Nothing lets its fans design a phone

A phone designed outside the company

On 30 October 2024, Nothing presents the Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition, a version of its mid-range phone whose finish, wallpapers, packaging and launch campaign come from members of its community.¹ The company calls it its "first major pilot to co-create hardware, software, and content with its community".¹ Underneath, it is the existing Phone (2a) Plus.² What changes is everything the customer sees and is told about it.

The project starts in March 2024. Nothing invites entries in four stages over six months: hardware design from 26 March, wallpapers in May, packaging in June and a marketing proposal in July.³ Each winner then works with the relevant team in London, the hardware winner with the industrial design team, the marketing winner with Brand & Creative.³ Carl Pei frames the idea broadly: "We believe in a future where the boundaries of what a company is and what the community is, will be erased."³ He calls it "a design and marketing co-creation project that I think will attract a lot of new creative minds", and suggests that the community might one day contribute code to Nothing OS or help create other products.³ Nothing itself presents the project as a "first-of-its-kind co-creation initiative".³

Four briefs, five winners

The call draws 900 entries from 47 countries.¹ Astrid Vanhuyse and Kenta Akasaki win the hardware stage with a concept inspired by fireflies, developed with Nothing's design director Adam Bates into a glow that needs daylight rather than electricity.⁴ The back of the phone carries a green-tinted phosphorescent finish that charges in light and glows for hours in the dark, while the Glyph light bars and the familiar rear layout remain.^{5, 6}

Andrés Mateos designs the wallpapers, expanding a planned set of four to six with the help of AI tools, under the name Connected Collection.⁵ Ian Henry Simmonds designs the packaging around a concept called Less is More, a super-macro crop of the phone with reflective and glow-in-the-dark elements, made as a box to keep.^{5, 6} Sonya Palma develops the marketing campaign, with films and digital assets, under the line "Find your light. Capture your light".^1, 

Handing over the brand's voice

The choice of categories carries the weight. Hardware finishes and wallpapers are familiar territory for fan contests. Packaging and marketing are not: they are where a company usually speaks in its own voice, and here an outsider writes the launch line. Nothing keeps editorial control, since every winner works inside its teams in London, but it lets the community supply the ideas those teams then execute.³

The result remains recognisably Nothing. The glow extends the brand's interest in light on the back of a phone, which the Glyph Interface established, and the finish varies colour and material rather than form. Co-creation works here because the brand's codes are clear enough for outsiders to work with. Fans do not invent a new identity; they show how far the existing one can be stretched and still be read as Nothing.

A small run with a wide reach

Nothing makes 1,000 units.² They cost 399 pounds, go on sale on 12 November, and the store in London stocks them from 16 November.¹ The run sells out in 15 minutes and later wins a Gold iF Design Award.⁷ Commercially, the volume is small. Its value lies in the story it allows: a phone whose campaign line was written by someone who, months earlier, was a member of the audience.

The format also gives the community Pei keeps addressing a visible role. The winners are hosted in London for the launch, and each of them can point to a part of a product on sale.³ The brand's claim to be built with its community gains evidence that can be held in the hand, and every buyer of the edition owns a piece of that claim.

A second edition in 2025

In March 2025, Nothing repeats the project for the Phone (3a), now with a cash prize of 1,000 pounds and four briefs: hardware, an accessory, software design and a marketing campaign.⁷ The result, presented on 9 December 2025, draws on more than 700 submissions.⁸ Emre Kayganacl designs the hardware, inspired by the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ambrogio Tacconi and Louis Aymond a box of dice set in Nothing's Ndot 55 typeface, Jad Zock the lock screen clock and wallpaper, and Sushruta Sarkar the campaign.⁸ Again, 1,000 units are made.⁸

What begins as a pilot becomes a recurring format, and the second brief widens what fans may touch, adding an object that ships in the box and treating software as a design field in its own right. With it, Nothing turns a share of its brand expression into a standing invitation, and makes participation itself part of what the brand stands for.