What ideas shape your design principles?

The one thing companies [like ours] often forget is the importance of designing products that people actually want to wear. The parts that actually touch the body should provide the best possible experience. Nothing feels quite like lambskin against skin—that’s why we use the material on the inside of our headbands and for our ear pads. For our earphones, we use solid brass or stainless steel for the acoustic enclosures that sit within the ear. The added weight, along with our ergonomic design, helps keep the earphones in place. Everything we do starts with design. Once we have the design we want, we layer in our materials, acoustics and technology. I believe many of our competitors start their process with technology and then focus on the design last. We’re very comfortable with taking a different approach than the rest of the industry.

How have new and innovative materials impacted your design process?  
I believe in utilizing and, when necessary, creating new materials as well as using materials in uncommon ways. Our number one priority is sound quality, so we use very high-end drivers made of either neodymium, titanium or beryllium. We co-designed—with Sir David Adjaye—the first concrete wireless speaker of its kind. Generally, using new materials can add steps to the 
design process, but in our experience the effort is always worth it. 

Read the Full Interview →