The usual order in a product launch is that the photographer goes out and the designer curates. Here there was nowhere to go. So the AluConnect visual world came out of design rather than selection — and that difference ran through the whole project.
A product that barely exists yet
AluConnect is a hybrid aluminium-PVC window system: the construction is developed and manufactured by Aluveka Group, and brought to the Hungarian market by Prémium Fenster System Kft. as the exclusive processor. A new product with an unknown name and no history — there was no previous website to rework and no identity to align with.
The thesis was simple: show the range and show the premium feel. That gave us the solution too — present the different window types, in different colours, in different life situations. Not in a catalogue, but in homes.
There was one problem with it. At the time barely a handful of finished units existed in the country, and those were in a showroom, so photographing them in houses was not possible. From the manufacturer we only had a few 3D models supplied for production.
The constraint became control
That pushed the centre of gravity of the project onto creative and visual direction. There was nothing to curate; we had to decide what world this product lives in — and then build that world, from the lifestyle scenes to the exploded construction render.
"We could not go out and shoot, because there was nowhere to shoot. At first that looked like a constraint; then it turned out to be freedom. We designed every single frame. The colour, the house, the time of day were all decisions, not accidents."
Bálint Kutassy, client lead, KUTASSY
The difference is not only a matter of workload. In photography reality decides: that house, that weather, that window type. In a render the brief decides — so behind every frame you can put the claim that the frame supports.
The matrix of range
Range cannot be claimed with one beautiful house. One type in one colour is not range, it is a product shot. So the scenes were built at the intersections of three axes: life situation, colour and window type. The same product in a different home, a different RAL code, a different opening mode.
That matrix was also the working method. It is not that a few beautiful images appeared and we then looked for copy to go with them; the image set grew out of the list of what had to be proven. The colour collection section carries the same logic further: next to each RAL code sits the rendered scene showing that colour on a real facade.
Two readers, one scroll
The research showed us who decides. The dealer wants figures — Uf value, system depth, RC2 — while the homeowner wants the look and the reassurance. The real challenge was not serving one or the other but the balance: the same scroll has to carry both.
That is where the rhythm of the page comes from: scene, data strip, explanation, then scene again. Uf = 0.8 W/(m²K) sits on the first screen, while its justification gets a section of its own. Both readers walk the same page but do not read the same things.
That is also why the construction became an interactive diagram rather than a paragraph. Four layers — outer face, structural bonding, multi-chamber PVC core, welded corner joint — opened one at a time next to an exploded 3D render. The advantage of the hybrid construction is four separate technical claims; crammed into one paragraph, none of them lands.
Motion is not decoration
The research also told us what the audience expects from a site like this: an Apple-like experience. That set the bar. Still images cannot deliver it — the premium feel is assembled out of the timing of details: the scroll-triggered movement, the way the diagram layers open, the rhythm of the image transitions.
It is the layer nobody notices on its own; they just feel that the whole thing is considered. The reverse holds too: if the motion lags or jumps, that reflects back onto the product. Which is why the output is a single document with the styles and the script compiled into it — there is no separate request for the rendering to wait on. LCP 1.2 seconds, zero layout shift.
What generalises from this
With an unknown product the site's first job is not to sell but to make people understand. And if there is nothing to photograph, that is not an obstacle to the project but its starting point: from then on every frame is a claim you have to design. It is more work, but it is also more precise.
That is why the identity was finished before the site. Without a logo, a palette and a typeface, the website would have been just a design proposal that the next deliverable overrides; this way the catalogue, the colour collection and the site all come out of the same system. The full process — from the reasoning behind the palette to the developer interview — is in the case study.