Spoon Lighting: a website, 3D product visuals and packaging for a catalogue of 2,000+ lights

The starting point

Spoon Lighting works in architectural and commercial lighting, with an in-house lighting design team that works with architects and designers, and a catalogue of more than 2,000 products. For a range that size, the usual route of photographing each fixture creates two problems. It is slow, because every new product needs its own shoot. And it is inconsistent, because lighting, angles and image quality drift from one batch of photos to the next, which makes a large catalogue look untidy online and in print.

The brief covered four outputs that all depend on product imagery: a website, product visuals for the catalogue, packaging and social media material. The question was how to produce imagery once and use it across all four without a new shoot each time.

The approach

The answer was to model the products rather than photograph them. Working with Alvin Reji, Old Port modelled and textured the lights in 3D in-house, using Autodesk Maya for modelling, Substance 3D Painter for texturing and Adobe Photoshop for finishing. Every product could then be shown in the same light, from the same angles and at the same quality.

Once a product exists as a 3D asset, it can be rendered for any format: a clean catalogue view for the website, a front-of-pack image for packaging, or an animated sequence for social media. The same visual style was carried through each channel, and the assets were reused rather than recreated.

Key decisions

3D instead of photography

As the project page puts it, with a catalogue this big, photography alone is slow and inconsistent. 3D visuals let the brand show every product in the same light, angle and quality, which is the standard a specifier comparing fixtures needs.

Model once, reuse everywhere

Treating the 3D models as a shared asset library, rather than one-off renders, is what made the approach efficient. The website, packaging and social content all draw from the same source, so the brand looks the same from the box to the feed.

Motion from the same assets

Because the products were already modelled, animated social posts could be built from the existing assets instead of needing video shoots. That keeps social content consistent with the website and packaging.

What was delivered

• Website design for spoonlighting.com, built around consistent product imagery so buyers can browse and compare a large catalogue.
• In-house 3D product visuals for the 2,000+ product catalogue, modelled in Autodesk Maya and textured in Substance 3D Painter.
• Packaging design using the same visual language.
• Social media material, including animated posts built from the 3D assets.

For the website side of projects like this, see our web development service; for the 3D and visual system, our creative direction work.

Where it is used now

The website is live at spoonlighting.com, and the 3D product visuals are reused across packaging and social media. The project is documented on Behance under branding and marketing for Spoon Lighting, and on athuliyjujacob.com.

The wider lesson applies to any brand with hundreds or thousands of products. Over the life of a catalogue, a 3D pipeline can be faster and more consistent than repeated photography, and it removes the visual mismatch that makes a big range look untidy online.