Client commission · rebrand and website for HQD Europe
Same brand.
New original.
HQD’s claim is “the original”. The website was a discount shop. This is the rebrand that makes the claim visible — and checkable.
01 · The brief
Overhaul it completely. Look at how IQOS or Apple would do it.
HQD sells disposables, pod systems and liquids across Europe through hqdeurope.com — a JTL-Shop that grew one promotion at a time. The brief was two sentences long: rebuild the website completely, rebrand it, and set the bar at IQOS and Apple.
IQOS shows how a nicotine brand can look like a technology company under some of the strictest advertising rules there are. Apple shows how a product page makes you want to scroll. HQD needed both — and a launch: the new HQD ALLSTAR, more powerful, with more functions and, for the first time, a display.
- Client
- HQD Europe · official distributor, Germany
- Scope
- Brand strategy, identity, UX, website, 3D, launch experience, compliance concept
- Platform
- JTL-Shop (stays the backend)
- Status
- Presented to the client as a working prototype — not live yet
02 · The old site
The old site sold discounts. It never sold the original.
Captured live at hqdeurope.com. Five things a first-time visitor meets before they meet a product.
- 01The first screen waits
The hero is a heavy lifestyle video. On every capture the first screen stayed white for more than seven seconds before it played.
- 02Discount before product
“4× GRATIS”, “3× FREE”, prices in every banner. The brand speaks like a clearance sale.
- 03Orange everywhere
The brand colour is a fill, not a signal. Nothing is louder than anything else.
- 04The best idea is buried
Original Check — the anti-counterfeit code on every box — is one menu item among six.
- 05Seven names, no system
SURV, SURV+, NOOK, HOOVA, HOOVA+, CIRAK 2, ALLSTAR LITE. No families, no way to choose.
03 · The idea
Original. Checkable.
The market is full of copies; HQD prints a code on every box so you can prove yours is real. That is the brand. The rebrand turns “the original” from a slogan into a property you can see, test and verify — and keeps the line HQD already prints on every pack: King of Taste.
The product is the hero. Materials, light, numbers. No adjective avalanches.
Original Check moves from the menu to the front page; the hologram seal becomes the motif.
Child lock, age checks, adult-only imagery — shown as features, not footnotes.
Battery, pod, liquid. One purchase becomes an ecosystem you come back to.
What Apple does
- One idea per screen
- Scroll-driven product story
- A colour picker you want to play with
- Comparison instead of claims
What IQOS does
- Device + consumable as one system
- The health warning designed in, not stuck on
- Age check that feels like part of the brand
- Service as product: verify, return, recycle
04 · The identity
Keep what is theirs. Change the stage.
The wordmark with its cut Q stays. The orange stays — HQD #FD5000, sampled from their own logo file. King of Taste stays. What changes is everything around them: a black, filmic stage, one wide display face that echoes the rounded letters of the mark, and orange used as light instead of paint.
Kept
- The HQD wordmark, from their vector file
- HQD orange #FD5000
- “King of Taste”, from the packaging
- Original Check
Changed
- Orange as light and call to action, not as a fill
- Black stage, cream for responsibility
- Unbounded for display, Inter for text, mono for specs
- Real product photography on every surface
05 · The launch
A launch you fly into.
The new HQD ALLSTAR arrived mid-project: more powerful, more functions, a display — and a front panel printed with planets. So the hero became space. You arrive at warp speed, the device flies in, an orbit ring draws itself around it, and the planets peel off the print and start circling it in 3D.
Scroll and it becomes a launch sequence: the camera orbits the device while a glass display shows battery, power and mode; then it dives into the panel and jumps to warp. “Ready for take-off?” — and a sign-up for launch day.
- 01Warp in
Star streaks decelerate; a nebula in their teal and blue.
- 02The object
Chrome frame, smoked pod, the real space print as the panel.
- 03The orbit
A ring and a comet, the way their key visual draws it.
- 04The planets
Six bodies lift off the print into orbit around the device.
- 05The mark
ALLSTAR redrawn as vector strokes, drawn on screen line by line.
The ALLSTAR wordmark was supplied as a flat image. It was measured and redrawn as seven round-capped strokes so the page can draw it, light it and scale it.
06 · The object
It has to be the real thing. Three rounds to get there.
The product is the hero, so the product has to be exact. Two builds failed review against the packshot — the notes below are the review, word for word.
Built from memory
A procedural CIRAK 2 in Three.js: lacquer, bloom, a glowing logo. Handsome, and not their device — wrong proportions, round top, a pod that did not exist.
“Die 3D-Vape sieht zu simpel aus.”Review note
Measured from the photo
Silhouette, logo position and LED measured pixel by pixel from the official packshot and lofted into a mesh. Closer — still a reconstruction.
“Das sind immer noch zwei verschiedene.”Review note
The photo becomes the object
Image-to-3D from the official product photo, compressed from 8 MB to 2 MB, recoloured per finish in a shader that keeps logo and LED white. The pod is lofted from its own photo and seated as deep as the real one.
“Wenn der Pod drinnen ist, schaut nur noch dieser Part raus.”Review note
07 · The new site
Every section does one thing, and you can touch it.
Built as a working prototype: one HTML page the client opens in a browser. Everything below runs.
The colour flood
Pick a finish and the whole stage takes its colour. Real packshots of all six batteries, cut out from the client’s photography.
The flavour universe
Eight pods scroll sideways; the room changes colour with each one.
The family
Seven product names became three families. SURV fans out on hover; ALLSTAR leads as a banner.
Original Check
From menu item to front page. A holographic seal you can tilt, a code field that answers in a second.
Mix & Match
The old bundle banners became a set builder: pick 5 or 10, the ring fills.
The film
HQD’s own campaign footage, finally given a full-width stage.
08 · Old vs new
Same company. Same products. Drag.
01First screen, first seconds
02Products
03Mix & Match
09 · The rules
Nicotine is regulated. The rules are part of the design.
German tobacco law restricts how e-cigarettes may be shown and advertised online. Rather than bolting compliance on at the end, the system starts from it.
- 01The warning is architecture
The statutory nicotine warning runs as a fixed white band above everything — designed in, never shrunk.
- 02Two age checks
An age gate on entry, verification at checkout and again on delivery by DHL.
- 03Adults only, visibly
No lifestyle models, no influencers under 25, flavour names as colour and profile instead of cartoon fruit.
- 04No health claims
No “safer”, no “helps you quit”. Specs only where the packaging states them, marked as manufacturer data.
- 05Legal review flagged
Where product information ends and online advertising begins is a question for HQD’s lawyers — marked as such in the concept.
10 · The campaign
Then came the ads. Forty-eight of them.
With the site presented, HQD asked for a marketing folder their retailers could open in Dropbox and use the same day: pick the product they sell, pick the format, download, post. Four products — SURV, JUICE, and the ALLSTAR and ALLSTAR LITE refill systems — two designs each, six formats each.
Every product got its own world rather than a template with the photo swapped. The packshots are HQD’s own, never generated; the worlds around them are built in 3D or set in type, and every frame carries the statutory warning.
- Products
- SURV · JUICE · ALLSTAR system · ALLSTAR LITE system
- Designs
- Two per product: one world, two palettes and type voices
- Formats
- 728 × 90 · 2000 × 800 · 1920 × 1080 · 1080 × 1920 · 2160 × 2160 · 1524 × 1920
- Delivered
- 48 banners for the retailer Dropbox, website, feed and WhatsApp Status
SURV
Type Slice The classic, flying through its own wordmark — in front of one letter, behind the next.
JUICE
Type Stack Five bottles standing on the letters of an extruded JUICE, each with its own contact shadow.
ALLSTAR
Orbit The device from the space print becomes the ship: a banded orange gas giant behind it, pod and liquid on a 3D orbit that passes behind and in front.
ALLSTAR LITE
Weightless “Lite”, made literal: three finishes, a pod and a liquid floating over volumetric cloud at sunset.
One world, six frames.
Nothing is cropped. Each format is composed again: the 3D camera re-frames the products into the space the layout leaves, type scales to the frame, and the thin banner gets a layout of its own.
728 × 90 · website strip, its own layout
Three rounds to a campaign.
The client reviewed every round. Their notes, word for word.
Clean and correct
Product cut-outs on brand orange, every format filled. Tidy — and a layout, not a campaign.
“Something we or even our customers could easily create ourselves.”Review note
Generated worlds
Fruit splashes and nebulae from an image model, products composited in. Louder, and it read as exactly what it was.
“Es darf nicht nach KI aussehen.”Review note
Built, then filmed
Every world modelled in WebGL or set in type, then run through a camera: depth of field, bloom, lens fringing, grain and a grade, so the 3D stops looking like 3D.
“Die 3D-Elemente dürfen nicht so nach Blender aussehen.”Review note
Wordmarks are HQD’s, taken as vectors from their sales folder; ALLSTAR and ALLSTAR LITE were redrawn as strokes because the supplied artwork was a low-resolution bitmap. The ALLSTAR device was cut from its kit box: HQD had no standalone packshot.
11 · The handover
Built to drop into their JTL-Shop.
JTL stays the backend — checkout, payments, age verification, stock from JTL-Wawi. The new design becomes a child template on JTL’s NOVA; the immersive pages load their 3D only where they appear. The client received a single-file preview to open anywhere and a hosting folder for a review link.
NOVA child template: tokens, header, footer, product tiles, checkout skin.
Home, ALLSTAR launch and CIRAK 2 story as template pages with lazy-loaded Three.js.
Set builder to their Mix & Match, launch sign-up to JTL’s availability alerts, Original Check to their existing registry.
Built on a staging copy, signed off, then switched on in the live shop.
One person. Every department.
Strategy
- Diagnosis of the old site
- Positioning “Original. Checkable.”
- IQOS / Apple benchmark
- Information architecture
Brand
- Identity system
- Colour and type
- ALLSTAR wordmark as vector
- Tone of voice
Product & 3D
- Three procedural / measured / image-to-3D rounds
- Space launch scene in WebGL
- Finish shader
- Product cut-outs from client photography
Web
- UX and interaction design
- Front-end prototype
- Single-file build for the client
- JTL integration plan
Campaign
- Retailer media folder, 48 banners
- Four 3D and type worlds
- Format system for six sizes
- Vector wordmarks
Compliance
- Warning, age gate, adult-only rules
- Legal questions flagged
HQD Europe, 2026. The website is a concept, not live yet; the ad campaign was delivered to HQD for their retailers. Nicotine products are for adults only — Dieses Produkt enthält Nikotin, einen Stoff, der sehr stark abhängig macht.
A complete rebrand and website for HQD Europe, set against IQOS and Apple: the old discount shop rebuilt as a filmic brand stage, a space launch for the new HQD ALLSTAR, the CIRAK 2 in exact 3D, and the nicotine rules designed in from the first pixel. Presented as a working prototype for their JTL-Shop — followed by a 48-banner ad campaign for their retailers.
- Client
- HQD Europe
- Role
- Strategy, identity, UX, 3D and front-end — every department
- Year
- 2026
- Disciplines
- Brand strategy, Rebrand, UX design, Web design, Front-end development, WebGL and 3D, Motion design, Launch concept, Paid social and display ads, Compliance by design
- Tools
- Three.js, GLSL, Higgsfield, Python, Claude
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