Lightsaber, meet the earphone

Music can be heard… and it can be felt. But seldom can it be seen. The Glow headphones bring the sensory element of sight to the music listening experience. Much like the way an equalizer helps people “see” music, the Glow earphones contain special cables that light up and pulsate with your audio.

Bringing innovation to the portable audio industry the way JBL did with the Pulse Bluetooth speaker back in 2013, Glow makes use of an innovative material called Fibrance. Developed by Corning (the people behind GorillaGlass), Fibrance is a fiber optic cable that instead of conducting light through it, dissipates it evenly across the length of the cable, allowing it to illuminate brightly and evenly by scattering a laser light. The Fibrance material doesn’t give off heat either, making it the perfect choice for the Glow.

Controlled by an app, the light can be made to remain static, or pulsate in sync with the music. The app also controls the intensity of the laser light (which shines well even in broad daylight). The laser cables in their sense become the branding for the Glow earphones. While most companies struggle with putting their logos on the tiny earpieces, the Glow earphones are a complete winner because not only are they a great sounding pair of phones (they are), the entire product in itself is a work of branding and iconic industrial design!

Designers: Jake (Jongha) Lee, Rich Park, Soohun Jung & BEBOP Designers.

BUY IT HERE: $169 $199

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The slimmest VR Headset ever made

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Where there is VR, there will be a screen, and what better than your phone screen? They’re beautifully hi-res, come with rich colors, and most importantly, they’re always with you. However, carrying a VR headset with you seems like too much of a hassle. That’s unless you’ve got the Figment VR case snapped around your phone.

In a trend to put more and more into or around one’s phones, the Figment headset is almost as wild as the Selfly that literally put a drone onto the back pf your smartphone. Super-thin for the competition in its category (not counting the Google Cardboard, because the cardboard only comes flat packed. It doesn’t go back to a flat design once it’s assembled) the Figment snaps the VR eyepiece to the back of your phone and with the simple click of a switch, makes it spring forward and into place, allowing you to use your phone as a VR headset.

The design is a true champion of innovative thinking. Imagine allowing the billions of smartphone users to have instant access to VR content at the press of a switch. There are obviously some caveats to the Figment. For starters, the wall that separates the left-eye content from the right-eye content is absent in the design. Plus, given that those lenses sit on the back of you’re phone, they would probably have to be made out of some incredibly resilient tempered glass. However I believe the Figment has opened the floodgates for making similar products that make VR incredibly accessible, because until we actually start getting a taste of Augmented Reality, VR is the most obvious future!

Designers: Jake (Jongha) Lee, Rich Park, Soohun Jung & BEBOP Designers.

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There’s something about the Evoke

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Let’s talk about the Evoke, one of the most pleasant looking wireless speakers I’ve seen in a while. The front grill has a beautiful pattern that reminds me of Jawbone’s Jambox. It’s almost become a symbol for portable audio, hasn’t it! The Evoke has a pillow-esque design machined out of aluminum. It gives the illusion of being soft and he anodized metal feels great to touch. While we’re on the subject of touch and everything tactile, Evoke’s product experience relies on hand proximity in an unusually beautiful way. The volume controls are capacitive and flush on the surface. You see them only when they light up, and they light up only when they sense your hand nearby. It’s quite a nifty feature to add, don’t you think! Makes sure the product’s design remains pure and becomes functional only when it needs to!

Designers: Jake (Jongha) Lee & A-LAB.

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