Italian lighting manufacturer Axolight hired Teikna Design to complete a total rebrand to be unveiled during the 2017 Milan Design Week. This work, which included a logo redesign, strategic repositioning, photo art direction, the website and catalogs, was driven by the idea that Axolight should no longer primarily target reps and dealers but rather appeal to specifiers and the design community. Previously, Axolight was perceived more as a product than a design-oriented brand—despite the company’s proven commitment to innovative design solutions and technology. This significant shift in focus required a radically different visual language, which was inspired by midcentury-modern style: basic geometric forms, vibrant colors, the font Futura and the strong, impactful use of graphic patterns.
The work on the catalog started in January 2017, with a deadline of March, in time for Milan Design Week 2017, which had a focus on lighting, says Claudia Neri, Teikna’s principal and design director. That was a tight schedule for producing 250-plus pages featuring more than 100 products. “Moreover, quite a few new products were still in the prototyping stage as we were at work on the layout of the catalog,” Neri says. “This resulted in a kind of double-sided pressure: On the one hand, the printers needed to have our files ASAP; on the other, the engineers were still testing products and kept changing the specs, inevitably delaying our work.”
Teikna’s brand repositioning work was barely finalized when it was put to the test on the catalog. Any critical issue was tested live on the project. “We had to keep rewriting some of our own rules,” Neri says. “Overall, it was a fantastic opportunity to test the strength of the brand system we had devised.”
The day the catalog was shipped, Teikna received a phone call from Axolight CEO Roberto Vivian telling the team how incredibly pleased he was, as the new catalog channeled his vision for a radical change of the brand. Axolight’s existing clients and partners were also positively surprised, and everyone agreed it was a quantum leap forward, Neri says. And it didn’t go unnoticed that upgrading the design and overall image hadn’t happened at the expense of practicality and usability.
Title Axolight Bespoke Design Catalog | Design Firm Teikna Design, Milan; www.teikna.com | Creative Team Claudia Neri, art director/designer/copywriter; Elisa Stagnoli, design assistant | Printer Grafiche Antiga | Client Axolight
very good
Wonderful!
Different type of lighting which are looks really nice and it is very creative work. Really nice ideas included in here for different type of ray of light.