Award of Merit:

Blackmagic Design for Blackmagic ATEM Mini Extreme

For 35 years, Blackmagic Design has created the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, live production switchers and real-time film scanners for the feature film, post-production and television broadcast industries. Their products have been used to produce a multitude of feature films including Rocketman, Deadpool, Jurassic World, and major television shows including Ozark, Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory. 

In 2016, with over 150 international design awards to their credit, Blackmagic Design became the first Australian company to be recognised as Red Dot: Design Team of the Year, joining the likes of Apple, Porsche, Bosch and Ferrari with an honour widely acknowledged as the most prestigious design award in the world. More recently, they were honoured with the 2021 Good Design Team of the Year by Good Design Australia. 

Ethos
Blackmagic Design is dedicated to making the highest quality video technology affordable to everyone. Their products combine a user focus and innovative technology with a design-led ethos that resonates with professionals and consumers alike. 

Design is integrated throughout Blackmagic’s entire development cycle, leveraged at every stage of the creation process, collaboratively and fluidly across disciplines to deliver more carefully considered final solutions. Hardware and software are developed in unison, informing each other in a dynamic fashion to create consistent, memorable experiences across a wide range of categories. This process has enabled them to drive product cycles with far greater speed, flexibility and efficiency than many other brands in the space. 

A User-centric Approach
Blackmagic products are made for a highly technical industry, with professional customers that demand high levels of performance, reliability and value. Not only are they well designed, of great quality and durability, they specifically cater to the user’s workflow. To achieve this, much time is spent studying the way users work and the environments they operate in. 

Design DNA
Blackmagic products cover many different segments of the video production industry, designed for a multitude of functions, users and contexts. Rather than attempting to create a singular visual narrative, products are instead united through their inherent qualities, reflecting the brand through physical traits like materials, finishes and internal structures, along with key touch points like latches, buttons and connections. 

The ID Team
The Blackmagic industrial design team is made up of diversely skilled, like-minded people, each with a common empathy for aspects of the process outside of their core strength. Understanding how design decisions affect engineering, manufacturing and even quality control at an early stage is incredibly important in ensuring products are not only delivered at an appropriate price point, but that they exceed the expectations of the end-user with each and every interaction with the product.

About the Project

ATEM Mini Extreme is an ultra-compact eight input live production switcher, designed specifically for professional live streaming of large productions and events on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Costing just $1285 it has proven a vital tool for broadcasters, educators and businesses adapting to life in the wake of COVID-19. 

Challenge
Typically designed for mainstream broadcasters, live production chains consisting of separate rack-mounted switcher ‘processing-brain’ and ‘control panel’ are large, complex and expensive. Often costing in excess of $20,000, they are virtually inaccessible to all but the most well-resourced facilities. The original ATEM Mini represented a highly affordable, portable and professional alternative. But with COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing forcing people to seek more innovative ways of engaging remote audiences, it soon became clear that a more powerful option, capable of enhancing the production values of larger multi-camera broadcasts, was required. 

Solution
For a fraction of the cost of traditional switchers at $1285, the purposeful design of ATEM Mini Extreme belies its powerful nature. Combining a fully-featured broadcast switcher ‘processing brain’ and ‘control panel’ in an ultracompact, lightweight enclosure, it can be used almost anywhere, allowing real-time control of up to eight HDMI video sources. Four upstream chroma keyers allows layering of camera footage over rendered backgrounds, enabling users to create professional, immersive virtual sets regardless of the location of the presenter. 

Innovation
The ATEM Mini Extreme is the world’s smallest and most affordable eight input switcher, able to be used discretely by a single presenter. This was achieved through a careful rationalisation of core functions, materials and manufacturing processes. 

Traditional switcher buttons, which are tall and mechanically complex, were replaced by low-profile silicone keypads, fine-tuned to emulate the high-end responsiveness of more expensive systems. This reduced costs significantly and enabled the lowest possible profile without compromising performance or durability. 

Impact
The impact of ATEM Mini Extreme is demonstrated in its integration into innovative productions like KulturMachtPotsdam, a 12 hour, multi-location digital cultural festival in Potsdam, Germany. 

Robert Klix, of live video specialist Wir Streamen, was responsible for facilitating a non-stop YouTube broadcast of the festival, designed to support artists and professionals involved in a Potsdam cultural scene brought to a standstill by the pandemic. 

“We needed a flexible but robust live production hub able to handle multiple content streams without taking up valuable performance space. ATEM Mini Extreme was so impressive, it really was the heart of the production desk.”

Category: Use

Designers and Projet Team:
Blackmagic Industrial Design Team, led by Simon Kidd