London is one of Europe’s pollution hotspots and it isn’t Britain’s only city with pollution challenges. Environmentalists who are clamouring for change need a way to measure the pollution that surrounds us. Then, with accurate metrics to hand, town planners will be able to model greener cities and health authorities can allocate spending on the basis of future need.

“We were immediately impressed by Bluefrog Design,” says Professor Roland Leigh, EarthSense technical director, who worked with Chris’s team on commercialising the sensor. “Bluefrog Design produced a series of industrial design concepts showing how the Zephyr® might look, which gave us confidence that a range of potential solutions had been considered. The experts understood the manufacturing process and what the instrument needed to deliver – and we enjoyed working with them, too.”“We were aware that while the Zephyr’s® initial specification was fixed, it might one day need to change,” Chris recalls. “So, we kept one eye on the future and developed a design that would be easy to repurpose, should it need to.”

Bluefrog Design’s solution is an extruded aluminium case with moulded caps enclosing the top and the bottom. Should EarthSense reconfigure the Zephyr®, the case can grow or shrink as required by adjusting the overall length of the extruded part – without the expense of retooling.

The finished design is clean, attractive and discreet, without entirely disappearing into its surroundings, which is intentional. Although EarthSense didn’t want to make the Zephyr® so obvious it might have attracted vandals, it was proud of what it had produced and wanted passers-by to take an interest. The result is a matt black case with blue highlights, which is stylish and exudes an air of confidence. Roland describes it as inspirational and believes that the finished product “shows that good design considerations have gone into it”