BEEP
Mini-Sized Android Smartphone
Role: Cofounder, Industrial Design, Branding
Timeline: Started project July 2022 // Launching 2024
BEEP is a smartphone company started by me and members of the original Pebble Smartwatch team. It is a community-based project to design, crowdfund, and make a premium mini-sized smartphone.
I created the BEEP brand and industrial design from the ground up, embodying a balance of crisp precision and soft friendliness. I sought to differentiate our aesthetic from competitors with a Playful Premium approach. The hardware shows its capability and power through its precise machined hardware, but is softened by generous curves and approachable details.
The phone is designed to be placed face-down on a table when not in use. It alerts the user of notifications using an LED integrated into the camera bump. This subtle detail is both useful and low-cost.
The team gathered critical insights and feedback from our community using frequent design presentations on Discord, in order to gain a better understanding of the needs of the enthusiast smartphone market. BEEP is currently in development and is scheduled for launch in 2024.
The brand is centered around a signature beep sound, which interprets the brand’s playful premium aesthetic into an iconic digital auditory interface. The beep acts as a liaison of communication between person and machine. The asterisk logo is the visual manifestation of the beep sound. It can also stand in for a wide variety of words, ideas, and sentiments.
BEEP is playful and bold. The logo type uses a custom rounded typeface and the body text is expressed in Roboto Mono, perfectly capturing the digital technical space that BEEP inhabits. The color palette is straightforward, with dark gray contrasted by light gray. The palette is brightened by its high-vis orange pop color, which alludes to the alerting purpose of a beep sound. BEEP’s audio and visual palette work together to signal the coming of the next big (mini) thing in smartphones.
