Beam
Project: Beam
Year: 2023
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Industrial Design
Beam is a portable cinema – combining a projector and speaker into a new category of audio-visual product. It’s designed reinvent how and when we can enjoy music & movies, be easy to store and quick to setup.
The brief was to create an audio product centred in new consumer behaviours. Audio is a crowded market and new products need to bring something more to consumers to stand out.
Building a Proposition
The crowded nature of the audio market means any new products need to stand out. This project started with intensive research and strategy aimed at identifying the opportunity space to do exactly this. We eventually landed on a new proposition by combining a high quality projector and speaker into a highly portable that support contemporary ways of coming content.
A new archetype
Traditional wired speaker and projector archetypes didn’t work for this new combination of products – so we had to create something new. We wanted to create something that felt part of the home both while in use – but also when stored away or just left to one side. In the end the cylindrical folding format of Beam felt like the perfect choice for an object centred on flexibility and practicality.
Designed for Contemporary Living
The way we consume movies and music has changed – streaming has shifted the visual landscape and great audio has become something we expect access to almost anywhere. The traditional idea of a family sitting round a television to watch something is still important – but there are many other ways we consume video content. Beam is designed to be flexible – able to work in a formal living room context when needed – but be at hand for quick content sharing or more informal contexts for consuming music or video content.
