The Design Story Behind Samsung’s The Premiere, A Lifestyle Projector Built for Every Environment

Our homes are the spaces that best represent our personal preferences, needs and tastes, much of which presents itself in the way in which we arrange the objects in our living spaces. Understanding that such organization techniques and choices are crucial to users when looking for pieces to add to their homes, the designers at Samsung Electronics have been pursuing a design direction that prioritizes how an object will blend into customer’s homes as well as their everyday lives.

Samsung’s The Serif, released in 2016, was the beginning of the solidification of this design direction as the company began to introduce lifestyle television products. Similarly, The Frame’s picture frame-like design allows the TV to serve as an artistic object when switched off, and The Serif blends in naturally to a space’s aesthetic due to its furniture-like design. Samsung’s latest product, lifestyle projector The Premiere, follows this design trajectory, too.

When designing The Premiere, Samsung’s designers deliberated constantly over not just the purpose of the product, but also the user experience it could offer. Accordingly, The Premiere was designed in consideration of the entirety of a user’s daily life as opposed to just those moments of downtime enjoying content, resulting in a design that truly gives back to the space it is placed in.

“The Premiere can be used in living rooms or bedrooms just like a normal TV, following a change in usage habits that has become the focal point of all our latest designs,” noted Sungil Bang, designer at the Product Design Group of Samsung’s Visual Display Business. Rather than being a product that is used just occasionally, the designers of The Premiere visualized an ultra-short throw projector product that is used frequently while being stored in a way similar to how users position their television sets. The Premiere’s main purpose is to provide users with cinematic experiences at home, but the designers looked beyond this simple role to explore how the product’s design could complement the space in which it is placed.

“The Premiere is a premium home appliance equipped with advanced technology,” noted designer Jigwang Kim. “However, despite its special functional offering, a projector can become less appealing when its design ruins the aesthetic of a home. We worked to create a design mockup and then verified its appearance within a space in order to confirm our conviction that we were creating a product that can truly become one with its environment.” As a result of this process, The Premiere’s material, appearance, color and size were all designed with the user environment in mind.

Rather than appearing as just another rigid electronic device, The Premiere is finished with fabric materials that help the product merge naturally into any space. Kvadrat textiles are known for the premium colors, textures and finishing they offer interior design products, and was therefore a natural choice to complement The Premiere’s design aesthetic. However, the process of including it in the product was not initially simple: due to the tight weave structure of Kvadrat fabrics, there were concerns the sound quality would be affected when the speakers were covered. Therefore, after much effort and trialing, a new fabric was developed with an increased aperture ratio built into its woven structure that would provide a high-quality aesthetic while also maintaining sound quality.

It takes a trained eye to achieve harmony within one’s home, given the range of objects and appliances each person has and the level of personalization they might wish to achieve. The Premiere features a smooth, refined design that is free of any superfluous accents and instead boasts a minimal and rounded shape with a slim silhouette. Its appearance allows it to harmonize well with any and every object, be it placed on a table or a book cabinet.

In order to achieve this appearance, the biggest hurdle faced by the designers was reducing the overall size of the product. The more advanced the technologies there are in a product, the bigger a product tends to become, but The Premiere’s designers were set on crafting a softly-shaped object as opposed to having a larger or rectangular-shaped design. It was by finely adjusting the position of the product’s circuit, lens, speaker and fan that this design was achieved, and not without constant correction of various curves and discussions with related teams. Furthermore, The Premiere’s softer color tone was chosen over more striking shades so that the projector gives a warm and elegant impression to users.

“We made sure that the natural aspects of the design complemented the actual user experience of The Premiere,” stressed designer Junpyo Kim. In order to match the exterior design with the simple, easy-to-use nature of the product, the designers considered the everyday use habits for a product like The Premiere, noting that, for the most ideal viewing experience possible, such tasks as closing the curtains, installing additional equipment or purchasing separate speakers should be made obsolete.

“We wanted to make sure the product could be used effortlessly by users, so our aim was to remove the need for them to adjust their environment according to the product,” highlighted designer Byungwook Kang. “This intent, which we included at every stage of the design process, accompanies the integration of new technologies in The Premiere that facilitate new viewing experiences and habits.” Such new technologies include The Premiere’s rich, three-dimensional sound that requires no extra speakers, clear image brightness and accurate, vivid image coloration, as well as the ultra-short throw technology that overcomes the limitations of where a projector needs to be placed to ameliorate the daily lives of users.

The position of a domestic product in the home will usually depend on its function. With a product like a lifestyle projector, this positioning can get quite complicated, as users have to consider installation requirements and habitual movement paths. The Premiere comes with none of these worries, as it can be placed freely wherever a user desires with no excessive installation required. The Premiere shoots its laser beams upwards rather than to the front thanks to its ultra-short throw technology, ensuring a large screen for viewers even when it is close to the wall and opening up the options for users to place and enjoy the lifestyle projector wherever they would like.

Clear picture quality is a necessity for the proper enjoyment of large screens (up to 130 inches), wherever a viewer may be sitting. Further to this, for maximum impact, the colors of content should be as vivid and as bright as a movie screen whatever the time of day the content is being enjoyed at. This is why The Premiere features a triple laser and HDR10+ technology for maximum color expression, and thanks to its contrast ratio of 2,000,000:1, every little detail is emphasized. Finally, its maximum brightness of 2,800 ANSI-Lumens means that external lighting is not a barrier for viewing enjoyment. If the value of The Premiere’s technologies is in how they enable users to enjoy crisp picture quality in any environment, the value of its design is in how it enables the product to provide this user enjoyment in any space.

Sound is one of the elements that truly define a remarkable home cinema experience. Since the performance of speakers mounted on projectors is usually not enough to provide an immersive cinematic experience, users normally have to install extra speakers in order to achieve the desired quality of sound. However, The Premiere introduces a whole new world of on-device sound quality. The Premiere’s all-in-one speaker is equipped with a woofer and an acoustic beam with a powerful output that emits sound through 44 audio holes on both the left and right hand sides of the device to create a truly three-dimensional sound experience. The product’s acoustic beam technology is structured similarly to wind instruments, with holes punctured through long tubes to achieve an immersive sound quality. While these tubes require a certain amount of space within the product, the designers went to extra lengths to ensure this wouldn’t affect its overall size by creating precise internal designs that allowed for the surround sound technology within a small exterior form.

The Premiere was designed to be a product that complements its environment seamlessly as opposed to standing out. This aesthetic decision was one made unanimously by the Samsung team in order to craft a product that understood its users and could suit actual situations, preferences and environments. Thanks to this approach, The Premiere features a design that blends naturally into everyday life and can fit comfortably into any environment.

* The images featured are simulated and for illustration purpose only. The actual product may differ from the images shown below.

* This product does not require the installation of an additional screen and can project onto flat monotone surfaces that are in white or bright colors. For an optimal projection environment, users are recommended to use a customized screen made for an ultra-short throw projector.