A Lisbon furniture workshop, taken online without sweeping up the sawdust.

Everything in the workshop turns, so the shop does too: every piece can be spun on screen before anyone buys it.

The brief

Torno is nine people and four lathes in a former cork warehouse in Xabregas, making stools, tables and lamps in Portuguese chestnut and ash. Until 2020 it sold through the workshop door and two shops in Lisbon, and had no website at all.

Both shops closed that spring. The founders needed to sell abroad, online, without becoming a furniture brand that only photographs well. The brief was a name for the work they already did, a shop and a film, on a budget of under €40,000.

The idea

The name was already on the door: torno is Portuguese for lathe. The wordmark is set wide and light, with an O as round as a turned leg seen end on, and nothing else on the page is decorated.

Every piece was filmed turning slowly on the lathe, so the shop shows it from all sides in 36 frames. The workshop reworked its joints so legs unscrew by hand, and we designed a flat box around them.

What we made

Identity and wordmark
Shopify store with 360° product views
Flat-pack box, swing tags and tape
60-second campaign film
Product photography direction

A dim woodworking shop with turned stools and a round table in raking window light, sawdust in the air — From “Volta”, the campaign film, shot in the Xabregas workshop in a single day.

How the mark moves

The letters turn on their own axis like a blank on the lathe, slowly, then stop with the grain facing out. The same spin runs on every product in the shop.

Close-up of the end of a turned chestnut leg with a brass thread, resting on a workbench among shavings

Made to unscrew

Every leg now unscrews by hand, so a dining table ships in one flat box 14 cm deep. Delivery to Berlin costs less than half what a crated table did.

A flat kraft shipping box printed in one chestnut ink, with swing tags, tape and a turned leg on a workbench — Box, swing tags and tape, printed in one chestnut ink on unbleached board.

What changed

of sales made online in year one
From a standing start: the workshop had no website before.
countries shipped to in the first year
Most orders go to Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
of orders on the books, up from three
The workshop took on two more turners in 2022.

Who made it

Orvel

Tomás FerreiraDesign direction and shopLisbon
Kayode AdebayoCampaign filmLondon
Anjali RaoCreative directionLondon

With

Client team: Joana Teles, Hugo Pinto
Film: Kayode Adebayo (director), Pedro Lacerda (camera)
Photography: Duarte Vieira
Boxes: Cartonagem Tejo, Vila Franca de Xira
Shopify development: Orvel engineering

Next project Medical interpreting app, 2021ouviAn on-demand interpreting app that puts a professional interpreter on a ward tablet in under a minute.