Copenhagen-based AIAIAI is best known for their clean, Scandinavian aesthetic and utilitarian approach to high-quality audio accessories. Compounding the success of their best-selling TMA-1 DJ headphones, AIAIAI looks to expand to the studio-producing consumer with the newly announced TMA-1 Studio. Like the TMA-1 DJ, it could be expected that the Studio headphones were also developed in careful collaboration with AIAIAI’s professional recording community, however, full technical specs are still on a slow trickle. Stay tuned though, as AIAIAI is rumored to be releasing pricing and full specs of the Studio headphones over the course of CES this week.

Primed for the individual on the go, AIAIAI has crafted the Capital Headphones, which pride themselves in a smooth listen no matter the extent of outside elements. The audio accessory boasts a rather impressive material composition, as it makes quality use of nylon, reinforced with fiberglass, and an additional lightweight rubber brace. So not only are you awarded with a fully functional and technologically advanced headphone, but the durability is top-notch as well. The Capital Headphones have yet to see a release, but you can expect availability sometime in the coming months.

Audio design company AIAIAI has been known for developing exceptionally high quality audio products for everyday use. With a modern, minimalist approach, as with most Scandinavian designs, they’ve created amplified and crystal clear sounds for the past few years. Aiming to show you a sneak peek at their headquarters in Copenhagen, AIAIAI created a fun video highlighting just what goes on in their office at night featuring a track by Renaissance Man.

A-Trak’s Brooklyn-based label let their characteristic, electronic, hip-hop panache and DJ expertise flow through the stripped down, iconic curves of the renowned TMA-1 DJ headphone. Pairing with Copenhagen-based audio design company AIAIAI, the design has been tweaked and tailored to give it a striking Fool’s Gold finish while retaining the original TMA-1 shapes and contours. New technical features in this limited edition include an angled stereo plug, which makes it harder to accidentally pull the plug from the mixer, as well as a cable lock, where you can choose to lock the cable to the TMA-1. Limited to 2,000 units worldwide, this could very well be a sought after collector’s item.  A release at the Fool’s Gold store in Brooklyn is slated for October 22, with retail set at $250 USD.

Fool’s Gold
536 Metropolitan Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
United States

Scandinavian brand AIAIAI collaborate with MOMOT on a series of paper toys. The project conceived with AIAIAI’s Korean partners, IconSupply, bring MOMOT into the picture who have garnered a huge following for their paper-derived 3D figures. AIAIAI patterns are applied throughout each piece with availability through IconSupply and soon, the AIAIAI webstore.

Clean and minimal in its design, the OP-1 Synthesizer and Controller from Teenage Engineering is one of the marquee designs form the Scandinavian brand. Just the right injection of colorful keys, the key components include eight built-in synthesizer engines, a built-in 4-track, a color coded interface, and easy use between PCs and Macs. Available now at colette.

In conjunction with the five-day Sónar Festival being held in Barcelona, Danish headphone company AIAIAI is teaming up with Galeria Cosmo to sponsor a pop-up shop featuring the entire product line from their current collection with a sneak peek at some future collaborations with several international brands and personalities. On the evening of Thursday, June 16, there will be an official opening reception for friends and press followed by an official COPENHAGEN Party at Le Kasbah hosted by AIAIAI & Tartelet Records with a scheduled performance by some of Denmark’s top DJs. The AIAIAI pop-up store will be open daily from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. during all five days of the event.

GALERÍA COSMO
Cafe & galería de arte
C/ Enric Granados
3
08007
Barcelona
Spain

The Tracks Headphone is an award-winning, supra-aural headphone with a subtle design focusing on elemental lines and an overall iconic shape. The simple brace design is easily adjustable and ensures a comfortable and secure fit. The customizable slider comes in 3 different colors and the 40mm speaker offers a better frequency distribution, and a full-spectrum sound quality with a lighter bass and detailed high frequency notes. Priced at $87 USD, this latest release from AIAIAI can be found through Turntable Lab and European Apple Store locations.

At a time when the convergence of lifestyle and head and earphones are at a pinnacle, Danish outfit AIAIAI has worked admirably to offer a quality product beyond just aesthetics. Taking immense pride in their design ethos and the total package, the brand’s roots in Scandinavia have perhaps given the design-centric brand a leg-up on the competition. An apparent yet uncontrived minimalism flows throughout the brand’s offerings. Among their most recent marquee products was the creation of the TMA-1, a series of cans that together with professional help have firmly cemented their vision of function and form.

Having recently made the jump in becoming one of brands supported by Apple, we interviewed AIAIAI’s Jacob Moesgaard. The brand’s cultural roots and its influence on design is a topic we explored as well as some of their own insights into design and the headphone scene. The imagery seen above is a mix of AIAIAI’s atelier as well as some shots of their flagship headphones, the TMA-1. AIAIAI is available now at select stockists as well as Apple Europe Stores.

The start of AIAIAI seemed not necessarily to be rooted in headphones but rather more of a creative outlet in general. Can you describe what AIAIAI encompasses?

You’re right, we started out with a few different ideas spurred from the creative setting we had been part of during the days of the A house. It was an old abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of central Copenhagen, where we threw parties and which for a number of years housed artists, musicians, designers and other like-minded individuals. Here we also formed a lot of the different relations that have later been very helpful in getting AIAIAI to where it is today. At this 25000-square-meter cross-section of creativity, there was room for all kinds of artistic, cultural and entrepreneurial ideas. This ‘spirit‘ is hopefully somewhat encompassed today in the AIAIAI brand, even though our main focus has since shifted from pulling draft-beer and playing rock music to making audio design products.

What has been the focal point of your design? How closely related is it with a certain minimalism that people often associate with Scandinavian design?

For us ‘minimalism’ can be a somewhat trite word, because these things go in circles and minimalism seems to be back en vogue like it’s been so many times before. Being informed by and brought up in a Danish and Scandinavian design tradition, words like democratic and affordable are equally important. It’s about stripping away unnecessary ornament and focusing on the important parts: a form of “no bullshit” approach to design. So it’s not a search for the next trend or what’s hot right now, but a ‘philosophy’ more focused on functionality and making the form follows the function to whatever end that might be… even if it’s over the edge. That, anyway, is our take on the Scandinavian minimalism.

How has the notion of headphones and earphones changed within the last few years as not only a piece of utilitarian function to something that is fashionable as well?

Headphones have always been an obvious part of your style, but we must say that the whole game has changed since we started. Back then we looked at all the classic black headphones without much of a design profile and our vision was to create something that looked good and at the same time kicked ass in terms of sound quality.
In the early days we were mainly focusing on design, as that was where we were able to make a visible difference – this has almost changed 180 degrees today.
We now see 10 new brands every week with colorful “design/lifestyle” headphones, which have to some extent resulted in a reversed correlation between design and quality for many consumers.
So our challenge today is to demonstrate that headphones can look cool and still be of a high quality – in other words our outwards communication today is more focused on the actual quality of our products and less on the design, than it was in the beginning. But in a market with a lot of not-always-great stuff, a well-functioning product can become fashionable for just being good quality and not necessarily anything more, no matter what the product is… Of course, looking good at the same time never hurts.

Aside from head and earphones, you’ve dabbled a bit into items such as T-shirts, but ultimately how far can your design philosophy go?

No one knows. There is no doubt that our focus is on headphones, but at the same time we simply can’t help doing a lot of other projects. The S-shirts are a small, small part of the whole AIAIAI project, even though it was originally one of the first things we set out to make and they were actually meant to coexist with the headphones. Having said that, now they are meant to be merchandise serving the purpose of playing along with our brand philosophy. They are either fun statements, reflections on sound, popular culture and design history. We just like doing them – and wearing them. On a slightly bigger scale we try to keep within the boundaries of audio at the moment, but if we see a good idea we follow it wherever it takes us – we feel this is important in order to stay creative and dynamic and perhaps come up with unconventional solutions. So there is no saying where we might end up…

Generally what’s your process to designing headphones? How about testing?

Our design process, and actually the way we work in general, is very open to just about anything. We always try to involve external partners (KiBiSi, Mannhandle, Teenage Engineering, etc.) and experts in various fields in order get the best possible insights and practice, and also to learn something new along the way. We like to do it this way opposed to do everything in-house, as we get a much more dynamic process and get to work with people who are the best at what they do and this hopefully also translates into the different projects. In a near future you’ll see some new interesting partnerships we’re venturing into – primarily in the more technical sphere.

What are the major limiting factors when it comes to headphone/earphone design?

The production is definitely a limiting factor. It can be quite the challenge to inform our production facilities about new ideas and products, especially when you don’t want to base it on already existing solutions. Another limiting factor is the fact that you cannot design to meet everyone’s needs. Flying Lotus was a good example of this. While testing we found out his head was simply too big… But we might actually have a solution to that in the near future (2012) as we are now working on a modular concept within the TMA-1 universe (note that Steven).

You’ve recently made the jump into Apple Europe Stores, is this viewed as an ultimate achievement for brands to be associated with Apple?

From a commercial perspective Apple is the biggest brand today so it is, of course, something we are proud of and something we’ve been striving for. But the ultimate achievement for us lies elsewhere, hopefully many years down the road. Apple is without a doubt leading in both design and electronics, so for them to recognize us is a great nod, a pat on the shoulder and something we are immensely appreciative of. That being said, it is not what drives us – we want to create genuine products of high quality and cool looks. Hopefully then, we can find someone, somewhere who wants to work with us in exploring new, untrodden terrain within the jungle, that is consumer electronics (smiles).

What’s your general perception regarding Apple and its subsequent design and approach to catering their experience for consumers?

Apple leads in most ways; ideation, technology, manufacturing, online, in-store, so we don’t necessarily see Apple as catering to consumers in meeting pre-existing needs. From our perspective they are creating needs and that’s exactly what most designers want to say they do – and most often don’t. It’s an interesting shift in paradigm (back to producer innovation) that not a lot of designers or manufacturers have been able to follow. At AIAIAI we don’t mean to follow Apple in that sense, we just intend to get inspired by what they do and see if we can create something for the same audience and their new needs created with an open collaborative approach. Regarding Apple design, certainly there are plenty of things we appreciate. From an industrial design perspective, we’re big fans of reductive design – that is removing anything that doesn’t enhance the experience. Jonathan Ive we’ve heard is heavily influenced by Dieter Rams so guess we have that in common. Really what’s most compelling about Apple is their unceasing ability to change the way people interact with technology.

Throughout the life of AIAIAI, what was your approach to the brand and developing it on a global level? And was this a critical part to your sustained growth?

Denmark is too small a market. So the whole world in all its glory has always been the focal point of what we do. Being brought up in a globalized age, we find it natural to develop collaborations and projects, and connect with people from all over the globe. We might bring a Scandinavian mindset to the table, but working internationally and with all kinds of people from different places is inspiring, humbling and rewarding. There are so many immensely talented people out there, so being able to work with some of them from the initial development, right along to the production phase and eventually in retail has been a great adventure so far. Hopefully there is more room to grow, more people to meet, more places to go to, and many more new types of headphones to develop. 

How long did it take to develop the TMA-1?

We’ve always wanted to make a proper headphone for DJ’s, but just wanted to get the right people involved, and as such the TMA-1 project was initiated with our friends and partners from Tartelet Records back in the summer of 2008. Together with Tartelet we formed a group of external partners on the technical side as well as a group of DJs that wanted to be involved in the development as testers. Involving all these people does not shorten the development process, but it assures that we come up with something special and well-thought through. All in all, it took over two years for us to get it right. And sure, we are delighted that people actually like what we’ve done, even though there’s always room for improvement.

Danish design firm KiBiSi had a role in the design of the headphones, but how did your relationship come about? Why the decision to have them design them relative to anybody else?

We‘ve known Lars from the very beginning of forming AIAIAI. We met during our days at the A House. Lars has been key to most of what we’ve created so far and as such, he was an obvious fit for this project. But that’s not the only reason. It takes a special designer to work in a setup like the one we created on the TMA-1. The user-driven approach with its iterative process and having to listen to so many different partners does not necessarily create a smooth design process, it requires a very open-minded and patient designer. That is Lars and his team at KiBiSi.

You mentioned the development of a modular TMA-1. Without giving too many details, what exactly will this entail?

Well… A modular design is something that we’ve wanted to do for a while, but we just haven’t had the right technical capabilities accessible. But now we’ve come up with a pretty unique mix of state-of-the-art technology combined with a modular physic design that will create quite a monster, we think. It’s obviously going to be active, which is new to us. On that note we’ve hooked up with some of the most skilled Danish engineers through a partnership with an old heritage pro audio company. It looks promising so far. On the physical design it’s KiBiSi again. It will for sure be a bit bigger in the cup, making it a closed cup over-ear design. We expect it to launch in the first quarter of 2012. Stay tuned!    

Interview: Eugene Kan
For more information on AIAIAI, please visit: http://www.aiaiai.dk/

Novelty USB drives rarely get old, proving they bring something new to the table as headphone brand AIAIAI, fashion brand Libertine Libertine, and artist Pantherman all come together to release Pantherman’s new album. Pantherman’s other claim to fame is being the frontman of Danish electro-rock group Spleen United. The 2GB USB drive is available now at AIAIAI.