A prestigious Red Dot Award in Communication Design has been conferred on LZF for its brilliantly choreographed, inspired and sensuous Telling Tales 2016 communication campaign. An exceptionally avant-garde endeavour, Telling Tales (a collection of illuminated stories) is an expressive oeuvre, its execution vivid, eloquent and deliciously mysterious.

The award for Telling Tales is another well earned feather in LZF’s cap and builds on the brand’s reputation for original communication projects. In 2013, LZF’s High Fidelity campaign won a Red Dot Award in Communication Design in the categories of branding and sound. This innovative venture included a successful collaboration with LA-based music maestro Rithma. In developing a multi-sensory experience, High Fidelity was an example of LZF’s willingness to experiment with varied communication formats.

For LZF, having that unique ability to connect with an audience, to promote its lighting products in interesting and novel ways, is a challenge it accepts with pleasure. Preparations for Telling Tales began in the summer of 2015. This visually stimulating and literary affair was the creation of LZF co-founder Mariví Calvo. It was Mariví’s intention that Telling Tales would take place at night, thus displaying LZF’s handsome lamps when lit. Moreover, in contrast with a focus on physical spaces, the campaign would spotlight the people inhabiting them. And finally, this was to be a work of artistic creation, different from traditional catalogue designs.

Valencia-based Masquespacio Studio was called upon to envision concepts for the campaign. Their direction led to the hyperreal photographic recreation of stories set in the 1950s, with allusions to the realist paintings of American artist Edward Hopper and Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window. Spanish writer Grassa Toro provided the texts to accompany each image. Written with a surreal quality, Toro described the stories for Telling Tales as a female narrator: a woman looking from her window, she would observe and imagine what was happening in the building opposite. Rather than provide a direct explanation of the image, Toro’s words relate an imagined scenario. Consequently, the combination of Telling Tales’ extremely realistic photographic detail and Grassa Toro’s storytelling is what distinguishes this campaign from others.

Toro is in effect narrating something that many of us do on a regular basis: the act of watching people and imaging what is happening in their lives. Thinking about Telling Tales, Toro explains: “What is fantastic is not what you see, but rather when I imagine everything I’m not seeing… [from her building, the narrator of Telling Tales] sees very little, and imagines a lot.” (An excerpt from an interview with Grassa Toro in LZF Magazine No. 3, 2016). Telling Tales is told in three volumes: Julie & Nelson, Lana & John and Ava & Silver. As co-stars, LZF’s shining lamps add a most pleasing aesthetic to the clever midcentury styling.

With input across the team, Telling Tales was a bona fide LZF collective effort. The campaign’s three volumes will be presented in an all-inclusive booklet format, ready for worldwide distribution. A momentous campaign for the company, the Telling Tales Red Dot Award was well deserved recognition of LZF’s capacity to run high quality marketing campaigns. Co-founder Sandro Tothill observes: We are competing with communication and graphic design studios from all around the world. That we’re actually in that top fifty cadre of companies receiving the Red Dot Award in Communication Design is as much of an achievement for us as being given a Red Dot Design Award.”

Written by Gerard McGuickin