Jacob Moesgaard - Co-Founder of AIAIAI

Monkee was lucky enough to sit down with Jacob from AIAIAI and ask him a couple questions. Check out how AIAIAI was started, where they're headed, what his advice to young designers is, and much, much more...

Where and when did the idea of AIAIAI come about?

 
Let me start by saying, I’m not a designer, neither are my partners with the exception of one (MIX), who is a graphic designer. Quite some time ago, Frederik and I – alongside our studies – were involved in a huge creative collective project called “ The A House”, in Copenhagen. It was this old industrial style building that was empty and waiting for some government clearance to become apartments.  We asked the owners (Walls A/S) if we could use the empty building while they were waiting for this clearance stuff and they said yes. We invited a bunch of creative minds into the house at a very cheap rate. We also had a club on the rooftop, where we met a lot of artists, musicians, designers and such, in fact that was where we met most of the creative minds that we work with today: Kilo, KiBiSi, Tartelet Records, HuskMitNavn etc. While facilitating this creative collective Christian (friend and now partner) asked if we wanted to get involved in this crazy project with headphones. He wanted to do headphones that had a different look and a somewhat different market strategy than the existing players in headphones. Knowing nothing about the technical parts of it, we said yes, thinking this was something we figure out by asking the right people to help us. Note that Denmark has a long and strong tradition in creating state-of-the-art sound.

 

So, there was initially four people on the team. Three of us were business students and the last one a graphic designer. A little further down the line we gained another partner, Thomas. Some would call him smart capital as he came in as an active investor. He is also an engineer, which has obviously widened our knowledge base a bit. Today we have a bunch of people working for us, some freelancers, and some employees. We have an office in Hong Kong and so on.  It’s been a fun journey. We started out quite cautious, because we wanted to get to know the market, and the production side of the business. And a lot of our marketing strategy also involved us staying smaller at the early stages. Moving slower also allowed us to do cool collabs and such, like the Sneaker Freaker one we did last year. Also, we’re still involved with every little detail of the business, we don’t have a lot of people making coffee for us, but it's still moving forward nicely, and we have a lot going on right now.

What types of projects are you working on?

 

 
We are working on loads of projects these days. The biggest one is the TMA-1 DJ Headphone project, which will be released in August. We’ve been developing it for about 2 years now together with our designers from KiBiSi and with a record label called Tartelet, whom we met at The A House, they are helping us with the functionality, features and sounds, etc. We are also working with music producer Jon Schumann. This team ends up making the project a lead-user driven development. On top of this team approach we’ve also partnered up with a range DJ’s to test the product and create feedback for improvements. In fact 30 of the best DJ’s in the world are forming this test team. We’ll be releasing the headphones in August and marking it with a big event in 10 big cities throughout the world. It’ll be quite massive.

In terms of the design of these headphones the main focus has been to develop a design that on one hand is icon of headphones and on the other hand works and looks like a tool for the user. The design approach has been to clean out as much as possible in the design and focus on exaggerating the details that are necessary to make the design work technically and visually. The design has a strong focus on cohesive relations between the different elements in the headphones. A relation that makes the design appear as a whole with the same DNA controlling every move in the design. No nonsense and straight up and with an understated branding only inside the brace, which means that no branding is seen on the headphone while wearing it. This underlines our focus on making a no-bullshit headphone focusing on the functionalities and a bold design.

What does aiaiai stand for?

 

 
Nothing really. But everything is iSomething, so that might have been an inspiration. We also later found out that Ai means love in Chinese, so it’s a pretty good brand name out there.
And think of it. We have hidden campaigns at quite a few large sport events. An example is the Tour De France, coming into the finish line the spectators scream AIAIAI ... And it even spells out like that on the cover of the newspapers.

Can you describe Aiaiai In three words?

 

Aiaiai is based on three values; playful, thorough and engaging.

What is AIAIAI Lab up to?

AIAIAI Lab is a place where we don’t have to think headphones. We can do whatever we want. As long as the idea is good, feasible and sounds fun to work on, we try to initiate it. So far we’ve ventured into quite a few projects that have nothing to do with our core business. Pop-up galleries, poster projects, tee shirt labels, music projects etc.

Do you have any advice for young designers?

 

I believe quite a few designers lack a business understanding and often times struggle getting their design out there. If you learn how to combine your creativity and artistic abilities with the business aspect, then you are well off making a living from your craft...

BIG Monkee love to Jacob over at AIAIAI. Stay tuned for more posts and updates on them soon!

Monkee was lucky enough to sit down with Jacob from AIAIAI and ask him a couple questions. Check out how AIAIAI was started, where they're headed, what his advice to young designers is, and much, much more...

Comments

[Toronto condo staging]

No nonsense and straight up and with an understated branding only inside the brace, which means that no branding is seen on the headphone while wearing it.