Pentair

Calming the Chaos

How do you make water exciting? Imagine spending $100,000 on a pool, only to clutter your backyard with mismatched equipment that looks industrial and outdated. Or searching for home water filtration that you can trust to protect your family, but finding products that look cold and uninspiring. Years of acquisitions left Pentair, a global leader in water solutions, with products that felt disconnected across pool equipment and filtration systems for residential and commercial customers.

The challenge? Convincing stakeholders that it could change. We formed a design council to bring together sales, marketing, product, engineering, and manufacturing, demonstrating that unifying over 100 products across three divisions was possible.

Our breakthrough came from thinking about water in three states: still, flowing, and contained. We translated each into the design language. Softened radii echo the calm of still water. Chamfered edges trace the boundary where water meets containment, like a pool's edge catching light. Flowing lines move like rivers around products.

These products live in chaos. Pool pads are mazes of PVC pipes. Home filtration systems sit among cluttered utility walls. Commercial kitchens are visual noise. Our Visual Brand Language had to calm that chaos, creating forms that blend into life, not add to the noise.

Insight-driven research validated the strategy. Consumer testing showed immediate preference for the new direction, giving us the evidence to bring stakeholders on board.

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The result was a comprehensive Visual Brand Language system, unifying design standards for 100+ SKUs and touchpoints across multiple business units. This strategy streamlined the product development pipeline by reducing design variability and physical branding aesthetic, resulting in a stronger, unified market presence for the $4.1B portfolio.