Zanussi is launching a new range of QUADRO® of built-in appliances which Zanusi says re-energizes and reaffirms the Zanussi design identity. In other words, Zanussi are back to doing some funky designs.
Zanussi (who are owned by Electrolux) says that the new QUADRO® range offers a simple geometric look with easy to use controls that look good and work beautifully. The refreshed Zanussi brand is bright, bold and provides a strong platform to continue our successful brand building activities. Simplifying the strong yellow Zanussi colour while underlining the logo with the colours of the Italian flag maximises consumer recognition and stand out in store.
The Zanussi QUADRO® range has been around, in name at least, since 1999 but obviously there have been many changes in that time. Over the years the designs have won international recognition with Good Design Award in 2000 and again in 2004. In 2004, the Compasso D’Oro was also awarded.
Unique design elements for the oven include a distinctive arched handle shape, black tinted glass doors with a dot pattern and amber LEDs and displays on many models. WE think it’s a clean look for the most part, from what we’ve seen but Zanussi are known to go a bit off the rails with design at times producing appliances that are completely different but this largely stopped when Electrolux bought the company, reigning in that Italian flair a little.
“Our work was inspired by the bestselling success story of the QUADRO® oven and built-in products range,” explains Roberto Barbieri, Senior Industrial Design Manager, who heads the Zanussi design team in Porcia, Italy. “For the design team, the challenge was to creatively translate the brand values of Zanussi personality into a visually consistent and coordinated range of products.”
Zanussi designs for people who want a flexible and low maintenance home with appliances that are effortless and simple to use, easy to maintain, functional and reliable. “We wanted to move away from the idea of the appliance as an industrial product and design something with our target consumer in mind,” Barbieri continues.
One of the new Zanussi built in ovens
“For the oven door, for example, we eliminated the stainless steel frame around the window to make the oven less industrial looking and to visually communicate the large oven cavity,” he says.
Barbieri explains that the reason for an arched shape for the oven door handle – one of the only two curved design features in the whole range – was to make it more emotional and friendly and less “Germanic.” (Or, “boring”)
“The hood design also uses an arched surface,” he continues. “That mirrors the oven handle shape, and the use of glass gives the hood an attractive, floating appearance. It’s affordable but at the same time stylish, unique and modern.”
“Our products do not promise super-specific functions to calibrate the perfect temperature or the perfect spin cycle,” Barbieri explains. “That’s because we are designing for people who are not perfectionists. They just want a reliable product that looks great and is easy to use.”
To make the controls easy to use and easy to read, the design team limited the number of programs made the graphics bigger and simplified the hierarchy in the menus. The team also made the knobs bigger, which will please a good many people that struggle with some of the more confusing elements in using modern appliances.
“What I hope we have achieved in the new design is a calibrated mix between easy to use, reliable products, and the original and modern Zanussi brand personality,” Barbieri says. “It should be a practical and expressive design, adaptable to the consumer’s life that becomes not a tool but partner in their daily life.”