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Samsung partnered with French designers to create the most beautiful TV we've ever seen

Drake Baer

2015-09-25T13:29:30Z

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While no longer hulking, tube-laden beasts, even the thinnest television aren't what you'd consider to be high-end furniture — they're impressively technical machines, not beautiful design objects.

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But what if a TV could be as elegant as a classy table or a chair?

That's the motivation behind the Serif, a new TV resulting from a partnership between Samsung and the French design studio ran by the brothers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, and will be available in Europe in November.

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The Bouroullec brothers tell Tech Insider that the project started with wanting to move away from the "ultra-thin screen on a base" style that dominates high-end TVs.

Flat Screen TVs

The ultra-thin style reduced weight and volume. But the TVs themselves became more and more coolly technical, and they don't quite fit with the warm qualities of many homes.

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The Serif, they say, "breaks the expected lines of the recent evolution in the world of TVs."

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Rather than standing apart from it, the Bouroullecs say the Serif "belongs to the domestic environment."

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The Serif is defined by the frame that outlines the screen. Looking at it from the front, you see the screen itself. From the side, there's an iconic "I" style form, with "shelves" at the top and bottom.

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"We took attention to the design from every point of view, so you can turn around and manipulate it like you would do with any other object," the Bouroullecs say.

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After many prototypes, the designers knew they wanted something unified. "The idea was not to be constrain ted to a single material or a single shape," they say, "but the challenge was that every detail and element composing the TV had to fuse harmoniously with the rest."

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The colors are an ivory white, a midnight blue, and a cardinal red. "Our color choice is more an issue of matching with the place where the TV would land, by fitting white into a white atmosphere or on the opposite by bringing red or dark blue as a contrast."

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They wanted the TV to "settle naturally" into a space, like a piece of furniture. "We studied both, the object and the interaction with the space around it, like a typographer does for a letter." they say.

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The Serif can be placed just about anywhere, on furniture or standing on its own legs. "Moreover, we feel that we have deployed shapes and colors that are breaking from the usual theme of masculine, cutting edge technology and extra-large size," they say. "Our TV is more subtle, it doesn’t exude power. Serif is made to fit in the world we live in."

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