From a logo to a brand system

Brand guidelines system | Tagline & messaging framework | 350+ SKU packaging designs | Product + lifestyle photography | Art direction | Advertising & tradeshow graphics | Video production | Website Redevelopment

Challenge:

When I took over the brand in 2011, it had an established logo and a general color scheme, but not much else. No brand guidelines, no consistent design language, and no shared idea of what the brand stood for. The brand itself had 125 years of history behind it, beginning in Germany as a maker of turntables and growing into a wide range of consumer electronics for the car, home, boat, and plane. Each of those categories was acting as its own visual world.

Approach:

For 14 years I oversaw and guided the brand's visual direction and messaging through packaging, web design, advertising, video production, photography, and copywriting. The first job was figuring out what the brand stood for and how to communicate that visually to the consumer. The tagline 'Sound Travels' came out of that work. It anchored the brand's audio heritage, spoke to the mobility its products are built around, and worked as well on a boat stereo as on a dash receiver.

This was work that did not have a clear end point. The system had to support a continuous cycle of packaging redesigns for different product lines and sales floors, photography, advertising and tradeshow graphics, video production, and website updates.

Outcome:

The brand expanded across product categories, each expansion supported by a consistent visual system. The packaging work in particular (350+ SKUs in 20,000+ retail locations) made the products recognizable on shelf. Maintaining quality and accuracy over that many touchpoints with a small team was an enormous challenge, and it only worked because the system kept improving.