We sat down and spoke with the designer Benjamin Hubert in his East London studio and discussed creative process, musical inspiration, and creating the Beosound Balance speaker.
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A wireless speaker with a dynamic acoustic performance designed to be positioned up against the wall on a shelf or side table in your home. Impressive sound compared to its size.
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DESIGNER OF BEOSOUND BALANCE
Benjamin Hubert
“What appeals to me as a creative is to work in a more democratic fashion… it always improves the end result, the experience and the products you're delivering.” We sat down and spoke with the designer Benjamin Hubert in his East London studio and discussed creative process, musical inspiration, and creating the Beosound Balance speaker.
On shared design values with Bang & Olufsen
At LAYER and as a designer, we believe the product should be timeless. Have a super high perceived value, be appropriate for use every day and it be a delight. People would say something is extremely experience driven and we feel that this resonates extremely well with Bang & Olufsen’s values of timelessness of products that people live with for a long time, and making things that really put a smile on people's faces.
Human experience before tech
The work we do at LAYER is extremely diverse. We work on everything from mobility products like wheelchairs to tech products to fashion apparel, and in all of those projects we're thinking about who's using it, how they're using it, why they're using it, where they're using it. And that experience really helps to drive the products and the design process. That's no different if we're creating an audio product. You have to really put the person first. And in our discussions and in our collaboration with Bang & Olufsen there was a meeting of minds from that perspective – that we were analyzing and thinking about the interaction of the person to help drive the form formats and functionality of the products.
Together with Bang & Olufsen, we were thinking about how people are now, how they're going be living in the future, where they're living, their needs and wants when they're in that space. All of those macro and micro trends, behaviors and rituals really fed into how we shaped the form, format and functionality of the Beosound Balance.
The creative process in designing the Beosound Balance
The creative process behind the Beosound Balance happened over a period of about 18 months. It was a very collaborative process of talking, thinking about audio, thinking about performance of audio, about domestic interiors and how people live with furniture.
We really focused on three things: One is how a person feels and interacts with an object that creates audio. Secondly, where to where they live and the environment and the design of the furniture they live with. And then lastly, the performance of the audio: how can that sound be directed? How can it be amplified to the highest possible performance in any situation?
On Beosound Balance materials
We discussed the idea that an audio product like the Beosound Balance speaker doesn't have to be about the technology – you don't have to look at it and think this is a technology product… It's really about considering an audio product to be like a beautiful piece of ceramic or a really well crafted piece of timber, and in a way in balance bringing those things together.
Here we have the idea through iteration, through shape and form and format of a beautiful object that sits on your mantelpiece or on your bay window or on your coffee table. It's a collection of very simple pieces of geometry that are informed by audio, and emphasize the audio capabilities and qualities of the product – but also reference objects that you would have in your home anyway, like a textile from a beautiful sofa, or timber from a finely crafted piece of furniture, or beautiful metal details from something valuable and precise that you might keep on your mantelpiece. It's a collection, a collage of these materials that bring an audio product closer to being a beautiful object.
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