Hi all! I’m Whilliam, an Industrial Designer based in North Carolina. I’m relatively new to the Nothing community forum but have been following Nothing since its founding. Nothing is a breath of fresh air in the tech space, and this community’s passion for design is truly needed. Shout out to the team at Nothing for putting the Phone (2a) design collaboration together!
RESEARCH
I began this project by gathering information. This included watching videos from the Nothing’s channel like “Meet Phone (2a)”, “Why Phone (2a) ft. Carl Pei”, and the Phone (2a) launch event, along with looking at the Nothing product catalogue.
From this, I gathered a set of priorities to hold in the process.
1. The concept should accent the phone’s design, not dominate it. This still needs to feel like a Nothing product.
3. The concept should continue Nothing’s vision of highlighting the amazing technology inside our devices.
EXPLORATION
Next, I jumped into pulling some inspiration from Pinterest and Behance. I gathered lots of good examples of tastefully designed CMF, along with some raw internals.
IDEATION
With these priorities and influences in mind, I began some ideation.
FIRST 3 CONCEPTS
The first three concepts I created were warm vs cool, calming waves, and light vs dark. These had some visual interest, but the concepts felt too unrelated to Nothing to stick.
SECOND 3 CONCEPTS
My next group of concepts felt stronger. Pulling from the launch video, I really loved the colors of the inside of the phone. The teal, yellow, orange, and black color palette really stuck out to me. It was punchy, but still felt like Nothing. This pushed me towards the idea of embracing the colors of these internal components.
There were several ways of implementing this idea onto the phone. I ideated three main options:
1. A design dominated by a bright orange flexible PCB
2. An X-ray bottom half vs a simplified top half
3. An integrated mix of the colors of the inside parts, transplanted onto the outside parts.
FINAL CONCEPT
INSIDE: OUT
Concept 3 felt the most like Nothing to me and won out. It’s asymmetrical yet balanced, adds a third shade to the lineup in between the other two existing models, and integrates several fun new colors with the restraint to know when to stop.
It also embodies the Nothing ethos, pulling the colors of the design straight from the components already inside the phone. It takes the Nothing vision and goes one level deeper, really letting the internal components drive the design.
All this, while still highlighting the newest icon, the eyes.
THANKS
So that’s my design! Big shoutout to the Nothing Team again for putting this on. It’s been a fun ride going through this design process. Really looking forward to seeing other designs from the community and how this whole thing rolls out!
If you’re a fellow designer/design nerd, feel free to reach out! I’d love to connect on LinkedIn or through my website.
LinkedIn
Website
