Maxell has been recognized for over fifty years for its exceptional consumer electronics, including cassette tapes, VHS tapes, headphones, and batteries. In addition to technological innovations, in the 1980s Maxell also gave birth to a true pop culture icon through its popular ads featuring the “Blown Away Guy” with his hair and tie being blown away by the high fidelity of the cassette tape playing through the speaker. Today, Maxell offers a comprehensive line of headphones, earbuds, batteries and digital media products as well as care, maintenance and storage products.

Hoping to reengage their brand with a new generation, Maxell came to Vision looking for a bold, new and responsive website that would reflect their retro-modern style. The original “Blown Away” ad and the newly reimagined 2005 revival featuring new products and a fierce “Blown Away Woman” both resonated with our team and inspired us throughout this project. We kicked everything off by completely immersing ourselves in the Maxell brand, really putting our fingers on the pulse of the company and what it means when they say “it’s still worth it.” Diving into their history, current product offerings, competition, target audience, brand positioning, and marketing objectives, we first partnered with Maxell on a creative brief and identified the goals for this project. Running with this knowledge, we then created a digital mood board, exploring colors, graphic treatments, and fonts with the mindset of paying homage to the charismatic nostalgia of the brand while creating a fresh, stylish design. Incorporating a mobile-first approach with the user-experience at the forefront, VCG then designed and developed a completely new WordPress website that communicates that their products are undoubtedly “Still Worth It.”

Since launching the new website, Maxell has received positive feedback internally and from both customers and other companies. Extremely user-friendly, engaging and responsive, the website combines a cool, modern look with a nod to this classic brand’s history. We are proud to say the site’s design earned our team another award from GD USA Magazine!