Jonathan Adler Designs a Collection for Moto X Pure Edition and Shares His Holiday Gifting Tips

This holiday season, Motorola has something for every style lover on your list, including an all new Moto X Pure collection designed by the iconic Jonathan Adler. The limited-edition collection features three eye-catching, stylish phones that Jonathan felt captured the spirit of Moto Maker, our online phone design studio.

The collection will be available for pre-order at Motorola.com/JonathanAdler beginning November 24, and will officially go on sale December 3 for $474.99 (32GB). To help round out the rest of your shopping list, we asked Jonathan to share his top holiday gifting tips for the style-obsessed friends and family in your life.

------------

Hey Moto fans, it’s Jonathan Adler here! I’m excited to be collaborating with Motorola. Like them, when I approach design, I encourage self-expression and ignoring the “rules” - and, I’m obsessed with my phone. So, why not embrace more choice when it comes to phone design? We all deserve phones as stylish as we are.

I’m sure many of you are thinking about your holiday gifting, so here are my tips for selecting the perfect gift for the design lover in your life.

• Make it Personal: Give a gift that appeals to everyone's favorite person: themselves. Even the least vain person in your orbit won't say no to a cozy baby Alpaca throw with their initials on it. Soft, squishy and luxurious -– what could be better?
• Think Outside the Gift Box: One of the best gifts I give myself every year is a trip to Capri each summer. If you're gifting a trip, try to find a little something for the recipient to open in advance – our Jet Set candles are available in squillions of scents and locales and provide an olfactory preview of your trip.
• Be Unexpected: I think good gifts are any combination of the following: super thoughtful, super premium or super unique. I love the idea of taking something utilitarian that you use every day and jazzing it up – just like I did with my new designs for Moto X Pure Edition. If it's going to be in your hand 24/7, might as well make it chic and unique.
• Bow & Go: I strive to make products with packaging that's as beautiful as what's inside. Just bow and go; when you're not spending an eternity wrapping it, you’ll have more time to devour the hors d'oeuvres at a holiday party.
• Give Good Game: I love to give games, and not just because I'm a super competitive person. If the conversation ever starts to lag at a holiday party you can just whip out a game and vanquish your boring seat mate at a round of backgammon.

Happy shopping!

Jonathan Adler

Shop Moto X Pure Edition designed by Jonathan Adler.

Ashton Kutcher Explores How Far You’d Go for #PhoneLove

They say love makes you do crazy things -- particularly when it comes to your smartphone.

Think about all the instances when you’ve placed your phone’s needs before your own -- the times you’ve found yourself crawling on dirty floors looking for an outlet to charge from, jumping out of bed in the middle of the night because your phone rings or chimes, or sticking your hand in a toilet because it slipped out of your pocket at precisely the wrong time. We sleep with them, eat with them, even shower with them. And do we need to mention the heartbreak felt when they’re dead, lost or worse, shattered by an accidental drop?

#PhoneLove is the intense and many times irrational relationships people have with their smartphones.

This isn’t bad, it’s simply true. To prove it, Ashton Kutcher conducted a series of real-world social experiments to see what happens when people are forced to choose between themselves and their phones. The purpose of these experiments is simple: to prove that people care about their phones more than they realize, but those phones aren't always loving them back.

Check out people being put to the test to see just how long they can go without touching their phones in this first #PhoneLove experiment:

At Moto, we believe you deserve a better mobile relationship with your phone. One that is reciprocal and two way. Unobtrusive, yet intuitive. Supportive, but not co-dependent. Where all the care and devotion you show is returned.

We’ll continue to share Ashton’s #PhoneLove experiments in the coming weeks to test this theory further. In the meantime, we want to hear about your cases of #PhoneLove on social! For better or for worse.

Explore #PhoneLove.

Start Up with ‘Stitch’: The Making of Motorola’s New Bootanimation

At Motorola, we design our smartphones and smartwatches to not only look and work great, but also feel great to the touch. Whether it’s the choice of a real wood grain or genuine Horween leather backs available across our Moto X line, or the various sizes and watchbands designed to fit all types of wrists on our Moto 360s, we always strive to deliver a user experience that’s uniquely tangible.

So when it came time to develop a new startup animation -- the animated Motorola logo that appears on your display when you turn your phone on -- we approached renowned product designer Peter Crawley, best known for his “Stitched Illustrations,” in which he hand-pierces paper with a pin, and then stitches it with a needle and cotton thread, resulting in pieces of art that you can almost feel just by looking at them. This felt like a perfect match with our innovative design spirit at Motorola.

“I knew from the start that I wanted the finished piece to have a real tactile feel to it -- for the customer to be able to see the texture and natural qualities of the paper and thread,” Crawley explains. “We played a lot with the existing Motorola color palettes, but felt that the blues and yellow used would not only work best with the screens but also really highlight the textures of the natural materials. The paper stock is sourced from a traditional English paper mill and is usually used for watercolor paintings, but it had such a great texture that is acts as a rich canvas for my work, too.”

So how does a primarily visual artist make the jump into digital animation? Check out the video below to get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of our new “Stitch” boot-up.

“It was the first time I had worked on an animation of this type, but the animation team was very experienced in this space and did a fantastic job in pulling together the concept and making the final piece exactly what we envisaged,” adds Crawley. “Seeing my work come to life in this way is really rewarding, but knowing it will be in people's hands all over the world is absolutely amazing.”

Look for "Stitch" on your Motorola device soon. For details on when upgrades will be coming to you, please refer to our software upgrade page for the latest and specifics by country, or follow G+ posts of our release announcements.​

Today, it's starting to roll out on the retail 2015 Moto X Style (3rd Gen) in both Brazil and India, and on the retail 2014 Moto X (2nd Gen) in Brazil retail.

Moodle
Hand stitched Illustration: Peter Crawley
Director: Lewis Kyle White
Creative Director: Chris Claire - Motorola
Animator Hands: Cadi Catlow
DOP: Phil Sills
Producer: Juliette S Dalton
Runner: Lou Marcellin
Studio assistant: Ian Stuart
Production: 2diceproductionz
----------
Making of
Film, Directed, DOP, Produced and Edit: Juliette S Dalton - 2diceproductionz
Making of Music: Dan Truen
--------
Stills
Juliette S Dalton - 2diceproductionz

Motorolans Give Back to Chicago

Motorolans are dedicated to solving problems that improve people’s lives, whether it’s through the mobile devices we create or through giving back to the communities where we live and work. In that spirit, today 300 Motorolans are giving back to the community through Motoserve, our annual day of service at Motorola Mobility’s global headquarters in Chicago.

The Motorola Mobility Foundation -- Motorola’s charitable and philanthropic arm -- has partnered with Chicago Cares for the second year in a row to try to make a difference in some of the city’s under-resourced neighborhoods through hands-on service. Motorolans are providing lunch to needy senior citizens, beautifying schools and community spaces with murals and fresh paint, and acknowledging the service and sacrifice of our nation’s veterans with transition and aid kits.

We’re proud that Motorolans are providing their time and talent in the community today. Some of the specific ways that our volunteer teams are making a difference are:

• Humboldt Park - Casa Central: Hosting a Kids Olympics, organizing a Casino Day and adding a fresh coat of paint to the Auditorium, a room that is in use nearly every day of the year.
• Back of the Yards - Hedges Elementary: Creating colorful mosaics, painting classrooms, and constructing bookcases in an effort to beautify the school for students and staff.
• Near West Side - Hope Institute: Giving the school a fresh look by painting the cafeteria and creating four colorful murals throughout the hallways.
• Bronzeville - Lincoln Perry Apartments: Spending quality time with senior residents while cooking and serving a meal, playing Bingo and making fleece blankets.
• Merchandise Mart - Motorola Mobility: Assembling 350 Welcome Home Kits for Veterans and Active Service Members to thank them for their service and help them set-up their new homes. Collecting, sorting and packaging close to 1500 hats and gloves that will keep Chicago's children, adults and seniors warm this winter.

Today’s activities are part of a year-round series of volunteer programs offered by the Motorola Mobility Foundation to Motorola’s employees. The Foundation’s mission is to catalyze the innovative use of technology to improve lives and communities. It does this by leveraging employee expertise and talent, providing funding, and partnering with nonprofits, learning institutions, startups, government, corporate and civic organizations.

Click here to learn more about the Motorola Mobility Foundation.

Moto Shop: Chicagoans get an Experiential Retail Shop this Holiday Season

Smartphones and wearables are the most personal accessories we own, and we want to make the shopping experience for Moto devices equally personal.

That’s why we’re introducing Moto Shop: the first-ever Motorola experiential boutique in the heart of downtown Chicago -- our hometown. We’ll open on Saturday, November 7, just in time for your holiday shopping.

Looking at products online can be fun, but nothing compares to experiencing them in person, especially when it comes to your smartphone or smartwatch. But don’t expect phones on display outlining technical specs -- Moto Shop is a hands-on, interactive environment with dedicated areas that bring to life our marquee products and device features.

Here’s a peek at what you can expect when Moto Shop opens:

We’re transforming Moto Maker from an online design studio to a mini workshop where you can get hands-on with genuine leathers, real woods and a broad-ranging color palette to build a custom Moto X Pure Edition. The possibilities are (almost) endless.

The Moto 360 boutique offers personalized smartwatch shopping. Nearly all the Moto Maker customization options are on display, so you can try them on and build a watch that reflects your unique style.

Get photographed on our Moto Shoot set with the Moto X Pure Edition’s top-rated 21 megapixel camera. You’ll never want to use another camera again.

And finally, we couldn’t build Moto Shop without letting shoppers put the world’s first shatterproof phone to the test in the Drop Zone. See Moto ShatterShield in action as the Droid Turbo 2 plummets from your hands onto slabs of concrete, ceramic and tile and never worry about dropping your phone again.

Come meet us in person on opening day, November 7, or for our grand opening celebration on November 14. We’d love to help you cross a few items off of your holiday gift list. Moto Shop is located at 108 N. State St. (Suite 140 at Block 37) and will be open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Learn more about the Moto Shop.