SOLEY · CMF & CIRCULAR DESIGN STUDIO
I design the way things feel.
Design teams work with me to turn material, colour and sensory thinking into strategy.
What people see, touch, and feel about your product is your brand. Most design teams make those decisions under pressure, without a system, and without a clear map for where materials are heading. I help you build both.
The work is for design-driven companies ready to move from decorative material thinking to strategic, where circularity, sensory identity and brand clarity become the same ambition.
HOW I WORK
Clarity
Teams move from scattered references and gut instinct to a shared material language they can name and defend.
Relevance
Every direction is grounded in your brand, your market and the cultural moment, never borrowed from a trend report.
Confidence
You leave with a system you can use, not just a document, one your team can build from long after we've finished.
Alignment
The work we do together becomes the foundation for decisions across design, brand, and product.
HOW WE CAN WORK TOGETHER
Direction Setting
For teams who need to find, or reclaim, a clear material and colour vision.
You're launching a new line, entering a new market, or realigning after a brand shift. You need a CMF direction that is grounded, differentiated, and built to last. CMF strategy, trend foresight and circular thinking, combined into a direction your team can name, defend and build from.
What's included:
— CMF audit and competitive landscape
— Material, colour and finish direction
— Circular principles brief built in from the start
— Presentation-ready strategy deck
Typically 6–10 weeks
Project Support
For teams with a direction who need a senior hand to carry it through.
You have a brief. You need someone who has done this before, who can develop colour and material specifications, source the right suppliers, and keep the quality of thinking consistent from first sketch to final sample. Material scouting where it adds real value.
What's included:
— CMF development across design phases
— Colour, finish and material specification
— Material and supplier sourcing
— Prototype review and manufacturing coordination
Duration project-dependant
Advisory Cadence
For design leaders who want a thinking partner on call.
A recurring engagement, monthly or quarterly, to pressure-test decisions, track where materials, AI, and sustainability are heading, and maintain design rigour across your portfolio. The equivalent of a senior CMF director, without the headcount.
What's included:
— Regular strategy sessions
— Trend briefings including AI-driven material and sustainability developments
— Review of ongoing projects
— Ad hoc support between sessions
Ongoing, minimum 3 months
SELECTED WORK
Bang & Olufsen Beosound Explore
CMF direction for B&O's first outdoor speaker, materials chosen to age with use.
Bang & Olufsen Core Palette
Built the foundational CMF system unifying B&O's product family. A shared material and colour language across generations.
NIO CMF Design Identity
Senior CMF designer on NIO's brand identity system. The material and colour logic that runs from badge to cabin, to stores and accessories, across the entire lineup.
Scent of The Unreal
AI-generated visions of surfaces that don't yet exist, each paired with a bespoke fragrance. A multi-sensory prototype asking what materials could become.
Volkswagen Adaptive Design for Circularity
Led a cross-disciplinary team across strategy, exterior, interior, UX, and CMF designing a full circular car concept built on longevity, modularity, and recyclability.
NIO EVE Concept
Led full CMF for NIO's origin concept, the car that established the material and sensory language the brand still builds from.
“Working with Lyse on our sustainability positioning was one of those rare experiences where the process itself becomes part of the outcome.”
She came in as a strategic guide at a moment when we wanted to translate our expertise into a clearer strategic direction.
She guided the work with precision and warmth, moving us from inventory to identity in a way that felt both rigorous and human.
The framework she introduced gave us a way to think about our innovation portfolio. We left with clarity we hadn’t had before, and a direction we could actually act from.
BASF Coatings Design Team
ABOUT
I'm Lyse Martel, a CMF and circular design strategist with fifteen years of practice, where material culture, sensory intelligence and brand identity meet.
Across Volkswagen Group and work for Bang & Olufsen, NIO and Hopium, materials were never decorative, they were intentional.
I founded SOLEY on a single conviction: circularity and beauty are the same ambition. A product designed to last, made from materials that respect their origin, will always feel more honest and more desirable than one that does not.
Feeling is intelligence.
SOLEY is named for the Icelandic buttercup, sóley, a flower that turns toward light. Lyse, in Norwegian, means light. Soleil, in French, means sun.
PRESS & SPEAKING
Fast Company · Design Can Make You Feel Things
Plural Magazine · Scent of the Unreal
SXSW · Tomorrow's Journey: The Future In-Car Experience International CMF
Conference, Shenzhen · Feeling is Intelligence
