Smartphones have lost character over the years, with their fronts (and even their backs) looking borderline similar over the past few years. Google’s Pixel 6 changed that with its unique belt-shaped design – something that’s continuing to become a visual language for the phone line… but all in all, most phones look eerily similar nowadays. The solution, however, lies in simply playing with the one design detail that helps give the smartphone its character – the camera bump. Meet the FOG phone concept, designed for sportswear brand Adidas. Designed by 2-LA Design, the FOG phone takes full liberty with redesigning the camera bump, resulting in a smartphone that truly looks memorable. To probe exactly how memorable the phone looks, 2-LA Design even excluded any logo or branding on the back of the phone, purely relying on the camera bump to grab eyeballs. The best part? The fact that the camera bump’s design lines up rather perfectly with Adidas’ 3-stripe logo, reinforcing the company’s brand (even though they probably would never enter the smartphone business).
Designer: 2-LA Design
“In the grand tapestry of design, every element, whether it’s the silhouette, the logo, or intricate details, ought to serve a sacred purpose, seamlessly melding into the symphony of the overall aesthetic,” says 2-LA Design.
The three stripes are practically synonymous with the Adidas brand at this point, making them a perfect icon for using in the smartphone’s design. 2-LA Design chose to interpret these stripes not as graphics on the phone’s back fascia (which would work just as well), but rather use it in the most weirdly brilliant way possible. The three lines on the back (looking almost like the Meta Quest 3’s camera bumps) have an unmistakable newness to them, and even if someone were to NOT recognize those stripes as the ‘Adidas FOG Phone’, they would definitely not confuse the phone for anything else from Samsung, Apple, Oppo, Xiaomi, Google, ASUS, etc.
The Adidas FOG Phone (which stands for Fear Of God, strangely enough) is a figment of 2-LA Design’s imagination. It doesn’t exist, but the design direction it proposes is a pretty novel way to look at smartphone design, helping bridge the gap between visual branding and industrial design. My only qualm is the lack of a flashlight…
