Everybody know Archos has a serious disease : being entirely designed by engineers, their players suffer from a terrible look (or not so terrible, whatever). We’re hoping that thing will change with Gen6. Here is an avenue worth exploring :

YankoDesign has recently uncovered a design concept, issued by a French company, Cubedesigners for Thomson.

The quite enticing images that were publish all across the Internet brought us to learn more about that.

We directly got in touch with Mathieu Pesme, one of the two product designers of the company.

Cubedesigners was appointed last year by Thomson to design the lines of their new generation of multimedia players. The different designs were not proposed for a sheer stylistic concept, but as a part of a whole commercial and industrial project.

Taking the general lines of the EH308 as a sketch, the aim was to create a innovative design for the successor of the current X3030.

Sadly, Thomson quitted their audio/video activity last october, thus stopping the research in design as well.

Several concepts had been proposed by Cubedesigners at that time :

All photographs are available on Cubedesigners website, domain "Design produit / Thomson".

To achieve their job, design-research consultancies face two different types of policies among their different clients :

1. Companies were the look of the players comes after the objectives of the R&D department. Archos, considering the preponderance of its engineers, enters this category. Designers then have to take very precise specifications into account. (dimensions, positionning of components, etc...)
2. Companies were the look is the preponderant specification of the products. This category represents relatively few companies on the market. The most typical case is of course Apple. These companies obviously make the jobs easier for designers, since they enjoy a much greater freedom. Once the final design is settled, it is the job of the engineers to stick everything into the box.

Packard Bell is a nice example of the companies where the line comes after the components.

All photographs are available on Cubedesigners website, domain "Design produit / Packard Bell".

That shows evidence that Archos’ current policy about the preponderance of technology is by no means incompatible with nice looks, through research consultancy.

The different rubrics of Cubedesigners’ website show that these pros can work on aestethics, but also on ergonomics and navigation, categorie in which Archos has a lot to learn, though considerable progress has been made over the last years...

Now comes thesticky question : how much for that ?

According to Mathieu Pesme, a basic study, which allows the proposotion of a few ideas and the production of the first scale models, costs between €8,000 et €20,000 (US$12,000-30,000).

As a comparison, a single billboard in the Parisian underground costs €90,000 to €100,000...

Considering the emotional impast that a well-made and innovative line can have on the masses, isn’t it Archos’ duty now to explore this avenue ?

Photographs : cubedesigners