Nothing plans to differentiate its products from rivals with ‘timeless’ designs.
What you need to know
- Carl Pei’s Nothing has teased the design of its upcoming audio product.
- Nothing says three major principles have guided its product design over the past several months: Weightlessness, Effortlessness, and Timelessness.
- The company plans to formally unveil its first products this summer.
Nothing, the new forward-thinking consumer technology company announced by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei earlier this year, has finally given us the first glimpse of the design of its upcoming audio product.
The “Concept 1” that you can see in the image above is the “expression of Nothing’s design principles.” It has been designed by Tom Howard, who is Nothing’s head of design and also the vice head of design at the company’s partner Teenage Engineering.
Nothing says its product design is guided by three basic principles: Weightlessness, Effortlessness, and Timelessness. To make its designs “weightless,” the company claims it “embraces raw tech” and gets rid of everything that’s superficial, such as unnecessary branding on the surface. It also strives to make its products simpler for its users by working on countless millimeter and pixel iterations. These iterations “add up to simplify the user experience until everything feels effortless.” Nothing also tries to ground its designs in something familiar, which it hopes will ensure they don’t easily feel outdated. The Concept 1, for example, is inspired by a grandmother’s tobacco pipe.
The company’s first product will reportedly be a pair of wireless earbuds, which will be released this summer. While we know nothing about the upcoming product currently, it is likely to be a strong challenger to the best wireless earbuds from tech giants like Samsung, Apple, and Sony. Nothing will also have to compete with OnePlus, which introduced its first true wireless earbuds last year.
