Designing (Swiss) Premium
Premium is neither a particular style nor a diluted form of luxury. It emerges when design, quality, function and the experience of use align with the brand to create a convincing sense of greater value.
Competing on value, not price
Swiss companies operate in a high-cost environment while competing globally with products that are often just as good. Those that cannot or do not want to compete on price need to show why their product is worth more. This is where premiumization begins: not as a price increase, but as a strategy for creating perceived value.
A good product works reliably and fulfils its purpose. But product quality alone is not enough for premium positioning. A premium product offers additional value that people can recognize, experience and consider relevant. A greater willingness to pay can be a result of this perception.
Premium should not be confused with luxury. Luxury is more strongly driven by rarity, exclusivity and symbolic status. Premium remains fundamentally comparable and needs to communicate why a product is not only good, but worth more.
The premium intent comes first
Premiumization does not begin with design. It begins with a strategic decision about what should make a product worth more.
In design practice, however, we often encounter “premium” as a design instruction: it should look expensive. Wood finishes, gold details, polished surfaces. These can all be premium codes, but they are not yet a premium strategy.
Before design begins, there needs to be clarity about what the brand stands for today and how it is perceived. What premium intent should follow from this for the product or portfolio? Which aspects of the brand promise should become visible and tangible? And why should this matter to the target audience?
Answering these questions is part of the strategic work of management, brand, marketing or product teams. “Make it look more premium” is not a sufficient design brief. A solid brief defines the premium intent in line with the brand promise, target audience, intended effect and relevant business parameters. From this, design can derive the appropriate design principles and design drivers.
Design makes the value proposition tangible
Only then does premiumization become a design task. Brand-led product design translates the strategic intent into the product itself and makes it tangible through design and use.
The means for doing this is product language. Through form, materials, the way a product feels and responds to touch, details and interaction, designers encode meanings and value associations into the product itself. Users read these signals largely intuitively. They perceive qualities such as precision, robustness or exclusivity without needing them to be explained.
Authenticity is crucial. It emerges when these product-language signals are perceived as a credible expression of the brand. Familiar premium or luxury codes can communicate value, but without a meaningful connection to the brand they quickly become interchangeable.
Coherence matters just as much. Brand promise, quality ambition, design and use need to reinforce one another. When these elements align, the premium intent becomes understandable. This can strengthen trust, perceived value and willingness to pay.
Premium has no universal look
There is no universal “premium style”. Premium can be reduced, technical, expressive or opulent. What matters is whether the design fits the specific value proposition of the brand.
A controlled design language can work perfectly for a brand that stands for precision and technical confidence. For another brand, the same restraint may feel generic. In that case, a more expressive or sculptural approach may be more convincing.
High-quality materials, precise details or elaborate finishes do not make a product premium on their own. Context gives them meaning. The question is therefore not what design looks premium in general, but what design convincingly communicates the premium intent of this brand and this product.
What Swissness can contribute
For Swiss brands, there is another factor. Swiss origin is internationally associated with positive expectations around quality, precision, reliability and trust, and can therefore support premium perception.
This influence of origin on how a product is perceived is known as the Country-of-Origin Effect. It matters for premiumization because origin already shapes expectations of quality and value.
A Swiss cross or a “Swiss Made” label alone does not make a product premium. Folkloric codes such as mountains, edelweiss or red and white also remain superficial if they have no meaningful connection to the brand and product.
What matters is that the expectations associated with Switzerland are fulfilled by the product itself. If Swiss origin becomes part of the brand promise, the qualities associated with it need to be reflected in design, manufacturing, function and use. Swissness is therefore not a design style, but a potential source of meaning and trust within the premiumization process.
From intent to system
Premiumization therefore becomes a management task throughout the development process. The premium intent needs to be defined strategically, translated into design, assessed for authenticity and coherence, and ultimately tested against the perception of the target audience.
This is where the Swiss Premiumization Canvas comes in. It is a framework developed by FOND Design for guiding and evaluating premium-related decisions throughout product development and connects four levels:
1. Strategic definition of the premium intent
2. Translation into design
3. Product design development and coherence check
4. Impact validation and premium readiness
This perspective is based on our long-standing design practice with Swiss brands and product manufacturers and was further developed through the Master’s thesis “Brand-Based Product Design as an Instrument of Premiumization: Country-of-Origin Effects and Design Logics in Swiss Companies” at the University of Bern. The work combined a review of existing research with a survey of 42 professionals from management, design, product management and brand management.
Premiumization emerges when a strategic brand ambition is convincingly translated into the product. Brand-led product design brings positioning, product language and use together into a coherent whole. For Swiss brands, origin can also become part of this value proposition where it adds meaning.
Interested in what premiumization could mean for your brand or product portfolio? Talk to Dominic Sturm, author of the Master’s thesis behind the Swiss Premiumization Canvas.