Tag Archives: Oton

A turntable fitting for the 2020s

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As a fitting companion to our favorite (and perhaps the most controversially popular) music playback device, the Elbow Cassette Player, Louis Berger’s oTon is a quirky playback device for serious design junkies and audiophiles.

With a design that’s audacious enough to get me to quit Spotify to listen to LP discs full time, the oTon is vertical, exposes most of the vinyl disc, and is practically completely transparent… a design choice that makes the album art on the vinyl discs visible during playback. The oTon works by wirelessly sending audio to a nearby speaker (it doesn’t come with an in-built speaker, as you’ll clearly be able to see), but another interesting little feature is the oTon’s ability to rip audio from the vinyl discs and export them to your phone, to listen to while on the go!

Designer: Louis Berger

What if your glasses could read to you?

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I firmly believe that the spectacle holds great opportunity for wearable tech, because even if there’s just a fraction of people wearing them, these people are ALWAYS wearing them. You could forget your watch, or your fitbit, but you never forget your glasses. Taking the function of glasses, and elevating them, the Oton is a pretty damn amazing wearable.

Designed to help you see, but even better than regular glasses, the Otonmake use of AI and Machine Learning to recognize images (text in particular), and play/read them out to the wearer. Imagine not being able to read the fine print, or even more useful, not being able to read a foreign language, the Oton turn image-text into speech, pretty much giving people superpowers, if you think about it! The future of wearables looks inclusive and empowering for sure!

Designer: Keisuke Shimakage

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