Estonian High End loudspeaker manufacturer, Estelon, have won a Red Dot design award. Red Dot’s product design award has been given out for over 60 years. This year the selection jury comprised of 40 independent designers, field lecturers and speciality journalists. Altogether over 5 500 works from 54 different countries were presented to the Red Dot’s 47 categories in 2017.

To quote Founder & President of Red Dot, Professor Dr. Peter Zec, in his message to Estelon, “On behalf of all Red Dot jurors, allow me to congratulate you sincerely on your success. Product Design stands more than ever for one of the most renowned evaluation processes for good design and innovation. You have every reason to be proud of your award as you came out on top in a comparison with the best in the industry.”

The Estelon Model YB speakers exemplifies ‘form follows function’ in every manner, being the key ideal of Founder & Chief Designer, Alfred Vassilkov’s philosophy. Alfred had been designing speakers for over 25 years for other companies before founding Estelon as a family business 6 years ago. He spent five years researching opportunities to achieve this ambition of making the world’s best speakers with the creation of Estelon. In his words, “All our speakers are about aesthetic and acoustic balance achieved by combining creativity and cutting-edge science. Each decision–  from engineering techniques to the materials and components used in the manufacturing process – is made with the perfect harmony of the speakers as a whole in mind. For me, this synergy is what I as an engineer strive for in my creations and I feel honoured that top experts, part of the Red Dot jury recognised our efforts by awarding Model YB ‘Red Dot Product Design 2017’. The entire team at Estelon is overwhelmed by this recognition.”

The cabinets are moulded from a specially developed ‘Estelon’ composite material which allows for modelling the ‘perfect shape for flawless sound’. The shape is also key in ensuring accurate positioning of the drivers used in the YBs. Thus, the mid-woofer is positioned above the beryllium tweeters to minimise sonic reflections from the floor, while the flowing contours of the cabinet make it wider at the bottom to stabilize the speaker and to provide sufficient volume for the aluminium cone bass driver. This design enables home-owners to place YBs closer to side walls in smaller spaces eliminating any resonances since the woofers are angled towards each other. The YBs are offered in a choice of white or black (gloss or matte) finishes. Estelon uses extremely durable and stable paints and lacquers from the automotive industry to achieve mirror-like surfaces. Layer by layer, hand polished and sanded – the painting process of YBs takes up to 4 weeks to be completed, by experienced craftsmen.