Project Layton is an answer to the traditional storage brands. High end memory has generally been controlled by a few large players, and they have become complacent, offering smaller performance improvements at increasingly higher prices. Premium memory is a high margin business ripe for disruption.
View designDesign a solid state drive that is competitive on price, performance and reliability.
Create a brand identity that resonates with consumers and laptop distributors.
Create marketing material and a social media campaign that showcase Project Layton’s competitive advantage.
In order to put together the drive, we worked closely with Chinese manufacturer, Shenzhen Just Technology. We had a lot of freedom on the board design including the controller, flash chips, cache, enclosure, and even the PCB. We made sure to factor in reliability, as well as price and performance in order to provide a 3 year warranty and a good customer experience.
Our next challenge was to create a design for the SSD casing. We chose a neutral colour scheme that would compliment a variety of builds and a contemporary brushed aluminium finish with chamfered edges.
Project Layton's logo was built from primitive shapes to inspire intrigue. I chose burnt yellow as the main accent colour for the advertising to stand out against the reds and blues of the SSD world. The advertising is high contrast and clean using clear visual hierarchy.
As you can see from our performance figures Project Layton compares very favourably against SSD brands in a similar price range with an enviable 97.5% reliability rating*. We partnered with distributors; New and Used Laptops 4 U and Grab a Laptop, to provide all their machines with Project Layton solid state drives. Project Layton climbed to number 3 in the eBay UK SSD search rankings.
However, this will probably be the last Project Layton batch we produce, due to rising memory prices and shrinking margins. We are satisfied that we have achieved what we set out to do; producing and marketing a high quality competitive SSD brand that has been a viable and vibrant addition to the solid state market.
*based on consumer data collected from Project Layton sales.