Smart power: Solar phone charger makes life a beach

Brazil – Beauty brand Nivea has run an interactive print advertisement that enables sunbathers to charge their smartphones from the beach.

Nivea Brazil is promoting its range of sun protection products through a tear-out magazine page fitted with a solar panel and charging dock to which beachgoers can connect their smartphone. A playful advertisement featuring bikini-clad revellers on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach depicts the product’s carefree ease: ‘With Nivea’s sun protection you don’t need to leave the beach for anything, not even to charge your phone.’

It took six months of development and two months of testing to produce a solar panel both slim enough and lightweight enough to be printed on a page. The ad ran in Veja Rio and other leading Brazilian magazines.

Designers are also harnessing organic power sources such as the wind, the sun and kinetic energy generated by human interaction. For more, see our Energy Scavenging design direction.