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Print hardware has an image problem. Open any brochure in the category and you'll find the same thing: a machine, a spec sheet, and barely a human in sight. Reliable, fast, accurate.
So when Roland DG went private after four decades as a public company and wanted a proper reset, we saw an opportunity to do something properly different.
Start with people, not products
We began by listening to around 18,000 Roland DG users worldwide, and one thing kept coming up. Customers didn't just want a reliable machine. They wanted the confidence to put their name to what they made. That became the idea behind the whole rebrand: Make Your Mark.
Photography was where that idea had to come alive. Led by our Art Director, whose background is in football and broadcast, and shot alongside a photographer from the world of sport, the series brought a lens to print that the category had never seen before.
Treat the printers like the high-performance machines they are
Look at how the best automotive advertising photographs high-performance machinery: low angles that make it tower, dramatic light that carves out every curve, a sense that something powerful is about to happen. Roland DG's printers are exactly that kind of machine, so we borrowed the playbook. Low angles, dramatic framing and hero lighting turned them from technical kit into the stars of the frame.
Every frame is flooded with colored light, a nod to flowing ink and the wide color gamut these machines deliver. It gives each image a glow you'd never get from a spec-sheet shot, and ties the whole series back to the heart of what Roland DG does: color.
Then we added the people. Each person was cast and styled to represent the audience behind a specific printer, from Etsy store owners to sign-writing businesses, across Roland DG's global customer base.
And we did it fast. Five printers, five talent, two days, one studio. Thirty images in phase one, with thirty more to follow.
Making its mark
The identity launched at ISA Expo in Orlando and FESPA in Barcelona, two of the biggest stages in print. The response was immediate:
Marketing Week summed it up with a headline about a B2B firm injecting humanity into its brand. We'll take that. One UK partner called it the best stand he'd ever seen from Roland DG, because real people bring it to life.
Roland DG's CEO, Kohei Tanabe, put it best: “It's something I have been wanting to do for my whole life at Roland DG.”
The lesson? B2B doesn't have to be boring. Put people first, treat the product like the hero it is, and the work does the talking.
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