It may look a little odd at first glance, but it captures the Teenage Engineering design language perfectly – Nerdy + Nordic. Meet the BD-1, a conceptual pair of TWS earbuds modeled on the company’s OP-1 synthesizer. The OP-1 synth became a pop culture design icon when it was used in Swedish House Mafia’s first music video, One. It sported a form factor that was sleek yet fun, retro yet new, and predominantly clean-looking without being boring. The BD-1 follows similar design cues by being relatively boxy, white, and use colorful ear-tips that match the colors used on the OP-1 synth. The best part? The earbuds case comes with a tiny AMOLED display that mimics the one found on the OP-1, displaying visualizations that react to the music you’re listening to!
Designer: Haechan Ryu
The BD-1 aren’t your average pair of earphones. They’re designed to look different, feel different, and be different. Made for audiophiles and people who appreciate nerdy audio gear, the BD-1 comes with a display on the front that sports visualizations, displays the name of the audio track you’re listening to, and even gives you battery stats (and also a date window, just for good measure).
The earphones sit within the clunky case, with an oddly appealing Star Wars-ish sci-fi design (I guess we’re looking at peak nerd). The earphones and case both use a combination of white plastic and metal to evoke this aesthetic that’s sort of comfortable and refreshing at the same time, and the colored ear-tips provide just the right splash of vibrancy to the design.
Just like the OP-1 synth, the BD-1 uses red, yellow, blue, and green color accents to stand out. In this case, the accents manifest themselves in the ear-tips as well as the BD-1’s USB-C charging cable. Each BD-1 comes with its own charging cable (which is more than what I can say for most smartphones these days). The cables even come with partial coiling as a hat-tip to the coiled wires used by most musicians and audio engineers.
Although Teenage Engineering hasn’t released any TWS Earbuds (yet), the audio-tech company did partner with Nothing over the design of the ear (1) earphones. However, those earphones were arguably designed keeping Nothing’s brand language in mind, with a focus on transparency. The BD-1 TWS earbuds aren’t transparent, but they’re unapologetically Teenage Engineering. They’re edgy, compact, fun, functional, and nothing like anything you’ve seen before. It’s a shame these ones are conceptual, though. I, for one, would really like to see earbuds with AMOLED displays built into their charging cases!
This is a fan-made concept and isn’t affiliated with Teenage Engineering. Any use of the Teenage Engineering brand and logo is for representational purposes only.
