A Universe of Control

A new name and identity, without forgetting our roots.

Elation Professional is one of the world’s leading creative lighting companies. Their premium products have illuminated live events from Imagine Dragons, to The Dave Matthews Band to the Super Bowl halftime show. The Elation team is always looking for new ways to provide complete solutions for their customers. So when the opportunity presented itself to acquire The M-Series controller platform, the choice was obvious. They even hired their development team.

A whole new identity

Elation couldn’t keep the name and La Visual added our proven naming process to the rebrand. Beyond the brand name, the agency was presented with the challenging task of naming the product line. We needed a naming system that resonated with a very niche, very engaged, and very vocal audience. We accepted the challenge to not only maintain their current following, but to re-ignite it.

Left brain,
Meet right brain.

Engineering Rockstars

We began by conducting deep research to illuminate the nature of the M-Series’s audience, which we found was one that uniquely straddled the line between technician and artist, developer and designer. From there, our team created a brand strategy and identity that captured both a visual and technical character.

The new brand name — Obsidian — highlighted the rebirth of the brand while joining the order of technology with the chaos of artistic expression. The Obsidian logo then became a natural extension of the name, inspired by both the ordered lines and chaotic patterns of volcanic rock.

The brand personality was further expanded to include naming for the lighting control software platform “Onyx” and a series of hardware controllers; the “NX” series.

Obsidian was a huge success and exceeded the client’s expectations. The result of our efforts is a brand that reengaged the current audience, and attracted new creators. And ultimately, a project that positively affected the bottom line.