Integrated Home Comfort and Identity
Well known for reliable air conditioner, furnace and water heating products, Rheem has been a leader in home comfort. With an established name that stands for quality, Rheem decided to heat things up with a new company-wide Visual Brand Language (VBL). The initiative brought together four divisions (Heating and Cooling, Water Heating, Specialty and Pool Spa products), multiple product platforms and a good, better, best strategy to create a meaningful design language.
A New Degree of Comfort
Recognizing that Rheem is all about temperature control, Priority Designs created design cues to help facilitate the brand message. Based on these cues, the products seemed destined to have a logo planted in a thermometer, stable forms that communicate carefree reliability and a subtle sophistication that elevates the traditional, mundane utility product to “appliance status”. The VBL content has proven that “coolness” doesn’t have to be expensive.
The new design language not only enhances the brand with a consistent message, but also allows room for flexibility and maintains a low cost assembly strategy across a wide range of products. The unassuming aesthetic is layered with strategy for wholesale and retail channels as well as ways to accommodate Rheem’s sub brands (Ruud, Richmond and Raypak). Rheem used these new VBL style cues to kick off their “New Degree of Comfort” campaign, launch several new products and revamp their go-to-market strategy.