Unilin
Panels

On the second occasion, the playing field for King George’s creative thinkers was a little wider. No less than 600 m2 was available to them to shape their imaginative interpretation of Unilin Panels. An opportunity to impress that the team did not pass up: they continued to build on the idea of surprising applications of sheet material, but this time larger than life. Inspired by the many marble designs in the new 2019 collection, the concept of a true art deco villa was born. An artistic movement that celebrated Unilin Panels’ roots with its rich Belgian history. The temporary ‘Villa Empain’ was covered from head to toe in panels: floor, ceiling, bar furniture, doorknobs, pylons, lamp stands, etc.

In addition to the creative concept, the stand’s presence at the fair was also exploited to the maximum. Because when everything looked deserted overnight, King George’s content team went into action. With precision, they visualised every detail of the stand, not only to provide content for blog and social media posts, but also to allow virtual visitors at home to enjoy all the stand’s amazing subtleties. Think stained glass that is basically black panel material with silver inlays and delicate waffle patterns from gold metallic panel material. Enough sophisticated details to fuel months of (online) content.

The past corona years have turned our lives upside down. The same goes for business. To respond to hybrid and smaller-scale initiatives instead of XL exhibitions, the royal brain came up with a mobile exhibition stand: the Trendshooter. A 1980 shooting booth was bought and converted from A to Z to King George’s design into a colourful and attractive trailer that playfully highlights Unilin Panels’ leading trends anywhere in Europe. The visitor ‘throws’ a trend into the Trendshooter and then gets to see it highlighted and musically supported, while in the meantime a picture of the shooter is drawn causing data capture – important for sales.

In addition to the idea and design of the Trendshooter itself, King George also took care of the selection and development of the 6 master trends, the design of all visuals accompanying the Trendshooter, the conceptualisation and writing of the trends, and the copy and development of the accompanying website. An all-round approach for King George with an all-round-profit for Unilin Panels, because with the cost of just 1 exhibition stand, it can now literally tour Europe. The playful and informal Trendshooter bridges language and national borders and was launched at Salone Del Mobile in June 2022. It is currently travelling around Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK.

To draw attention to the collection, King George was asked to conceive and elaborate a visual campaign. As a kind of sympathetic parody, the choice was made to do the typical photo shoots of international designer furniture brands. Rather than working purely graphically, King unleashed the talent from the interior design cell on a maquette. The result is a sleek design that does the opposite of what a classic visual campaign would achieve: instead of depicting the sheet material far away and thus losing the details of the designs, they were now magnified to 1/5 scale through application in the maquette. This created a very distinct character of the featured materials and the overall campaign image.

King Georges graphics department went to work with the photos from the maquette, creating a catchy overall image and a host of corporate derivatives such as e-mail signatures, communication carriers and, of course, visuals for the Unilin Panels website.