The Acer Guy

This is going to be a long post, and an unexpected one for “regular” readers, but a lot of The Acer Guy went into part of what happened yesterday. What better place than this to celebrate it?

After more than three weeks of intense preparations and countless speculation, last night saw the launch of the Acer Gemstone and TravelMate ProFile series.

I’m really excited to see how these two new notebook designs will be received as there really was a lot of work put into the products. Over the past few weeks, I helped bridged the gap between product and the customers.

If I’ve done my job correctly, it should at least get off to a warm start

A little background on the subject

The Gemstone Concept and ProFile design is a joint effort between BMW Group DesignworksUSA and Acer. These are the guys behind industrial design icons such as the new Mini, BMW (obviously) and countless high-technology devices from world-class brands such as Nokia, Motorola and Magellan. Go and check out their site.

Without wishing to dilute the considerable efforts of this amazing team, the name Gemstone was the result of some serious market research and intense focus groups.

In short, an in-depth analysis of consumer market trends, user needs and preferences gave BMW Group DesignworksUSA a clear picture of how the end product should look, feel and perform. Take a step back, and the end result looks like a finely cut opal. Hence “Gemstone”.

The business world reacts to change a lot differently to the consumer world. Fashion takes a back seat in this unforgiving environment so it’s not surprise the new TravelMate ProFile design is low-key in comparison. Actually that’s just the point.

In the speech last night, the differences between the two product areas were laid out very clearly indeed:

• Whereas the professional market looks for “productivity”, the consumer looks for “expression”.

• Where the professional seeks “reliability”, the consumer seeks “friendliness”.

• “Well-built” for one is as important as “comfortable” is for the other

• And where “efficiency” means everything to a professional, “versatility” is what home users prize the most.

Given that as a starting block, and the TravelMate’s reputation, would you have changed the professional line?

What they did do was take a very close look at the smallest detail – that is, after all, what industrial design is all about.

Once the “names and purposes” of the products had been signed off, the briefs hit the marketing guys (us) and we were given literally three weeks to come up with ideas on launch strategies, events and marketing collateral.

The guys handling this at CircleLine really do deserve a mention and my personal thanks. What they managed to pull off such a limited time-frame is nothing short of miraculous.

Anyway. Back to the products:

First of all, I’d like to explain some of the messages you might have seen associated with these products.

I came up with this headline to express how nature has the ultimate control over the shapes and forms we value in life, gemstones being the most precious. Technology, on the other hand, empowers users to create. The headline links the design concept with the final product. Violà!

This one’s a lot easier to explain, but there is a hidden message. Performance is the currency used to judge business efficiency. It’s all that counts. No-brainer to use that here. The clever part of the headline is the closing part.

The guys at BMW Group DesignworksUSA took a long hard look at the TravelMate Folio design and used Industrial Design to improve on it. Now go back to the Wikipedia definition of Industrial Design and look for the part that says:

“Product characteristics specified by the industrial designer may include the overall shape of the object, the location of details with respect to one another, colors, texture, sounds, and aspects concerning the use of the product ergonomics.”

They are small details. But combined, these details build a better product, and a better product improves performance.

The event

Last night, the event was held in East End Studios in Milan, one of the largest privately-owned exhibition centres in Italy. It’s the kind of place large car manufacturers use to present their latest models to selected journalists. Trust me it was massive.

Acer took residence in one of the halls and put on a show like they’ve never done before. First off, there were no chairs. This was a product presentation that was more an exhibition than a product announcement.

Five massive structures dominated the hall, each one made up of three, 5-metre panels and three black columns with nature images projected onto the four side areas and industrial images on the rear-centre.

Then, at 7pm, the lights went down and Gianpiero Morbello, marcoms manager for the EMEA region, took the microphone, taking the audience through the evolution of design, the importance of industrial design and ending on how technology has been the single-biggest industrial design innovator of all time.

At that point he handed the microphone over to Kevin O’Donoghue, Product Business Director PC Commercial– Acer EMEA, who had “the envious task of describing what design means to Acer.”

There was palpable tension in the air as Kevin walked the audience through the different applications of design in the consumer and professional worlds. This was certainly no ordinary presentation.

And then he said…

We have created two different product families that are so different they could almost be from two separate companies.

• One is a revolution in consumer desire. The other, an evolution of business efficiency.

• One is the natural shape of technology; the other shows its power in the details

• One introduces a new life style, the other a new style of business.

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present to you, the Aspire Gemstone and TravelMate ProFile designs.

At that point the music cut in, and the spotlights pointed to the black tubes which slowly started to rise. The audience didn’t know what hit them.

Inside each of the tubes was an Aspire Gemstone notebook, and to the rear, three TravelMate Profile notebooks.

When you see them in the flesh, they really are stunning.

The TravelMate ProFile

The TravelMate ProFile is the more “ordinary” of the two but, if you’ve read the explanation of the headline above, you’ll already know why. The magnesium alloy outer casing is an extremely smart touch. Dark, professional-looking with no excesses, it looks like it really is: powerful, reliable, efficient, secure and surprisingly lightweight.

Did I mention that some TravelMate ProFile models feature a biometric fingerprint recognition suite that provides 100% biometric secure access? Or that they all now feature the latest edition of Acer’s DASP+ technology? Data security was obviously top of the design brief.

The Aspire Gemstone

But the star of the show was the Gemstone design.

If you look at it for a minute, the unique shapes and forms really do mark this as a carefully-studied object of rare quality.

It features something called a holographic 3D LCD cover that is shaped with graduated curves and a shimmering dark sub-layer and really does look good in the flesh.

“Surface treatment” is the buzzword for industrial designers at the moment and the Gemstone has its fair share. Apart from the shimmering outside, the inside deserves a mention.

Because it’s light grey.

It’s an effect called CeramiFinish and was chosen because grey is softer on the eyes over time, and Aspire users are known for their media-intensive activities. Think about that for a while, and then tell me if they were wrong to choose it.

The other thing about the Aspire Gemstone series is the choice to use Dolby. Or to give it its full name, Dolby Home Theatre Virtual Surround Sound technology.

There’s a patented speaker grill running the full width of the notebook and, if the effects from the Dolby screensaver are anything to go by, the result is startling.

Another feature that captures your attention when you turn on a Gemstone notebook is something Acer calls the media flow line.

This apparently strange feature has a very specific purpose. It runs from the power input jack around the keyboard to the touch pad and is a sort of “visual guide” that draws the user’s attention along the energy flow line of the PC across the media keys and Empowering key which, as anyone who’s actually used them will confirm, completely transform the PC experience.

Clever these BMW designers!

In concluding the evening, Kevin said:

These two new design concepts symbolize Acer’s long-term commitment to the brand-name PC business, and represent a new era of industrial design for the company.

We hope you enjoy using them as much as we did creating them.

That last sentence is significant. Acer’s on a roll at the moment.

It’s gaining ground on the competition by gaining a bigger and better audience. But more importantly, it’s convincing more and more people to take its ideas, its objectives, and its products very seriously indeed.

And if last night is anything to go by, it’s having fun too.
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