Modular Storage Stool

Lonnie Grover came to us with a problem rather than a product. Family living rooms need seating that also stores things, and a surface that isn't permanently in the way. The piece he wanted didn't exist yet — so it had to be designed before it could be rendered.

That makes this the outlier in our portfolio. The lighting work visualised products that already existed: someone else's design, our renders. Here the industrial design was ours — a dual cushioned pouffe split by a low timber bridge with open shelving beneath, paired with a detachable C-shaped side table that either slots into the frame or lifts out to work as a laptop desk or reading ledge.

A piece that transforms has to hold up in every configuration. It cannot look resolved assembled and awkward apart, and the render has to prove that rather than hide it behind a flattering angle.

Design development came first: the proportions, the height of the bridge, how deep the cubbies could go before the seat lost comfort, how the C-table clears the frame without catching. Only then was the piece built in 3D — to manufacturing dimensions, so the joinery and hardware read as buildable rather than approximate.

The signature colourway sets the character. A scalloped dual-fabric trim pairs a plush teal velvet top cushion with an embroidered damask lower skirt, against bleached oak. It is a deliberately decorative move on an otherwise minimal frame, and it is the reason the piece reads as furniture rather than as storage.

Then seven variants — which is where product CGI either earns its keep or exposes itself. Velvet, linen, leather, bouclé and tweed are not colours, they are different physics. Bouclé is looped and catches light at its nubs. Tweed is a woven slub with visible fibre direction. Velvet is directional pile that shifts value as it curves over a cushion. Author those lazily and all seven variants look like one material recoloured, which defeats the entire point of showing seven.

Camera, lighting and staging stay locked across the whole set, so what a customer compares on a product page is genuinely the finish and nothing else.

Ten visuals: seven studio finish variants and three in-situ lifestyle scenes — the piece assembled in a bright Dallas living room, the C-table detached beside a sofa as a laptop desk, and the cubbies in use holding books and toys in a working family space.

Lonnie ended up with a ready-to-produce line rather than a single product: seven finishes spanning monochrome, earthy and jewel-tone palettes, suited to different retail catalogues and client customisation decks. The lifestyle set supplied e-commerce and spec-sheet imagery before a single unit was manufactured. And because the model exists, an eighth colourway is a re-render rather than a reshoot.