This is a small wooden Bluetooth speaker, which is also an almost seamless wooden box. Apart from a small touch button and a USB charging port, there are no other external "interferences". 

As a speaker, it has nothing to reduce. Professor Zhang Fei from the School of Science and Arts at Zhejiang University of Technology recently received an award invitation from the 2019 German Red Dot Award, 

holding this minimalist wooden box. In July this year, he will also attend the award ceremony in Essen, Germany.

The Red Dot Award in Germany, along with the IF Award in Germany and the IDEA Award in the United States, are collectively known as the three major design awards in the world. 

The Red Dot Award has always been regarded as a barometer of future design directions and is known as the "Oscar" of the design industry.

With the same precision as building an airplane, complete a piece of wood

Zhang Fei has been thinking about making a beautiful wooden Bluetooth speaker for almost 4 years. Prior to this, he used solid wood as raw material to design desk lamps, stationery, 

music boxes, and an attractive seamless egg. These internal and external design accumulations not only allowed Zhang Fei to sincerely appreciate the inherent solidity and affinity of logs, 

but also played with logs with the precision of building airplanes.

The unique feature of this wooden Bluetooth speaker is that it is made of a whole piece of wood, trying to preserve the seamless integration of the work. It is also Zhang Fei's obsession with wooden design. 

"When our work comes out, even the wood grain has natural continuity." Traditional wooden speakers often use splicing, but if we discard splicing, what should we do? 

Zhang Fei said that the method of hollowing out the wood is to use precision controlled CNC method to wash out the inner cavity. This approach inevitably takes some time, 

but the presentation effect is very good. And this approach has been well trained in the design of music boxes and seamless eggs.

The name of seamless egg is Nest egg, which won the German iF Product Design Award in 2014. Zhang Fei said that it is actually a magnet. 

When it attracts a paper clip, it dries an egg like a haystack, hence the name. But interestingly, you can't even notice how the magnet is inserted because it looks like a seamless egg from the outside. 

So many carpenters feel that it's too precise when they come, and they can even catch up with building airplanes. Zhang Fei really likes this sentence, 

'Yes, we just need to do this with the same attitude as building airplanes.' Later, Bayin Box applied this method more fully and skillfully, and won the iF Product Design Award.

Meanwhile, the low-key touch buttons on the speaker are also worth mentioning. Zhang Fei said that the touch switch itself is not a very advanced technology, but it is difficult to use on wood. 

On the original design of the wooden desk lamp, he attempted to use a touch button to switch the power and adjust the brightness and darkness together. 

Require very clever implantation of chips, "Zhang Fei told reporters. To turn it on and off, just lightly tap on its wooden surface. As for dimming, 

hold it down and gradually weaken it; Press it again and gradually become stronger. This approach also applies to the switch and volume adjustment of speakers.

Original design requires a good-looking leather bag More interesting soul

However, as a speaker, good sound is the key. The previous design and production of the music box gave Zhang Fei basic confidence that solid wood material has a higher density 

and is more likely to produce good sound compared to commonly used plastic materials in the market. But to take another step forward and even equalize with big brands on the market, 

relying solely on this innate advantage is far from enough.

As early as 2014, Zhang Fei made an attempt, but was not satisfied with the sound. Later, he stumbled through many detours until the first version of Bluetooth speakers was released in 2016. 

However, he still felt that it was not perfect enough, so he reluctantly scrapped all the circuit boards and no longer sold them to the public. The opportunity arose in March of last year. 

At that time, Zhang Fei modified a sound system for his car, making driving an incredibly enjoyable thing and making his ears extremely picky, listening to terrible speakers. 

This also reignited his passion for making a good speaker.

Zhang Fei invited an acoustic engineer to try making various wooden box structures and tested a large number of sound comparisons. 

At the same time, he also collected various models of well-known Bluetooth speakers and compared their sound structures and sounds, 

constantly learning from the experiences of his predecessors. This 9-month experience, in Zhang Fei's words, completely buried time underground in design, 

and also allowed him to fully enjoy the endless joy brought by design.

To create original designs, one must not only have a beautiful appearance, but also an interesting soul. 

Zhang Fei admitted that there has always been a misconception among the outside world that product design is just about exterior design, 

and this was exactly his idea at one point. Before creating original designs, Zhang Fei worked in design services for 8 years. 

Once, a manufacturer brought a bathroom heater and asked them to design more than ten different appearances, provided that the arrangement and spacing of the four lights could not be changed. 

This gave him a strong sense of fatigue and made him decide to stop and rest well.

It was during those days of rest that he played and designed two simple wooden desk lamps, "man" and "woman". 

He used a polished solid round wooden rod to support a lampshade, and the "woman" lamp had a "waist" design with adjustable lampshades. 

These two desk lamps were later used by him as New Year gifts to give to friends and became very popular. Then, due to an experience of going to the hospital alone for intravenous infusion, 

he brought in a technical engineer and devoted himself to designing an infusion monitoring system. He has always advocated the simplicity and practicality of design. 

"Since doing original design, I have found that many things in life are unreasonable and even unnecessary." 

These experiences have made him strongly feel the inherent freedom and charm of original design, and have also gained recognition and respect from more industries and markets.