It is a small stereo center. Plain basic the story is two speakers connected to each other, both connected to a portable device. This we wanted to explain by having two circular speakers connected by a bridge. It is easy to understand. Giving it lightweight, it would appear less offensive in the room. Therefore, we designed both the speakers and the bridge almost two dimensional by strongly angling the back parts. The fact that the front of the speakers and the bridge act as two different planes stresses the two dimensional effect, because it uses the air spaces between as part of the sculptural composition. The way it stands on a shelf is underlying the weightless, by the use of four invisible feet that makes the rings float a few millimeters above the surface. It is possible to slide a sheet of paper under the speakers. Another effect of the conic speakers is that it gives better freedom in placement. It can be angled from the wall top or placed in the corner. In the center of the bridge is a circular control wheel that is duplicated in the connected remote.
The remote should be nothing more than the circular control wheel, but lying lifted a little above the table asking to be grabbed and used. The battery compartment is used for that and it also gives the needed direction on an otherwise direction free remote. By placing the remote so the battery compartment is between your two fingers you get enough sense of direction to blindfold operate the round wheel.
In all these examples I have focused on describing the idea and how it differs from mainstream. It had been important to differentiate by being different but not strange. However, I am recently getting gradually more focused on other aspects of creating desirability than of being different.
Design is to sense the invisible behind the visible.
To sum it all up, I have a self-portrait my wife Wang Lan has made that I like a lot. When you look at the black ink painting you can see it was quickly done, almost an instant move by the hand. It is direct figurative but in an indirect way. The eyes are obvious for everyone to see, but not the big sweater neck that she was wearing at that time. The best part of it is all the things not drawn but you are able to see. It’s the white space on the paper surrounding the brush stroke. When you equal that to design the white space is all the things the designed object refers to indirectly. All the things it reminds you about and you sense. The social context and the cultural history it is related to. It is also about the creative process. When searching for the new we must look at the white, the invisible and discover it there.