Seymourpowell has designed new products for kt's olleh range, and also delivered a comprehensive product identity across kt's entire olleh suite of 56 products.
As part of the brief, Seymourpowell was tasked with bringing consistency to kt's family of 56 product types - each managed, designed and manufactured separately by different internal business units. The products range from USB modems, connector cables, set top box's, remote controls, smart phones, satellite dishes, rack servers, digital signage, laptops, speakers, and point of sale terminals.
Seymourpowell created a single product identity, outlined in a set of innovative guidelines that ensure the family of olleh products remain on-brand. By translating the core product values of the brand, the product identity provides a consistency to the design of all olleh products.
Core to the brief was the development of kt's award-winning home networking devices, which consist of the internet modem, home hub and set top box. These products received a red dot award for design concept in the entertainment category, and are subsequently in the process of being developed for production. Key to their success was their subversion of common impersonal high tech devices. Through their natural design style and sophisticated form, the olleh products provide an emotional and sympathetic connection with the users and their lives.
Seymourpowell also designed the packaging associated with the home networking devices, which received the 'Best of the Best' red dot award for design concept in the productivity category. The packaging has been designed to minimise material use and encourage re-use. Once the packaging delivers the products safely to the home, it can be reused as a device to help manage the cables associated with kt's products by simply turning the packaging inside out. The product packaging is consistent with the identity of the products they contain as it uses simple, unobtrusive and sympathetic forms.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the new product identity, Seymourpowell designed 14 new products within the olleh range. These products tested the understanding and consistency of the product identity and include: a wifi phone, landline phone, tablet, remote control, wibro USB modem, security camera, power adaptor, connector cables, cable tidy, domestic 3g repeater, and public wifi modem.
The attributes of the olleh products were communicated in the olleh curve brochure, for which kt received the red dot award in communication design for editorial and corporate publishing. The brochure is a sleek visual depiction of how Seymourpowell and kt came to develop the concepts and product identity.
"The scale of kt's ambitions is really unprecedented. The project involved the creation of a product identity manual that allows their business units and design teams to create and manage the development of products with a consistent visual language and brand identity," commented Matthew Cockerill, Associate Design Director of Seymourpowell. "The work was a creative and technical challenge, to deliver an identity that could deliver aesthetically pleasing products across such a diverse portfolio of products whilst respecting their component constraints, ergonomic considerations and product category conventions.
Ultimately the success of the product identity will be judged by the products it helps define. In our work, we have created the first 14 of these products, delivering consumer technology that is appropriate for the consumer's home as well as the brand. The products aim to be sympathetic to their surroundings, blending in whilst simultaneously retaining individual character and identity."