
Nicolas is a french designer based in Shanghai since 2005. Graduated with a master degree in product design in France, he moved to China to integrate a Chinese agency focusing on product design and user research for international and Chinese companies interested in both local and global markets.
Now having established a creative company with a photographer and a music editor, Nicolas' goal is to widen his scope of action in a much more holistic manner. Designing is all about storytelling... and experience design gives it a complete meaning.
'Design brings stories to life' - Yves Béhard
Experience design considers all the moments of interactions
between people and brands. All those experiences cover in fact
a wide scope of applications and disciplines (from products,
packaging, retail environnment, to the clothing and attitudes of
employees...).
When it comes to design in an expiriential way, the
designer has to consider the brand and the users.By creating
meaningful stories unearthed by the understanding of the
brand values and the users expectations, the designer is able to
generate value from those interactions for both parties.
Located in the former French concession, shanghai, Nicolas' studio offers the possibilities for various workshops and brainstorming sessions amoung people with different backgrounds: photography, graphics, engineering...
Far/close.
Brand
Le Bistrôt in Shanghai was suffering a lack of consistancy between the previous ‘Le Meridien’ global brand image and the recent chic and avant-garde feeling the hotel is heading to.
My goal was to give a more stylish overall impression of the restaurant by darkening some light areas and make use of transparency to emphasize on the wording.
Story
The concept is to play on the size of the characters to make the names of each stations appear directly from the complete menu. So that from far, only the main names can be seen, whereas the guests can discover the complete menu as they come closer.
Contemporary life. Chinese touch.
Brand
s.porcelain is a tableware brand developped by s.point, shanghai. The goal is to represent what is contemporary Chinese design by using traditional materials (e.g. wood and porcelain). “Nothing, and then something” is the spirit of s. products. This philosophy is always transferred to the products through pure form in the sense of elegant and reduced structure of simplicity, to emphasize on the quality.
Story
The products I’ve created for this brand not only follow this sense of aesthetic and minimalism, but I have designed them to reinforce the friendlyness and convenience of the brand. Each detail is linked to a specific use. They may start from a gesture, an observation, an association.... The coffee cup for example is inspired by the traditional tea cup (without handle and somehow painful for the fingers... ) This cup allows the user to feel the heat of the coffee - much appreciated in winter - and offers an elegant way of stackability.
Foldable medicine packaging.
Brand
Healsafe is a flexible range of medecine packagings. Developped to be sold to laboratories, it aims to deliver drug intakes in the safest conditions as possible keeping in mind to fulfill the laboratories requierements in term of size of pills, number of takes a day, lenght of the treatment... Healsafe participates to the increasement of patient safety by improving the quality of interactions “medecine/patient” during a complete treatment : visual relation, experimentation and acces to the information.
Story
Healsafe is 100% user friendly packaging. In a single gesture, it opens to display, in a convenient cross-shape, all the pills and information needed. The colors, and segmentation on the packaging also help the patient to follow his treatment in the best conditions.
Mesure currents smartly.
Brand
Based in Seattle, Fluke is the world leader for electronic measurement tools; it has a strong and solid visual design identity defined by a bulky yellow outer shell. It was a good experience for me to collaborate several times with this company (remotely from shanghai) for various user-friendly products.
Story
This award-winning product is the result of a collaborative team project (up to 4/5 people). Our goal was to provide a unique solution that focuses both on ergonomy and usage. The front part has a detachable clamp that allows the user to access wires that would be unreachable with a normal tool.
Designed for the runners.
Collaboration with Nike Design Team, U.S.
I took part in the immersion program organized by Nike: flying to Portland (Oregon) for one week to get to know the design team, and 'meet the runners' in the Eugene tracks and fields. The goal was to get real insight of how athletes train and how we could come up with a design that fits best their needs.