A new Leica speaker
Master Industrial Design Engineering 2022
This project was done within the course Graphic Language of Products. The goal of this project is to analyze a brand and its language and then use the results of that analysis to create a new product that suits the brand, even though they do not sell those types of products. For this project, our group was assigned to analyze the brand Leica, which is famous for its cameras. After this analysis, we got challenged to create a new speaker design that would fit their brand.
We first started by analyzing the brand. For this, a brand timeline, a logo timeline, product collages, a product portfolio, an identity prism, and a strategy analysis were created. Then we investigated the way they advertise. We reviewed their design elements and their competitors and constructed a style DFA and a competitor DFA. After this, we did a graphical exploration to verify our findings on the design elements. Finally, we conducted interviews. From all this data a translation prism was created, and the visualization of the core values was thought out.
Brand timeline
Brand timeline
Product portfolio
Identity prism
Style DFA
Competitor DFA
Interview results
Translation prism
Value visualization
Now that we had a fundamental understanding of the brand and its visual language, we decided to conduct some research into speaker design. For this, a speaker benchmark was used. In this benchmark, speakers of various brands were compared based on their price, their modern/classic looks, their exclusiveness, their simplicity, and their consistency.
While doing all this research we found that Leica has breached out and has created a product other than cameras and lenses. They have created their own phone, the Leitz Phone 1. This case was a perfect example of how they approached implementing their brand identity into a new product. Therefore, we studied this case carefully. However, we did decide to not let this case be leading in our design process.
Graphical product language exists in multiple dimensions. There are the 2D elements, the 3D elements, and the 2.5D elements. In this project, we were advised to first implement our findings while creating a 2D design and a 3D design separately. In the end, to create a new 2.5D design, these 2D and 3D designs would be merged.
For the 2D design, we got a basic 3D speaker design to use as a base. The goal was to create a speaker with the Leica identity from this base. After several rounds of ideation, the final 2D design was created. From this, the design elements were applied to our physical base.
For the 3D design, we looked at the classic shapes that Leica has used for its cameras and classic speaker shapes. We thus took a camera-to-speaker approach and a speaker-to-speaker approach. For the final 3D design, the results of both approaches were used.
As mentioned before, the 2.5D design was constructed from the 2D design and the 3D design.
2.5D design details and visualizations
To evaluate the final design, we analyzed if the values set after the analysis phase were achieved in our design. To help with this, we interviewed people to get a more objective look at the created design. From this evaluation, we found that the value of exclusiveness could be better represented. Furthermore, the link to vintage and photography was not made as much as desirable. The results also show that the accessibility of this design needs more evaluation.
This project was done in cooperation with; Floor Stefess, Merijn Kendziorra
This project was done as an educational project for the University of Twente, there is no official connection to the company of Leica, all their rights are reserved to them.