Imagine a product that never existed — a Braun domino set — and give it the full treatment it would have had: renders, posters and a short film, as if the campaign really ran.
Everything. Modelling, materials, lighting, composition, typography, layout and the animation pass.
A coherent set of key visuals in two lighting moods, plus a looping animation, all reading as one fictional brand campaign.
Blender, Photoshop, After Effects
Context
The idea
Braun’s design language is instantly recognisable: primary colours, honest materials, and a form that follows its function. What would a Braun domino set look like if Dieter Rams had designed it — and what would its advertising have looked like?
Why this project matters to my portfolio
This is a self-directed project with no client to please, which makes it a good test of taste. The brief was entirely mine: keep the restraint of the Braun aesthetic while adding a wink of humour, and make a set of images that could plausibly have been printed in 1965.
Constraints & Deliverables
Constraints
- Stay inside a strict Braun palette: red, blue, yellow, green, black, white.
- No decorative excess — every object on set has to earn its place.
- The fiction has to hold: consistent typography, consistent product, consistent light.
Deliverables
- Product renders of the lighter cube and the ashtrays
- Two poster layouts (daylight and low-light variants)
- An isometric set layout showing the full range
- A short looping animation
Pipeline & Process
Pre-production / Setup
I started from reference boards of Braun print advertising: the outlined display type, the small caption block at the bottom, the generous empty ground the objects are standing on. Those three decisions fixed the whole composition before a single polygon existed.
Modelling & Materials
- Blender
Approach
The parts are modelled as real, manufacturable objects rather than illustrations: moulded plastic bodies with rounded edges, pressed metal rims, a slight parting line. Materials are deliberately imperfect — fine scratches, dust, fingerprints — because a perfectly clean render reads as fake, which is the opposite of what a product photograph does.
Key technical decisions
- One master asset set, reused across every layout so the product never drifts.
- Procedural surface wear driven by a single noise field, so both moods share the same wear.
- Flame and ember as emissive geometry plus volumetrics, not a post-production overlay.
Lighting & Compositing
- Blender
- After Effects
Approach
Two lighting setups were built from the same scene: a soft studio daylight for the product-forward posters, and a low-key night setup where the flames carry the image. Typography and captions were composited afterwards so the layout could be iterated without re-rendering the 3D.
Visual Evidence & Process
Daylight and night variants of the same set — the same assets, two completely different moods.
