From the speaker brand that has become renowned for treading that fine line between room-commanding audio and equally room-commanding design, Transparent has just completed funding for its latest easy-on-the-eye device via Kickstarter. Developing on the success that the brand has had with its iconic glass and aluminium flagship, the Transparent Light Speaker is its debut portable offering, complete with an adjustable light that flickers in time to music and with a look inspired by outdoor lanterns and campfires.
Perhaps not all that surprising for a brand that prides itself on aesthetics, Transparent hails from the design haven that is Stockholm, where we’ve received an inside look at the new release from founders Per Brickstad and Martin Willers. Friends from art school, the two set out with a vision of making long-lasting speakers that were modular and thus forever upgradeable. The glaringly obvious take on the name Transparent is the glass construction they started out with – an undeniably stylish look that has seen their brand bought into not just by those most trendy e-tailers (Mr Porter and The Conran Shop are two of its largest stockists in the UK) but by beautifully designed hotels and shops the world over.
But the less surface-level take is a commitment to achieving transparent sound, an industry reference regarding a speaker’s ability to channel the truest intention of a musician – clear and undecorated. It’s no easy feat given neither founder has an audio background of his own, but Transparent’s founders have done a mighty job of balancing state-of-the-art design with a sound that’d satisfy even the fussiest audiophile, especially given that glass is not the most natural vessel for acoustics and a good glass speaker, more often found in the dashboards of an expensive Beemer, will set you back several thousand pounds. By partnering with all the right people, Transparent’s glass speakers deliver a particularly deep bass for its size, crisp highs and clear mids, all of which has been achieved with the Light Speaker using the same materials, though its smaller size does naturally lend it less volume.
For Brickstad, Transparent’s products aren’t about finding a balance between aesthetic design and sound, but making a product that works for its user. “If we have something that is poorly designed aesthetically it won’t work in a person's home and if it sounds bad it won’t work either,” he says. “We have to be proud of the product from both angles. It’s about understanding customer behaviour, how people relate to tech today and how people listen to music. Those behaviour insights drive our product development.”
The slightly subtler sound of the Light Speaker is no major loss given the general look and feel is less suited to a dance party than it is relaxed gatherings in the garden or on the beach. Conveniently for Transparent, they’re the gatherings likely to be settings for most of our social meet-ups in 2021. Indeed, founder Brickstad would have you believe his new speaker shines brightest when playing the experimental music of his favourite Danish artist, Be Svendsen, and we’d agree it’s quite the showcase. The genre-bending sounds are greatly elevated by the addition of an amber flickering light, making for a multisensory experience rather than simple playback. Stick the Light Speaker at the edge of the tub, in lieu of a candle, and it’s easy to lose yourself in the same Phoebe Bridgers album that came up tops in many a GQ staffer’s Spotify Wrapped last month.
And whatever your music taste, the light element can be adjusted accordingly. In its design process, Brickstad and Willers meticulously analysed the real flames of campfires to inspire their design, which fed into everything from the movement of the light to the exact colours of a distinguishing fire, a brighter living candle (at around 1,800 kelvin) right up to a functional white light you might have at your bedside while buried in a book. Not to sacrifice function for design, IPX2 weather resistance means it’ll withstand normal rainfall should your picnic be a washout too.
Fittingly for a brand of such beauty, the Light Speaker does not rely on its good looks to cement its premium status, following in the footsteps of fashion with an emphasis on sustainability and manufacturing transparency, without ever greenwashing. From the very outset, Brickstad and Willers have been upfront and realistic about the footprint of their products, be it using suppliers who use recycled material and sustainable energy sources wherever possible, while acknowledging that there’s no such thing as a truly sustainable factory or material, or creating speakers that are entirely modular and upgradeable to elongate their lifespan.
It is yet another way a brand called Transparent lives up to every possible meaning of the word and is why Kickstarter has been the natural means for which the duo have released the Light Speaker and the products that came before it. “We release via Kickstarter because it’s important for us to be upfront about every detail,” says Willers. “For us, it’s a very natural way to act, despite being very uncommon for consumer electronics on the whole, where you get a polished message at the end of a very long manufacturing process. It’s important for us to be upfront with the consumer, if not simply because I appreciate it when I get that authenticity from other brands and other people.”
The Light Speaker is as fresh a product you could wish for from a brand as refreshingly in tune with what consumers want in 2021. Not only this, but it builds out Transparent’s speaker line-up to cover every base of home audio and beyond. We get the sense that, with founders who rarely shy from admitting they have eyes on Apple and the other biggest names in consumer electronics, the Light Speaker is a mere budding flame compared to what Transparent has to come.
Transparent’s Light Speaker is available to preorder now via indiegogo.com
Best desk lamps to light up your life in 2021
