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Mark Solomon is the Principle Designer for the Voodoo business unit, where he is responsible for the industrial design, packaging design, and brand visual language for Voodoo and VoodooDNA product lines. Mark has over 20 international design awards. His latest is an IDEA Silver award for the HP Blackbird 002. He also holds 34 patents and another 48 patents pending. The other day he sat down with us to talk about the design philosophy behind VoodooPC’s new Envy 133 notebook and Omen desktop computers.
The Next Bench News: These days, the world seems to be all curves and soft forms. Yet, both the Envy and the Omen are square blocks and straight lines. Are you just trying to be different?
Mark Solomon: Voodoo is indifferent to trends, and by doing so has become a trendmaker in its space. But the new design language of Voodoo is more than just being different, it goes back to the brand tenets of what Voodoo is and how it fulfills the brand experience.
TNBN: What do you mean by basic design language?
Mark: All of Voodoo’s products share some common visual and experiential traits. Just like people in a family share certain characteristics—a chiseled jaw, a pointed nose—that are passed down from generation to generation.
TNBN: How do these traits manifest themselves in Voodoo’s products?
Mark: Being originally from HP, we had to study Voodoo of the past to ensure the new Voodoo was true to it’s roots. We discovered a couple of basic truths that are core elements that run throughout its products. First, alot of the products were square or geometric in form. So we decided to build on this family trait by updating and refining it. The result is that the Envy and the Omen share a monolithic form. They’re square blocks, with clean, straight lines and totally flat surfaces. Turn the Envy upside-down and it’s completely flat. There are no bump-outs or curves that you see in other notebooks. The same with the Omen. No extraneous shapes. It’s all business. We’ve taken the square block and made it very sexy.
TNBN: What’s the second basic truth you discovered about how Voodoo builds computers?
Mark: They use high quality materials. The new Envy and Omen take this to the next step by using what I call “performance materials.” For the Omen, we chose aircraft-quality aluminum. Not cast, but extruded. Not only is it lighter and stronger than steel or sheet metal, aluminum has really great thermal properties and dissipates heat more efficiently than other metals.
TNBN: What about the Envy, other than its square shape, it seems like an entirely different animal?
Mark: Vastly different, but also the same. It’s also made of a high-performance material: carbon fiber. A different material, but it shares some of aluminum’s characteristics: it’s ultra light and ultra strong. In order to create a notebook that’s just 0.70 inches thick, weighs less than 3.4 pounds and has a removable battery, there was no other way to do it. By using extruded aluminum and carbon fiber on these machines, it enabled us to design in higher performance—whether it’s super high-powered gaming on the Omen, or increased mobility on the Envy.
TNBN: The LCD screens on the Envy and the Omen are covered with a thick slab glass that goes from edge to edge. We’ve never seen this before.
Mark: It’s a subtle little design feature that emphasizes their clean flush lines. Also notice that the Envy and the Omen have LCD screens covered with a thick slab of glass that goes from edge to edge. It’s a subtle little feature, but it adds to their clean, flush lines.
TNBN: Beautiful. It accentuates the square, monolithic form you were talking about.
Mark: It’s very difficult to do and adds to the unmistakable quality of workmanship that goes into these machines. There are also exposed edges on other parts, as well. For instance, on the keyboard deck of the Envy. And on the Omen’s side panels. This effect only works when you’ve got tight engineering. Most manufacturers try to hide their exposed edges because it doesn’t look quite so sexy when you’re using sheet metal. But we wanted to show the quality and thickness of the materials we are using. The exposed edges also come into play in the personalization of the Envy and the Omen. They show the various layers of paint, wood and other materials that are and will be used to customize and personalize these machines.
TNBN: It’s almost like looking at the strata in a rock formation.
Mark: Exactly. Say a user has his Omen for four years and has applied different paints and surfaces to it during that time. He can see the entire history of his machine just by looking at the edges. You can go a little crazy with this, but you get the idea.
TNBN: Both machines also share a certain thin quality. Was this intentional?
Mark: Yes, we worked really hard to get both machines really thin. When you look at the Omen straight on, despite its mass, it’s thin. We didn’t use any trickery to accomplish this. In contrast, the HP Blackbird’s cantilevered design involves a little bit of optical illusion to hide its size. The only thing that might be construed as trickery in the Omen is the “hover” effect when viewing it from the side. But this actually serves an important function in the cooling of the interior components. This is also why we rotated the motherboard.
TNBN: Yes, we’ve been wondering why everything is turned around on the Omen. How did this novel idea come about?
Mark: Simple science… A proven scientific fact is that heat rises. We wanted to rotate the board 90 degrees to take full advantage of that concept. Why force heat through the front and back of the machine using energy-eating fans when you can accomplish the same thing using natural convection. Of course, we still have placed fans and liquid cooling in the Omen, but we are assisting the cooling process and, in theory, will have a quieter machine.
TNBN: Does anyone else do this on their machines?
Mark: Convection techniques have been employed, but, as far as I know, no one has rotated the motherboard on a large desktop. Another functional reason we wanted to rotate the board was to introduce a new user accessibility and cable management experience. When you rotate the board, all the connections are on top of the machine. You don’t have to turn the entire case around every time you want to connect something up. Or, if it’s under your desk, crawl under it and deal with a tangle of cables in the darkness. With the Omen, the all the connections are easily access just by lifting off the top panel. No tools are necessary.
TNBN: How does this accessibility theme play out on the Envy?
Mark: It’s more of a software solution. User accessibility is expressed with the Envy’s instant-on feature. You can access the Web, personal documents and media instantly, using Voodoo IOS, without waiting for the whole system to power up.
TNBN: Ahh…a little Voodoo magic.
Mark: [CHUCKLES] Arthur C. Clarke said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” From that perspective, there were a few things we wanted to do that added a “wow” factor to these computers. On the Envy, there’s a proximity sensor that recognizes when your fingers are on the keyboard and turns off the touchpad to avoid any accidental movement of the cursor. There’s also a palm sensor that turns on the keyboard lighting—and turns off to save power when your hands move away for period of time. And even if wireless isn’t available where you’re working, you can plug an Ethernet cable into a jack on the power brick and a point-to-point Wi-Fi connection is automatically established. We even developed optional facial recognition software for the Envy. The machine actually recognizes your face! That’s magic.
TNBN: Is there magic in the Omen?
Mark: OMEN has some nice surprises as well, such as the interior lighting that turns on like in a refrigerator. You can choose from 16 million different colored lighting schemes for underneath the machine, as well as different animated behaviors. It’s like having your own little light show.
TNBN: Mark, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Hope we get to do this again soon.
Mark: You’re welcome. I’ll come back when we’ve got some new magic to share.
The Next Bench News: These days, the world seems to be all curves and soft forms. Yet, both the Envy and the Omen are square blocks and straight lines. Are you just trying to be different?
Mark Solomon: Voodoo is indifferent to trends, and by doing so has become a trendmaker in its space. But the new design language of Voodoo is more than just being different, it goes back to the brand tenets of what Voodoo is and how it fulfills the brand experience.
TNBN: What do you mean by basic design language?
Mark: All of Voodoo’s products share some common visual and experiential traits. Just like people in a family share certain characteristics—a chiseled jaw, a pointed nose—that are passed down from generation to generation.
TNBN: How do these traits manifest themselves in Voodoo’s products?
Mark: Being originally from HP, we had to study Voodoo of the past to ensure the new Voodoo was true to it’s roots. We discovered a couple of basic truths that are core elements that run throughout its products. First, alot of the products were square or geometric in form. So we decided to build on this family trait by updating and refining it. The result is that the Envy and the Omen share a monolithic form. They’re square blocks, with clean, straight lines and totally flat surfaces. Turn the Envy upside-down and it’s completely flat. There are no bump-outs or curves that you see in other notebooks. The same with the Omen. No extraneous shapes. It’s all business. We’ve taken the square block and made it very sexy.
TNBN: What’s the second basic truth you discovered about how Voodoo builds computers?
Mark: They use high quality materials. The new Envy and Omen take this to the next step by using what I call “performance materials.” For the Omen, we chose aircraft-quality aluminum. Not cast, but extruded. Not only is it lighter and stronger than steel or sheet metal, aluminum has really great thermal properties and dissipates heat more efficiently than other metals.
TNBN: What about the Envy, other than its square shape, it seems like an entirely different animal?
Mark: Vastly different, but also the same. It’s also made of a high-performance material: carbon fiber. A different material, but it shares some of aluminum’s characteristics: it’s ultra light and ultra strong. In order to create a notebook that’s just 0.70 inches thick, weighs less than 3.4 pounds and has a removable battery, there was no other way to do it. By using extruded aluminum and carbon fiber on these machines, it enabled us to design in higher performance—whether it’s super high-powered gaming on the Omen, or increased mobility on the Envy.
TNBN: The LCD screens on the Envy and the Omen are covered with a thick slab glass that goes from edge to edge. We’ve never seen this before.
Mark: It’s a subtle little design feature that emphasizes their clean flush lines. Also notice that the Envy and the Omen have LCD screens covered with a thick slab of glass that goes from edge to edge. It’s a subtle little feature, but it adds to their clean, flush lines.
TNBN: Beautiful. It accentuates the square, monolithic form you were talking about.
Mark: It’s very difficult to do and adds to the unmistakable quality of workmanship that goes into these machines. There are also exposed edges on other parts, as well. For instance, on the keyboard deck of the Envy. And on the Omen’s side panels. This effect only works when you’ve got tight engineering. Most manufacturers try to hide their exposed edges because it doesn’t look quite so sexy when you’re using sheet metal. But we wanted to show the quality and thickness of the materials we are using. The exposed edges also come into play in the personalization of the Envy and the Omen. They show the various layers of paint, wood and other materials that are and will be used to customize and personalize these machines.
TNBN: It’s almost like looking at the strata in a rock formation.
Mark: Exactly. Say a user has his Omen for four years and has applied different paints and surfaces to it during that time. He can see the entire history of his machine just by looking at the edges. You can go a little crazy with this, but you get the idea.
TNBN: Both machines also share a certain thin quality. Was this intentional?
Mark: Yes, we worked really hard to get both machines really thin. When you look at the Omen straight on, despite its mass, it’s thin. We didn’t use any trickery to accomplish this. In contrast, the HP Blackbird’s cantilevered design involves a little bit of optical illusion to hide its size. The only thing that might be construed as trickery in the Omen is the “hover” effect when viewing it from the side. But this actually serves an important function in the cooling of the interior components. This is also why we rotated the motherboard.
TNBN: Yes, we’ve been wondering why everything is turned around on the Omen. How did this novel idea come about?
Mark: Simple science… A proven scientific fact is that heat rises. We wanted to rotate the board 90 degrees to take full advantage of that concept. Why force heat through the front and back of the machine using energy-eating fans when you can accomplish the same thing using natural convection. Of course, we still have placed fans and liquid cooling in the Omen, but we are assisting the cooling process and, in theory, will have a quieter machine.
TNBN: Does anyone else do this on their machines?
Mark: Convection techniques have been employed, but, as far as I know, no one has rotated the motherboard on a large desktop. Another functional reason we wanted to rotate the board was to introduce a new user accessibility and cable management experience. When you rotate the board, all the connections are on top of the machine. You don’t have to turn the entire case around every time you want to connect something up. Or, if it’s under your desk, crawl under it and deal with a tangle of cables in the darkness. With the Omen, the all the connections are easily access just by lifting off the top panel. No tools are necessary.
TNBN: How does this accessibility theme play out on the Envy?
Mark: It’s more of a software solution. User accessibility is expressed with the Envy’s instant-on feature. You can access the Web, personal documents and media instantly, using Voodoo IOS, without waiting for the whole system to power up.
TNBN: Ahh…a little Voodoo magic.
Mark: [CHUCKLES] Arthur C. Clarke said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” From that perspective, there were a few things we wanted to do that added a “wow” factor to these computers. On the Envy, there’s a proximity sensor that recognizes when your fingers are on the keyboard and turns off the touchpad to avoid any accidental movement of the cursor. There’s also a palm sensor that turns on the keyboard lighting—and turns off to save power when your hands move away for period of time. And even if wireless isn’t available where you’re working, you can plug an Ethernet cable into a jack on the power brick and a point-to-point Wi-Fi connection is automatically established. We even developed optional facial recognition software for the Envy. The machine actually recognizes your face! That’s magic.
TNBN: Is there magic in the Omen?
Mark: OMEN has some nice surprises as well, such as the interior lighting that turns on like in a refrigerator. You can choose from 16 million different colored lighting schemes for underneath the machine, as well as different animated behaviors. It’s like having your own little light show.
TNBN: Mark, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Hope we get to do this again soon.
Mark: You’re welcome. I’ll come back when we’ve got some new magic to share.
