The concept for this piece came from my college roommate’s makeshift immersive audio setup for his thesis research with the Elon University Department of Music Production and Recording Arts. I made a silly pun about how it looks like a phone booth… a headphone booth. Then, this idea came flooding through my brain. I saw a few phone booths in the UK while I was abroad this year, and I realized that people don’t seem to use them for anything other than Instagram pictures now. I remembered reading an article while I was in London about the city’s push to keep them on the streets despite their limited use, and I also saw that some are already being converted into libraries to give them a new purpose. Through a lot of quality time with Photoshop, I was determined to make this idea come to life. I was lucky to find that Sonos recently updated their branding to not include strict brand colors, and they updated their primary typeface with Aktiv Grotesk. Not having many limitations — other than keeping the design work pretty clean and basic — helped make this project more feasible and successful. 

On my idea board, I included some preliminary research and thoughts that triggered this idea, and I explained a little bit about the mechanics behind how something like this would work. I created three different variations of how the exterior of the booths might be represented, in addition to a pretty detailed view of the interior, thanks to some great stock photography from Envato Elements. In theory, the audience for this project would be young music lovers ages 16-32. They are the kind of people who would be most intrigued by this concept, most encouraged to share about the exhibition with their friends and family, and most inclined to actually buy Sonos products. See the flat images below.