Industrial Design Analysis: Beosound Emerge

The Beosound Emerge is a speaker designed by Bang & Olufsen (B&O). In this video, I do a quick industrial design analysis of the design and give my take on it. Overall, this design shows a very strong, singular point of view. There isn’t much up for interpretation to this design, which is a testament to the B&O team for rallying together and sticking to a concise vision. It was designed in collaboration with Layer Design. Overall, the Beosound Emerge is a design that is very consistent in its visual look and feel. It has a lot of depth by using classic materials, and it borrows heavily from the rich heritage of books. It’s very elegant in the way that it uses understated, low contrast materials with a very balanced visual hierarchy. And it shows a real commitment to craftsmanship in the way that it is constructed and manufactured.

John Mauriello has been working professionally as an industrial designer since 2010. He is an Adjunct Professor of industrial design at California College of the Arts.

[PhiSei]

These product design analyzes are my personal favorite video format of yours!
You have a really good eye for the visual intention of the designers and it's always interesting to see someones else perspective and point out visual connections and their emotional space (f.e. books)

[Ali.design]

The lastest B and O speakers look incredible, very subtle yet elegant. Great analysis and insight as usual!

[julianread]

Much more than a product. Simply a work of art. I love how Bang and Olufsen use designers who specialise in different areas for their audio.

[fernandagustins]

As an industrial design student, I am grateful that these types of channels exist, that motivate me to continue learning!

[michaelh]

As a B&O fan., thank you Layer Design, you did an amazing job.

[lucasalamo]

As a B&O owner and self employed designer, I appreciate this video very much. What I would suggest is if you have looked into B&O’s history as a company, to make a video dedicated to this idea of platitudes companies like B&O have operated from since their inception- with your commentary on it of course! Awesome work

[xuanl]

I love this video so much. Every description almost could be used on everything. Very useful for my design report.

[marcosschneider]

Excellent breakdown and commentary. I love the way you analyzed down the product and included some references for the visual language. Also great is the little bit of critique at the end – nice to see the commentary about what could be better, even in a highly designed, engineered and well considered product like this one.

[geraldmcmullon]

Having lived with an used a pair of B&O Emerge for a over a month now I remain impressed by the quality of sound for such a small speaker. I steam my music library from my PC using DLNA via wi-fi and immediately notice the improvement over Bluetooth via my laptop from the same source. Designed to be a wireless audio speakers for streaming it is disappointing that it (as most Bluetooth and wireless speakers) is so poor when watching video (Facebook, YouTube, iPlayer etc) because of the very long lag. On a computer programmes like VLC have some adjustments for lip sync but that does not work for a video in a browser. These and other Mozart speakers are more than good enough to replace stand mounted or floor standing speakers and improve over the speakers fitted into most televisions and are idea computer desktop speakers in terms of size and quality but having no USB and still problems when using the fibre optic input. Can't have everything? At this price point and double for the Level and double again for the Balance expecting that little bit more flexibility.

[Designotherwise]

As always, I really enjoy your analysis of these new products!
I do wanna say that I think arguably the ps5 is a quite elegant piece when you compare it to its predecessors! I think obviously the blue lights and the shiny plastic gives it a strong “gamer” aesthetic but yeah I do think it’s quite a lot more elegant than the play stations that came before it!
The speaker is definitely a decor statement in my opinion! I like your analogy with books.

[adam]

As an industrial designer, I really like this design, Thank you for the video!

[justuscheng]

Hi John, thank you for creating these videos with great content! School should definitely have design analyses like this!! Or students can just subscribe to your channel 🙂

[roeytsemah]

Fantastic breakdown! Thanks for these lessons.

[danielpatterson]

Great analysis dude, always look forward to your videos

[m.e.p.r]

When this product was first announced I was really excited because B&O design is so recognizable and still sets the bar in the audio visual space when it comes to a marriage of audio performance and ID IMO. But when I saw this... I just remember thinking that this isn't B&O at all, it looks like an imitation. I had no idea B&O had out sourced the ID of this product to a third party until I saw this video. It's just not right...I'm not sure if it's the muddled proportions, the asymmetry, the drab colour pallette or a combination of all of those. But this is not B&O. It's not an awful design by any means, but it's just not what I have come to expect from B&O. I'm actually shocked that B&O outsourced this product...
The stand on the bottom makes it look like a cheap gaming console, so I think the analysis and commentary is spot on. Where are the sharp pure forms, the play of dark and light, the feeling of weight and substance, soft/warm and sheer/cold material choice's that are so synonymous with B&O?
This looks like a cross between a PS4 and a cheap router you might expect to receive as part of a broadband set-up package. It's looks flimsy and light weight...maybe the renders do not do this justice I'm not sure?
Whatever it is, come on B&O...please don't outsource your brand, your design, your history and gamble with your pedigree and heritage. Situations like this really just serve to dilute a brand for the sake of throughput and output and it's not cool. If I was a designer working for B&O I would be pretty upset about this.

[freerkderuiter]

B&O has always outsourced the design. None of the great designers they've had were ever on the payroll, even though some of them worked for B&O for a very long time. But B&O recognize the value of design in their products as a key success factor. In some ways the designer has more power than the CEO at B&O. When he says "no" to the final product it is not going in production. There are many anecdotes about this within the factory staff.

[maxschondorfer]

@Design Theory, are you interested in analyzing more Bang&Olufsen products? I would love to see more videos about them. :)

[atticusnah]

Thank you for the great analysis. Interesting design for sure. I have the Beosound Level and it seems more like a retro-60s "International Style" design compared to the Emerge, which seems
"Softer". Not sure which I prefer yet. Would be interesting to experience the emerge to see how the sound compares between the two forms/designs.

[alexlewis]

Hi John, I know it's off-topic but do you plan on doing any more portfolio reviews soon? I have a portfolio I've been working on forever and I'd love to get your thoughts on it!

[sshlokmishra]

As usual gr8 content, keep uploading 😁