A zen state of shaving

Mindfulness has been one of the buzzwords of the last year and a half. As we spent more time with ourselves, we clasped at books, apps, and Netflix specials that reminded us how to reconnect with ourselves and better our minds and bodies. The key to mindfulness is meditation, but it goes beyond deep breathing exercises and mantras; it should also be carried into everything we do, making sure we operate in the moment and relieve our stresses. In “The Miracle of Mindfulness” by Thich Nhat Hanh the Buddist Monk teaches how to reach mindfulness in your daily routine activities like making tea or doing the dishes. Use these moments of pause to practice meditation. If you cannot practice these activities in mindfulness, he says, then meditation in silence will also be unreachable. The link between design and mindfulness should be inherent. If we are fighting against it to perform our daily routines, there is no room to carry out our daily tasks calmly and with pleasure. From Rams and Jobs to the Japanese folk-craft pioneer Soetsu Yanagi good design has always been about making products that can be used with ease and designed with a zen notion. The latest of these comes from Gillette’s creation lab, GilletteLabs. Their Heated Razor puts innovation and design to the forefront bringing a revolutionary new feeling to the daily shave. Through its innovative warming bar, the razor delivers instant and soothing warmth to the skin at the push of a button. From its ergonomics to the elegant charging pad, each part of the razor is designed to make your shaving experience a more mindful experience. As we all look deeper into our purchasing decisions and how we take care of ourselves in general, our self-care routines have taken an upturn for the better, and all this falls into the basic package of mindfulness. With more self-care and better design, our lives get easier, and more time can be spent upping our wellness and going forward into the day calmly. With this in mind, we tasked design studio Traum Inc to interpret GilletteLabs Heated Razor taking into account 3 main areas - Design, Wellness and Human. Working out of East London, digital creative studio Traum Inc’s manifesto is to create “New images for a new world using new tools for new machines.” Their work for clients, vastly ranging from Cartier and Channel to the Design Museum and MTV transports you to another realm that soothes the mind and the eye taking you away from the usual daily strains of the screen. On their work, founder Thomas Traum says, “I think few realize the power of images. To me, creating images for a future is linked to the probability of this future. Images inform culture in a very direct way. Speculative images are like tiny startups wishing a possible future into existence, allowing others to imagine the future you want. We are so obsessed with images we created our own platform to automatically harvest them, https://anything.io/product. You need good inputs for good outputs.” Images and videos have been digitally altered and are shown for illustration purposes only.