Teenage Engineering design language gives this CD player concept a fresh new look

It isn’t just vinyl that’s making a comeback. Although they’re much younger and haven’t exactly vanished from the market, audio CDs have been easily supplanted by streaming services and MP3s. There are plenty that still prefer to hold physical media that really emphasizes their ownership of the product, so CD players have never really become as rare as record players before this recent retro revolution.

They have, however, been rather uninspiring and unaesthetic, still bearing the technology-centric design from the 90s. It’s definitely high time to give this device a makeover, but there’s no need to also ditch the CD player’s identity. Taking a cue from Teenage Engineering’s design book, this concept gives the audio device an aesthetic that is modern, clean, and clearly industrial.

Designers: Jake Wegesin (Ambient Press), Pierrick Pichaureaux (Pich.Studio)

Although Teenage Engineering’s products serve a rather niche market of audio synthesizers and other music-related devices, the outfit’s design language has inspired many to follow suit and give their products a minimalist industrial style. That design language involves the use of geometric shapes, sharp edges and angles, and a monochromatic color scheme, often in silver, with a few orange highlights here and there. It beautifully bridges the gap between a more technical treatment and a clean, modern look that can be applied to almost any product today.

A CD player isn’t that far from Teenage Engineering’s core product line, so this concept doesn’t stray far either. Instead of the usual plastic you’d see on its kind, you get a metallic square block that has very little extraneous details on any side. Even the presence of a CD bay is only indicated by a very thin line circling around the center of the box. It’s a bit deceptive, however, as the lid is actually the whole top surface rather than that broken circle.

The controls of the CD player almost disappear into the body of the box as well, protruding only so slightly from the edges. The design of what seems to be the volume control is pretty ingenious, a knob that hides in one of the rounded corners of the player. Curiously, the only thing that literally sticks out is the headphone jack, here encased in a small knurled cylinder jutting out from the bottom of the box. Whether it has any tactile functionality isn’t clear, but it would be such a waste since its very design seems begging to be pulled or twisted.

The predominantly brushed silver body of the CD-P1 concept is broken only by a few orange accents, such as the carrying trap and the groove on the volume knob to indicate its position. Flip the box over, however, and you are met with a felt-like orange material that gives both a visual contrast as well as a tactile one. The minimalist style of this design concept probably won’t fit everyone’s tastes, but it’s definitely a breath of fresh air for a product whose dominant designs seem to go back decades as well.

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