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CES 2013: Polaroid Must Be the Best Place for an Industrial Designer to Work At

By Rain Noe - January 8, 2013

in Consumer Electronics

While we got sucked into the Polaroid area by the iDevice lens add-ons display above, it was what we saw deeper inside that really caught our eye: They've gone into Bluetooth speakers in a major way. The reason we gave this post the title it's got is because it doesn't look like their design director said no to anything. It looks like the assignment came in to design a portable Bluetooth speaker, the team cranked out twenty cool concept sketches, and all of them got greenlit.

There were longitudinal ones roughly equivalent to what the competition's got...

...spherical ones...

...cylindrical ones...

...tiny cyclindrical ones...

...cylindrical ones that transform...

...waterproof ones meant to hang in a shower or be taken to the beach...

...rugged-looking boombox-and-dock ones...

...and my personal favorite, this apparently waterproof dock/speaker that seems to be modeled after a hurricane lamp.

I love that they made this huge a variety, and I have to wonder how they were able to afford to put out such a broad offering. The Polaroid rep had no info on prices, release dates, tech specs or even model numbers. But if this is the amount of designs they produced, that's a place I'd like to work.

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BenThere

12 years ago

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Polaroid licenses their name since becoming bankrupt several times and own by a company that trys to sell crap with their brand name. I can find all these product on alibaba.
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bluestu

12 years ago

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guess no one here (including the poster) is aware that Polaroid filed for bankrupcy long before Kodak, and any products bearing their name are just licensing the brand. It's painfully obvious these are crappy OEM audio products branded Polaroid. I'll bet last year these same items were in the 'low rent' area of CES! Polaroid definitely isn't a good place for a designer anymore (if there's even internal design).
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powers

12 years ago

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Back when I was in school a potential professor did a presentation. He was a former Polaroid designer from the late 80s early 90s, and he told the very sad story about how the designers convinced brass to invest in digital after they marketed a new camera which was aimed at young teens. The project went great & Polaroid made lots of money.... And management decided to stick with the chemicals. I think he said 2/3 of the design team quit. Maybe after seeing what happened to Kodak, Polaroid has finally decided to start listening to the designers.
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maishado

12 years ago

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Good call - That is an old country buffet of design going on.
Also a ripoff fest. I see a complete sony and nokia ripoff in that group.

Is some factory just licensing the polaroid name?

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John Kestner

12 years ago

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"I have to wonder how they were able to afford to put out such a broad offering. The Polaroid rep had no info on prices, release dates, tech specs or even model numbers."

There's your answer. Like so much at CES (why?), most of those will never be produced. Cheap hype to showcase your design explorations.

Also, Polaroid speakers??
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