The Google Pixel 2 (left) and Pixel 2 XL. Wired

It's been hard to avoid the Pixel 2. Google's marketing machine has plastered it everywhere from pop-up digital adverts to expensive TV sports and giant posters. It even created a magazine to advertise the £629 phone.

The reason? Competition is tough. Never before have so many phones with the same basic design – a flat slab of glass – been vying for consumer cash. But, according to Google creative lead and industrial design manager Alberto Villarreal, this isn't a problem with phone design.


"If you look at the consumer electronics industries there is a lot of products that look very techie and that have very functional look," he said in an interview with WIRED Germany. In essence, he argues that phones and other gadgets should be designed to be enjoyed, not as an object that has to be used out of necessity.

For Google, Villarreal says, this has meant taking the step of introducing fabric to as many of its products as possible. In its latest raft of hardware, the Google Home has a fabric outer-shell and the Pixel phone can now come with a fabric case (although this is rather steep at £35). In mainstream tech design, one of the newest Amazon Echo voice assistants also has a fabric outer shell.

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"I think using fabric, when putting it in my pocket it feels more like something that is warm or organic maybe," Villarreal explains. "It just feels more approachable. We are also starting to use more of a tactile material identity as part of our design language."

These design decisions have in part come from the worlds of fashion. Google has opted for pastel colours that it claims are calming and blend in with other items. Whether this works or not is disputable.


Google is getting serious about hardware, but it won't win easily Google Google is getting serious about hardware, but it won't win easily

But, despite these aesthetic attempts from Google, a phone's screen is still crucial for everyday tasks. "If I would dream of what would be the perfect phone, probably I wouldn't put holes on the front," he says. "I think it is a designers dream, to have most of the experience being on the screen."

Villarreal says that for both of the Pixel phones – the first was released in 2016 – he tried to "remove everything that is distracting from it". There's no brand name on the front of the device, for instance. "Even the front-facing speakers - that are a great feature that people love - even those are treated very discretely."

Among the largest mobile brands, there's a clear move to make the screen cover as much of the front of the device as possible. Samsung's S8 and S8+ squeeze an improbable amount of screen into the case, while the iPhone X goes further still, albeit with niggling notch issues.


But for designers to achieve a completely seamless screen, the hardware needs to disappear within the phone itself. Before leaks revealing the details of the iPhone X, there was speculation its fingerprint-reading TouchID would be embedded under the screen (FaceID was included instead). Apple didn't achieve this but the first phone with biometric technology in the screen is due to be released at the end of this month. Vivo's X20 Plus UD is likely to be the first of a number of phones that hides away the fingerprint scanner.

"I think definitely as media consumption and the experience of the screen becomes the most important part of the experience, there is definitely an intention of maximising the aspect ratio and removing everything else that is outside," Villarreal says. "That why everything that is not a screen becomes very important."

WIRED Germany's Dominik Schönleben conducted the interview with Alberto Villarreal in Berlin