A product family built around one design decision: turning the function light into a ring that wraps the product — the first indirect light source in this category for Vestel.
Vestel came with a theme in mind and a clear ambition: move away from their existing appliance language and build something distinctly new. The Sefa series was developed in close collaboration with Vestel Design Studio — they defined the direction, and the full design development process was carried out together.
The result was a family of four core products — plastic and metal tea makers, plastic and metal Turkish coffee machines — that expanded through glass and metal teapot variants, color options, and material combinations into a range that served multiple customer segments from a single coherent platform.
The design language had to be simple and fluid, with balanced proportions and a clean visual identity across every product in the family. The brief asked for something genuinely different from what existed in Vestel's lineup — not a refinement, but a new direction.
The answer came from the function light. Instead of treating it as a small indicator on the surface, we turned it into a ring that wraps the product — an indirect light source that became both a design element and a first for the category within Vestel. That single decision gave the entire series its identity.
Every appliance has a function light. Sefa made it the design.
Idea
Vestel wanted a series that stood apart from everything already in their range. The idea that unlocked the direction was simple: take the one element every appliance already has — the function indicator light — and redesign it from a small surface detail into a defining visual feature, a ring of indirect light wrapping the entire product.
The original vision for the platform went further: a fully base-controlled automatic tea maker, where power, temperature, and brew time were all managed through the base itself. That version didn't reach production — but the ambition behind it shaped how the rest of the series was conceived, as a platform with real intelligence built in from the start.
Form
Simple, fluid forms with balanced proportions — a clean visual family that reads as coherent across plastic and metal finishes, across tea makers and coffee machines. The light ring isn't an addition to the form; it's integrated into the product's silhouette, so the product reads differently when it's active than when it's at rest.
Color variants and material combinations — glass and metal teapots, colored bodies — extended the same platform into multiple sub-ranges without requiring a new design for each.
Function
Four core products — plastic tea maker, metal tea maker, plastic Turkish coffee machine, metal Turkish coffee machine — each carrying every function their category requires. The platform's design flexibility let small changes in material, color, or teapot type create distinct product lines from a single shared design logic, serving different customer segments without multiplying complexity.
Differentiation
The indirect light ring was a first for this product category within Vestel — and a rare feature in the broader small appliance market. It gave the Sefa series an immediately recognizable identity that no existing product in Vestel's range had, while staying well within the clean, minimal language the brief asked for.
The platform's flexibility is the second differentiator: one design system that could address multiple price points and customer profiles through material and color variation alone, without starting over for each segment. The base-controlled automatic version that didn't make it to production points to where the platform was always capable of going.
Impact
The Sefa series remained in Vestel's product range for years, serving multiple customer segments through its material and color variants. A single coherent platform that grew into a full product family — without losing the visual identity that made it recognizable in the first place.
Working in close collaboration with Vestel Design Studio meant the process was genuinely shared — not a handoff, but a parallel development where both sides contributed to the outcome. Understanding what Vestel's team was trying to achieve, and then finding the design decisions that would get them there, is a different kind of creative work than working alone from a brief.
The light ring decision was the project's turning point. Once it was resolved — once the function indicator became a design element rather than an afterthought — the rest of the family followed naturally from that single idea. The base-controlled automatic concept, though it didn't reach production, pushed the platform's ambition further than the brief alone would have taken it.
Four core products, multiple variants, one design language — the Sefa series expanded Vestel's small appliance range with a platform flexible enough to serve different markets, and distinctive enough to stand apart in all of them.