We first met the super people Houseof at an interior design networking event Concept North late last summer. Concept North is a community platform that shares a mutual passion for connecting like-minded people in the creative industry and property world. Houseof and their products certainly caught our attention.

The ambitious Houseof only creates products that we want to fill our own homes with, a new lighting and homeware store, making waves in the retail sector, challenging the way everything is done, and bringing a startup mentality to a stale industry.

After seeing some of their beautiful products we got talking with Houseof about their process. The time, logistics, and costs that are involved in taking a design, getting the product manufactured, photography which involved building room sets for each product campaign, marketing material, and so forth, ready for sales and distribution.

Naturally, we were drawn to the marketing element of this, Houseof goes to great lengths to ensure their products and its personality are seen in the best light (no pun intended) which goes beyond just taking photos of their products.

The brand exposure for Houseof includes a raft of press articles and features within interior design publications. Product photos are essential, but to allow readers to see their products in situ. Houseof produces brand-led photoshoots to produce distinctive Houseof lifestyle imagery which is a key part of what makes them, them.

“We are here to change the way online retail works, by empowering our community with expert information, design and inspiration.”
Helen -Houseof Co-Founder

As an online retailer, thankfully Houseof wasn’t faced with any store closure during the COVID-19 lockdown, however, with a new range of products due in the coming weeks, posed a different problem for Houseof.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, a photo shoot on set was an instant non-starter. The inability to create the core images and lifestyle photography for marketing material to promote their new range posed a huge pain point for Houesof CGI became the only option for Houseof to keep the cogs moving.

When Houseof approached us to create CGI imagery of their products we were delighted. The use of simple geometry to create beautiful products and the lifestyle scenes they design around them is something we have wanted to be involved in since we met, and it’s always exciting to take a company through their first experience using CGI.

Houseof had used London-based designer Elle P.J. on their previous sets and we were excited to see what she had in store for the new products. Working in collaboration with Elle P.J we set to work to bring her concept ideas to life in a 3D space, very quickly the three sets being assembled started to come to life. It’s an exciting process.

Like for most of the working world in lockdown, Zoom calls were a crucial and frequent part of the process, sharing screens of sketches and conveying ideas worked well, but what helped make huge strides was sharing the working 3D scenes.

Working on the-the-fly with Helen and Elle was really insightful to their process. New ideas could be tried out, instantly developed or written off in a moment. The speed and unlimited nature of working in 3D opened up a world of opportunities that simply wouldn’t have been possible on a physical set.

We delivered each product in all kinds of angles, colours, and textures, changing any style elements, products, or moods without having to re-shoot. CGI was the most cost-effective way to do this, creating a computer-generated model of the product or the scene gave Houseof a complete digital record of it which means in the future, the ability to go back and make tweaks, the process worked really well, the images speak for themselves.

“CGI product imagery is now almost impossible to be distinguished from a genuine photograph. It allows companies to showcase their products before they even manufacture it. Explore new options, revisit scenes, change colours, change the camera angle – No Problem. ”
Sam – LINEAR

In addition to the lifestyle and product images, we also created rotating gifs of the products and a promotional animation that introduces the products in the lifestyle sets created. These additional creative elements really enabled us to add our own creative feel to the project too.

Working In collaboration with Helen and Elle to create CGI versions of the products and Houseof vision has been a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting creative journey, we all couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

Little did we know that Helen also had another fantastic opportunity in a new agreement to sell their products with H&M. With time being a limiting factor, we got to work on creating a new set of CGIs for several new products, and before we knew it our CGIs were on the homepage of H&M, showcasing Houseof as a brand new lighting partner.

We always believed that CGI would be ideal for Houseof not only is there a significant cost saving over traditional photography, but the capabilities of working in a computer-generated environment enables creativity in ways that can be limited in reality. As a saved virtual environment, we can revisit the sets and the products at any time and create a whole new arsenal of stunning images at a really low cost compared to photography.

It’s been an exciting journey, being able to work with designers in this way was new for us. We are lucky to work with several brilliant interior designers on past projects, however working with Elle P.J, a talented set designer, working in collaboration to get their vision and compositions from their mind to the screen was a first. An amazing learning curve for everyone and an exciting insight into what is to come.

Love Houseof you can purchase directly from their website or via H&M Home

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Let’s discuss a project, contact: sam@linearcgi.studio