Interiors · product publishing
2023–24
The Magazine
Groël manufactures door handles — and handle catalogues are, almost by definition, technical listings nobody reads.
A full year of work led from art direction: concept, editorial script, photography, hand-made Photoshop montages — before AI-generated imagery existed —, real interviews and the layout of more than a hundred pages.
The Magazine
The door-handle catalogue that reads like a fashion magazine.
Interiors · product publishing
2023–24
A full year of work led from art direction: concept, editorial script, photography, hand-made Photoshop montages — before AI-generated imagery existed —, real interviews and the layout of more than a hundred pages.
Challenge
The brief was the brand's general catalogue, and the decision was to not make a catalogue at all: to shape it as a fashion magazine, with a cover, a contents page, interviews, articles and photo editorials, where the product is desired before it is looked up.
Everything was made before AI could generate images: every surreal montage, every impossible still life, is hand-built Photoshop — cut-outs, light and shadow constructed piece by piece over real photography. A full year of art direction, photography, montage, editing and interviews.
Strategy
The handle left the hardware aisle and walked into fashion.
The strategy starts with a status change: if the handle is photographed, written and laid out as fashion, it stops competing in the hardware aisle and starts competing on the interior designer's moodboard. The magazine doesn't sell SKUs: it builds brand desire.
Each section adopts a real editorial genre — the contents page, the opinion editorial, the interview, the technical report, the house ads — so the reader travels the whole catalogue without ever feeling they're reading a catalogue.
Identity
The visual tone mixes three registers that alternate like in a real magazine: clean product photo editorials, surreal montages where the handle appears where it shouldn't — a skyline, the dunes, a plate — and large-format typographic pieces in the style of fashion advertising.
All retouching and photomontage are hand-made in Photoshop, with classic cut-out, lighting and colour techniques — the project predates AI-generated imagery, and that craft shows in every composition.
System
Like any magazine, it has an engine room: real interviews with the brand's collaborators — such as Toni Espuch (Azul Tierra) —, signed product features, and a serious technical section — 'La Fabbrica' — explaining finishes, powercoat and PVD deposition with custom diagrams.
The custom-order flow is told as a restaurant's 'menu': you choose base, style, format, model and finish with the chef's suggestions — Groël's configurator turned into a dining experience.
Applications
The same universe produced large-format pieces: typographic posters per model — Vasilisa, Three, New York —, house ads and surreal plates that stand alone at fairs, showrooms and social media.
The magazine is also the calling card for Groël's collaborations with design studios — Pelizzari Studio, lagranja design — with their designs told as features.
Outcome
The magazine worked inside and outside the company: it became the piece Groël introduces itself with, travelled to industry events — including Milan's Salone del Mobile, the world stage of interior design — and accompanies the brand's collaborations with studios like Pelizzari Studio and lagranja design.
The project proved an industrial product can carry a fashion narrative without losing technical rigour: the same object starring in a surreal montage appears three pages later with its exploded view, finishes and forging process.
And it proved something else: that manual craft — a year of Photoshop, photography and montage, without a single generated image — is still what makes an image stick.
