Rotolight — Brand, Web & Magic Eye

📣 Context

Rotolight was a young British lighting company when I joined, about to move to Pinewood Studios and launch a product that would put it in front of professional film crews: the Anova LED flood light.

The brand had to work for two audiences at once (photographers who knew Rotolight's ring lights, and cinematographers who had never heard of it) across print, web, trade shows and, for the first time, an app that controlled the lights themselves.

🏆 Outcomes

🥋 My Role

I was brand manager, designer and developer in one. I owned the visual identity and the marketing direction, with the marketing team running the campaigns, and everything the brand touched: print ads, magazine pages, brochures, product sheets, outdoor and trade-show material. I designed and built the website and the digital experience around each product.

I led the design of Magic Eye and designed its interface myself, and coordinated partners and assets from concept to launch. Across the group, I also designed and built the online shops of the sister brands, the launch mini-sites and the event material.

🧭 Key Decisions

• One brand for two audiences. Photographers already knew the name; cinematographers had never heard of it. The identity had to carry the credibility of an established professional brand for both, from brochures and product sheets to the website.
• One story for the Anova launch. The same story ran across the website, print and trade shows, including Greg Gorman's portrait of Andy Garcia for Cigar Aficionado, lit by the Anova.
• Treat every touchpoint as one system. The brochure, the trade-show stand, the website and the app were designed as one system, not as separate jobs.
• An interface as solid as the light. Magic Eye was designed with the hardware and the brand, so the app felt as professional as the light it controlled.

📑 Magic Eye

The Anova was among the first professional lights that could be controlled entirely over WiFi, and Magic Eye was the brain behind it. From an iPhone or iPad, a crew could control up to 128 lights, build scenes, store and recall them, and sequence them into transitions.

Its most striking feature used the phone's camera to read the light on location and send it to the lights on set, so a studio could match conditions shot somewhere else.

The Anova 2 with Magic Eye received a Special Award at Cinec 2012 in Munich, the Anova won the BKSTS Technical & Scientific Achievement award in 2013, and the Magic Eye upgrade won the Cinegear 2013 Technical Award in Los Angeles. The Anova line went on to win more than ten international awards, and Rotolight lights were used on productions such as Skyfall, Captain Phillips, Maleficent, EastEnders and Coronation Street.

📌 Across the Group

• Appleworld Distribution, the parent company, also ran Planet Audio Systems, Planet Video Systems and Mac Universe.
• Online shops for the pro-audio, pro-video and Mac audiences, with their own graphics and marketing material.
• Mini-sites for product launches and events whenever new brands entered the UK market through the group.

🧠 Takeaways

• A small brand earns trust by being consistent everywhere. Treating every touchpoint as one system did more for Rotolight's credibility than any single campaign.
• Hardware, software and brand are one product. The interface had to feel as solid and professional as the light it controlled.