A new Industrial Design Language for Smartphones and Tablets
The story
Creating a manifold yet visually cohesive, applicable design language for the next generation of Vodafone smartphones and tablets
SMAL was approached to help Vodafone and its design team to develop a design language for a range of eight smartphones and tablets pushing the existing industrial design language to the next level. Vodafone's aim was to democratize affordable innovation handsets for everybody, whilst creating a design that incorporates its own, unique elements.
From creating a pattern language design, to the development of buttons and detail elements, designing slim goods with an individual profile required close collaboration with manufacturers to produce exceptional design despite production budget restrictions.
Combining trend research, market research and tight manufacturer restrictions, the smartphone and tablet family design has exceeded expectations and resulted in positive recognition on tech blogs, news portals and of course by the target audience.
As a result, demand for the 2016 range of devices is now higher than ever and advances the awareness of Vodafone's position as a design and value driven producer and provider of mobile devices.
Simple continuous base shape
Symmetric concave grooves
Slimming layers, precise edges
45° cut side buttons
Precise, tactile knurling pattern
Laser-etched, hexagonal pattern
Simple continuous base shape
Symmetric concave grooves
Slimming layers, precise edges
45° cut side buttons
Precise, tactile knurling pattern
Laser-etched, hexagonal pattern
The new Vodafone
SMART 7 Series
Concave chamfers create slimming lines
and precise edges.
Knurled side buttons and
a unique surface pattern
Close collaboration with the Vodafone design team through agile design processes, fast CAD iterations, and frequent material testing meant that important design decisions could be made on real scale mockups in partnership with the manufacturers.
This efficient collaboration fused with parallelizing processes inhouse enabled an incredibly high turnover rate for the 2016 range of devices. From first kick-off to market ready, no fewer than eight devices were realized within less than ten months.
