Airwave by Ledalite
Identity
WHERE
Ledalite, is a Phillips-owned company that creates ergonomic lighting products and technologies for commercial and institutional markets across North America, South America, Europe and Asia. A strong commitment to providing energy efficient lighting solutions led them to a new technology called Airwave: an innovative set of wireless and self-powered controls that use natural sources of energy including solar power and kinetic motion to wirelessly communicate with luminaires. We were asked to create the identity for Airwave.
IDEAS
Airwave is an amazing and brilliant invention. The switch looks like any other light switch, but does not need to be wired and no holes cut into the wall-just stick it on, literally anywhere. The motion of the switch getting rocked up or down generates just enough kinetic energy to power an RF modulator, sending a signal to the receiver located at the light fixture. There are other aspects to the technology such as ambient lighting sensors that add tremendous cost and environmental advantages.
Not marketed as a separate product, Airwave is positioned as an integrated technology feature in certain products, the first two being in the Float and Pique lines which launched globally in February 2009. Thus, the Airwave logo had to work alongside the logos of other technologies such as MesoOptics that Ledalite promotes and markets with their products. The challenge with Airwave was the uniqueness of the technology and the fact we had to do something that would stand on its own while also looking like a member of the ‘family’.
We achieved this by developing the creative alongside the existing logos, and making slight revisions to the older logos so that there is a platform for future additions. The Airwave logo is a combination of the intitials ‘a’ and ‘w”, with the ‘a’ doubling as the international symbol for ‘on’ and the ‘w’ represented by a wave-like graphic suggestive of the system’s wireless aspect. The wordmark is a custom typeface we developed. The green was chosen not only to reflect the obvious environmental benefits of the product, but to complement existing colour palettes.
WORK
Following completion of the identity, we worked closely with the Ledalite marketing team on the strategy, messaging and printed and online materials for the sales launch of the products. The central element for this being a 32 page brochure highlighting the new technology and offerings. In addition, we consulted on the creation of a video highlighting the technology. A unique aspect of the project was the creation of photo-realistic renderings of products and environments in place of traditional location scouting, photography and retouching. This enabled much more flexiblity to demonstrate the product in the desired settings and had the benefit of streamlining the production workflow
In terms of product lifecycle, Airwave has only just left the starting gate, however, by all intial feedback post global launch has been extremely positive. Airwave is a fresh, exciting and smart technology backed by an identity and materials that project exactly that.
