The Nest rewires Ryness branding

The Nest has overhauled Ryness’s retail interiors, branding and communications, ahead of the London-based lighting and electrical goods chain’s plans to treble its retail estate.

The revamped look, revealed at a new-build Fulham outlet on Saturday, will ultimately roll out across ’90 percent’ of the retailer’s 13 other sites, according to Ryness chief executive Andrew Lindsay. It also looks set to be taken through up to 20 additional stores, which are planned to launch over the next two years (DW 15 July).

Lindsay briefed The Nest to design an identity and interiors that would improve customer navigation and communications. ‘We didn’t feel we were explaining to customers what we were doing and the services we were providing,’ he explains.

The challenge was to create a ‘truly practical’ concept that would meet customers’ needs at ‘the lowest cost base’, consultancy creative director Bill Cumming says.

‘Ryness is very specifically an urban electrical store found in residential and work areas. [The old design] is very busy, in terms of the amount of stuff that’s in there. Part of our job was to unravel that and make it easier for new customers to shop, while retaining existing customers,’ he says.

Other key considerations were modernising the brand in the face of stiff competition from out-of-town superstores and keeping the fit-out – to be executed by Ryness – simple and economical.

Redesigned stores will be ‘laid out as a catalogue, with every shelf and bay referenced’, according to Cumming. Black, white and red graphics boast simplified iconography, and ‘industrial, yellow, jigsaw flooring’ is ‘quick to lay and easy to maintain’, he adds.

Ryness’s refreshed identity, which features an illustration of a plug, clearly identifies the chain’s ‘core competence’.

The Nest beat three other groups to the work following a credentials pitch in May. Cumming, art director James Skinner and senior designer Andy Smith were creative leads on the project.

The Nest beat three other groups to the work following a credentials pitch in March.