Hey Community!
Natalie here from the Community Team. I’m excited to share a behind the scenes update on the Community Edition project, following Mattia’s recap of Stage 1: Hardware Design in Tokyo during our Q1 Community Update. I’ll be keeping you posted here on nothing.community each month of the competition, so stay tuned.
Stage 1: Hardware Design saw over 400 amazing submissions of Community-made concepts of Phone (2a), with Kenta and Astrid’s concept Phosphorescence being announced as the winner.
Our internal jury, made up of members of the Nothing Industrial Design team, spent hours judging each submission and taking notes on both the creativity of the design, and the feasibility of each idea. Each submission was printed out for the team to mark up, analyse and make notes on.
Once they settled on a design, which happened to be Astrid and Kenta’s, they set up a call to discuss the idea and the co-creation process in more detail, before agreeing that Phosphorescence would become the winning design for Stage 1!
Astrid and Kenta run a design studio in Shoreditch together: Akasaki Vanhuyse, and are long-time fans of Nothing. Their winning concept is now going through many stages of development and co-creation in order to arrive at the final design. Prototypes of the Community Edition Phone (2a) are already being produced for Astrid, Kenta and our teams to review and adapt together.
During one of their first co-creation calls with Lucy Birley, our CMF Designer in the London Design Team, they saw an early sample of a Phone (2a) fitted with a glow in the dark material - an exciting first step step towards making their concept a reality.
Following this, next week, the duo are heading to our Design Studio in London to continue the development of their hardware alongside our ID team. We’ll be sure to report back on how that goes and maybe show you some more behind-the-scenes!
The Industrial Design teams, as well as the wider Nothing team were so impressed by the quality of submissions - we clearly have a lot of talent in our community! The community’s favourite concepts from Stage 1: Hardware Design, were gifted with their very own Phone (2a) units as a recognition of their talent and hard work. We’d like to shoutout three community favourites:
Amaeshi - Nothing Phone (2a) Legionnaire
Go - Illuminating Design
Christopher’s Design
Whilst the Hardware Design stage was ending, the Nothing team had already worked in the background to finalise the brief for Stage 2: Wallpaper Design.
For this stage, the jury is made up of members of our software team, including Software Creative Director, Mladen Hoyss, and Software Designer, Ken Jiang. Alongside Rob, they created the brief for the community to follow.
Interestingly, AI was a big part of their discussions.
“We introduced the AI Wallpaper Studio with Nothing OS 2.5, which is a feature we love. AI can be used to create amazing things, using intelligent and creative prompts, but it’s also very easy to be lazy with it. We deliberated between accepting AI submissions, or encouraging people to stay away from AI. However, we know what a great tool it is and so we came to the conclusion that as long as the person has explained their process, their prompts, and their inspirations behind their AI-generated submission, we’d love to see it.” - Rob, Community Manager
The voting phase for Stage 2: Wallpaper Design closes at 10pm BST on 22nd May, and our jury should arrive at a winning concept by the end of the month! You can view all the submissions and cast your vote for your favourite wallpaper design here.
Thank you for reading the first edition of the Community Edition Project: Monthly Journal. Check back soon to find out which Wallpaper Design will be our winner.
And, stay tuned for Stage 3: Packaging Design! The team are working behind the scenes to finalise the brief, and put together a comprehensive guide for participants to follow.
