My team and I received a “Good Design Award” from the prestigious Chicago Athenaeum, Museum of Architecture and Design for our Nakamichi Phoenix Electrostatic Speaker. The product has since been renamed and repositioned as part of the Dragon audiophile product range. This product was also featured in Wired Magazine issue 15.03

This win was particularly sweet, as it was a product that we recommended, pushed, and developed as part of our ongoing research into trends, consumer markets and technology. This speaker is also a cumulative milestone example of our evolving design language strategy that I had mapped out for the brand and product category about 3 years ago.

Finally we are 1 of the 6 Good Design Awards that was given out to designers and manufacturers from Singapore. Still along way to go compared to the 270 haul from the US, still, this is a great boost for the budding Industrial Design Industry in Singapore.

The Lumos portable DVD, designed together with Tithima S. and E Chin, for Nakamichi, has been featured in the latest UK version of the T3 Gadget Magazine. (August 2007, Page 18). A wonderful review and do stay tuned for some scanned images when I get the chance to upload it.

Edit: Here are the scanned images and the detailed review after. The design was inspired by premium leather ladies handbags and the tactile textures found on it.

Very kind words from the review. This is the English translation of the Swedish text found in the magazine:

“Phoenix radiates class and is a revolutionary electrostatic speaker with HD-A technology from Nakamichi. It combines a unique design with high end sound. The light, ultra-thin membrane is capable of delivering a transparent, clear and well defined sound with exceptional control. Special components provide a detailed and distortion free deep bass even when the speaker is pressed hard. Phoenix convinces as it is hardly affected by room acoustics and sounds as good as it is beautiful to look at.”

Click to download the PDF version of the scanned pages from the Magazine.

The Phoenix Electrostatic Speaker, designed and developed by my team and I, has been featured on Wired Magazine. Sniff…

Edit: Added gratuitous shot from the magazine. Ahhh so tasty.

Get a Wired [1-year subscription] from Amazon.

Here’s the write up, which I’m saving for eternity:

Electrostatic speakers, which make music by vibrating diaphragms between oppositely charged plates, have been around since the ’50s. But unlike poodle skirts, they never caught on, because the distortion-free sound was projected in a fairly narrow sonic field. Nakamichi has widened the optimal listening area by shaping the plates in its Phoenix speakers like teardrops. And to bump up the bass, notoriously lacking in electrostatics, each speaker has an integrated dual-cone subwoofer. The two drivers move opposite to each other, canceling out errant vibrations that would color the sound.
Phoenix: $8,600 per pair, www.nakamichi.com

This article is located in the latest Wired Magazine 15.03, grab it while you can! I know I will.

My design team and I recently bagged 2 “Innovations 2007 Design and Engineering Awards Honorees” at the world’s biggest consumer electronics show the CES in Viva Las Vegas in January 2007.

Sorry this is a little late, but I needed to be sure that the press release was cleared. The first award was for our High Definition Kimono LCDTV launched with a lot of criticism at last year’s IFA Berlin 2006 show, and the second award was for our “ultra-stealth” audiophile speaker project codename “Phoenix”.

Called the HD-A (High Definition Audio) Electrostatic Speaker, this speaker is a perfect fusion between engineering and aesthetics. HD-A, a proprietary technology, is the audio equivalent of HD-TV and its related marques.

Overall it was a tough project with many design and management constraints that needed to be overcome, but I think we managed to work it a design solution that did not sacrificed a lot of our design intent. The important thing as well is this speaker design (not the TV) represents, in its entirety the new Nakamichi design language that I had developed since I joined the company more than 4 years ago. This design language development process was in itself was a whole different battle to the product’s management, as acceptance was really the main criteria. I had to be tactful so as to allow the “new look” to be slowly absorbed and accepted by the brand, the organization and its culture, and most importantly by our customers.

This image was a representation of the product for selection for the Innovation Award, it is, however, a rendering of an early Industrial Design prototype as we had to submit the graphics early for consideration.

Meanwhile let me leave you with a slightly fuzzy shot taken by Ubergizmo, interestingly the only one that I have found on the internet. As its still in a prototype mode, so do stay tuned for an image of the actual product once we get the final R&D and marketing clearance.