Developed at Gretel, New York.

Rockwell Unscripted—designed by David Rockwell for Knoll—is an expansive workspace furniture collection of over 30 different elements in six different categories. It’s an unconventional collection of improvisational elements that demanded an equally unconventional and improvisational approach to the branding.

The collection responds to the user’s working style, turning the typical office system paradigm on its head. The collection: uncorporate, unrigid, and untraditional; our approach: to unshow the collection by inverting the usual approach of featuring the product, and instead, put the user experience and environment at the forefront. We shifted the focus from the design of the furniture to the experience, simultaneously highlighting and hiding the actual collection.

Design details reference the signature hand holes in the tables and seating, patterns and graphics created from furniture details, and spot varnish highlights on furniture silhouettes.

Wraparound text and inverted typography invite users to rotate the brochure, themselves, or both, translating the Unscripted experience into a visual concept, while staying true to Knoll’s typographic purity. A lexicon of un-words simultaneously describe what the collection is and isn’t, with additional text delivered in a freeform narrative style unburdened by the rules of grammar, expressing the improvisational nature of how the collection is designed to be used.

Digital execution by our friends at Schema Design