One Success Leads to Another: How Voltera’s NOVA Truly Defined a Brand

Voltera’s first product wasn’t just a product; it was the most influential asset that defined who they are and what they do. But after their team built their first game-changing circuit printer with the resources they had in-house, they needed to step back and consider what design meant to their brand and company as a whole before embarking on their next product. Here’s how we worked together to define and refine what Voltera stands for… and how we built a design philosophy that carries through their newly launched second product (and the products that will follow).

Words by Jackelyn Gill

A strong first impression can make or break a company’s future. But here’s the challenge with making a strong first impression: how do you repeat success with a second product and even higher expectations?

In 2015, the circuit board printing machine earned more than $500,000 from nearly 1,000 backers on Kickstarter for its promise to quickly and conveniently help product developers, researchers, and academics create prototypes in-house, without handling dangerous chemicals or relying on third-party manufacturers to build and ship every iteration. One year later, the V-One was named one of the most innovative Kickstarter projects of all time, joining names like the Oculus Rift VR headset and The Planetary Society’s LightSail.

It won the 2015 James Dyson Award, with Dyson himself commenting that “Their solution makes prototyping electronics easier and more accessible—particularly to students and small businesses. It also has the potential to inspire many more budding engineers. Something I am very passionate about indeed.”

And at the end of 2020, there were over 2,500 V-One machines in the field, a number that grows every day.

But when Voltera began work on their second machine, they hit a roadblock. “One of the challenges with designing our second product was actually having an existing product on the market,” says Voltera co-founder James Pickard. “With the physical design of the V-One playing such an important role in defining [our brand], the big challenge was to step back from our first product and embrace new design possibilities.”

When James approached me looking for a design partner who could work closely with his team to evolve the design language for Voltera and blend it with the requirements of precision and modularity into a new product, I knew it would be a rewarding challenge.

And with the recent launch of Voltera’s newest machine, NOVA—a larger, professional-grade prototyper with added functionality that allows it to print high-viscosity inks with greater accuracy on flexible materials—the company feels confident that they’ll make a strong second impression, too.

Building from the brand up

Now a rapidly scaling company with nearly 10 years of history behind it, Voltera began as a small startup with big ideas.

In the early days, the V-One itself became the foundation for their visual branding, inspiring everything from their graphics and content to their website and packaging. But as they grew, James and his team realized the importance of establishing brand around the company and what it represented, rather than the scope of a physical product. “It was hard to evolve or expand the brand because it was tied to a physical thing rather than independently defined where it could be implemented in different ways.”

With the existing V-One design, it wasn’t possible to simply scale it up or stretch it wider. It was clear that, for NOVA, we needed to expand Voltera’s design strategy in a reasoned and thoughtful way, starting with company values and existing brand equity.

Our work together began in the Align and Immerse phases of my design process to understand who Voltera was as a company, where they were four years after their early success, and where they wanted to be in the future. We worked through their brand values of:

· Accessibility—bringing prototyping in-house for users with an intuitive design that doesn’t break the budget

· Elegance—solving real-world problems with technical solutions that are simple yet sophisticated, and a delight to use

· Innovation—being a front-runner in accessible hybrid electronics development platforms

· Credibility—creating high-quality products built to last, with support that’s just a chat away

Voltera also wanted their products to be technical marvels of engineering that feel like magic to use, inspire people to find new solutions to their problems, make users feel supported, instill trust and confidence in the machine as an important part of their application, and be expandable for future (and as-yet-unknown) purposes.

In this phase, we also listened closely to customers who said that they’d like to print on larger surfaces, and on materials like fabric and film. They were looking for more precision, accuracy, and room for storage. Finally, they wanted the convenience of loading more than one attachment at a time, and accessories for things like heating and cooling inks and materials.

“Working on a second product with more experience under our belts, we definitely tried to be more intentional about a lot of things, including how we represent our brand through our product design,” says James. “We wanted the new product to not only represent our brand but allow us the freedom and flexibility to incorporate a lot of the lessons learned and considerations that weren’t necessarily front-of-mind the first time around.”

And we needed to accomplish all of this with a design philosophy that would make people instantly recognize NOVA—and every product that follows—as “Voltera.”

Rethinking the old to create the new

Gantry design to conceal cabling and integrate rail systems

The first iteration of NOVA’s design was the first time James and his team felt challenged to think about their machines and their company in a different way.

A departure from the V-One’s rounded, closed-loop design, green lighting, and exposed components, the proposed NOVA design took a more open form featuring the vacuum plate that allows for printing on flexible materials as a centerpiece, while simultaneously hiding screws, cabling, and tubing without sacrificing accessibility. With a built-in tray, it made sure important tools users might need were within reach at all times, saving on desk space.

When James and I collected feedback from the Voltera team on the new direction, “it was interesting to see the choices of words people used and what caught their eye,” he says.

“Pretty much everyone brought up the lack of green in the original direction… Joseph helped us realize that these comments didn’t actually mean that green should be added, but rather that people were struggling to identify Voltera within the design.”

This first iteration was a valuable one. It gave me the direction I needed to continue with a second version that better resolved the brand, and for James and his team, “it showed us how to interpret design feedback and highlighted what feelings and impressions we wanted our brand to invoke,” he says. “I think it was really useful and helped us understand our brand better.”

Voltera, through-and-through

The result of this process is what you’ll find in Voltera’s store today, with our second iteration.

While the newly-launched NOVA carries their logo and a familiar silver-and-black colourway, that’s hardly where the brand alignment stops. It evolves the V-One design with the angular shape of the body that pairs with a more polished and premium finish, a reveal gap that provides a peek beneath the hood while still hiding the inner cabling, and a moving tool bridge that looks as finished in its home position as it does while printing.

Of course, it doesn’t sacrifice functionality or accuracy, with the vacuum plate remaining central to the unit and a head that allows for two attachments at once, which prints with the high precision customers expect from a well-oiled machine.

It’s truly about accessibility, too, with a modular, ergonomic design that doesn’t just ensure it’s easy for users to set up and operate, but also makes maintenance and service less expensive, time-consuming, and challenging with great attention given to the order of assembly and disassembly. It carries over the built-in tool tray from our first iteration and allows for expandability and adaptability with future accessories.

We focused on local manufacturing, optimizing each part for available materials and processes that are common to Canada—like extruded aluminum, for example—and create complex and beautiful joinery when intersected. And because of its construction, the design can be scaled to smaller or larger sizes without reworking the components or losing functionality. In fact, when we built our first demo unit at a smaller scale for internal testing, we were all pleasantly surprised at how flawlessly it performed.

“Instead of just designing for the end user which is obviously really important, we also tried to think about the experience of everyone that is involved along the way bringing the product to market from manufacturing, assembly, fulfillment, support, future improvements, etc.,” says James.

And when we unveiled this version to the team, we were met immediately with a combined sense of excitement and familiarity, says James. “One of our software developers, Haoran, got really excited—and then, with a big smile, said, ‘This is our product.’”

A marvel of engineering

With the final version of NOVA, James and his team feel confident about making a strong second impression. But the story doesn’t end there because the product—and the process of creating it—gave them much more.

For James, it’s the first of many products to come. “The design allows us to grow and expand our product offering but also lays a lot of the groundwork for future add-ons,” he says.

They also look at design (and their design partnerships) with a different perspective. “We are definitely more articulate and able to express feedback constructively when it comes to design,” he says, adding “The whole process very much felt like a self-reflection exercise and it helped us figure out what Voltera means when it comes to design.”

And just like they innovated and iterated as their company grew, “In the end, I think our customers will really benefit from the design since it gives them flexibility and allows them to innovate as their needs change over time.”