visuals: https://disk.360.yandex.ru/client/aa/d_vTimlfQRWVyfgg/

How Max Paint turned the visual noise of the coatings category into a competitive advantage.

Radar agency helped Russian company “Zvezda-EM”, a coatings distributor with 20 years in the automotive refinish market, become a manufacturer with a brand of its own. Max Paint was created for automotive body shop painters and designed around a single principle: a product should look as precise as the work it is made for.

In an automotive body shop, the label is the first test a product has to pass. Long before a painter opens a technical data sheet or sprays a test panel, they have already decided whether the can in front of them looks like a professional tool or a compromise. In a category where the wrong choice costs hours of rework, that first impression carries real weight.

Max Paint is a professional automotive refinish system of primers, basecoats, clearcoats, fillers and ancillaries developed for automotive body shop painters. Radar agency developed the brand story, positioning, tagline, visual identity and the complete packaging system for the range.

A Distributor Becomes a Manufacturer
For two decades, Russian company “Zvezda-EM” built its business on distributing professional Japanese and European automotive coatings. In 2022, the major international refinish brands, including Sikkens, Standox and Glasurit, exited the Russian market, and around 80% of the company’s revenue was suddenly at risk.
The company could stay a distributor with a shrinking-to-none portfolio or invest in production and a brand of its own. Zvezda-EM chose the second path.

That decision raised a hard question: automotive body shop painters had spent their entire careers working with global brands, so why would they trust a new local manufacturer? The task went far beyond product quality.

Brief main goal for Radar agency was to create a brand that automotive body shop painters would trust on equal terms with the international products they used to work with, starting from the first look at the shelf.

The Category Problem: Visual Noise
During the research stage, we audited the current state of automotive coatings category and found the same pattern on every shelf: bright colours, busy graphics, text-heavy labels and decorative details competed for attention. Instead of helping automotive body shop painters find the right product quickly, the packaging made the category harder to navigate and made it difficult to tell a reliable product from a compromise.

Together with Max Paint, the team decided to move in the opposite direction.

Technology. Craft. Result.
Max Paint’s purpose is practical: to help automotive body shop painters save time, reduce risk and achieve a predictable result from the first application. These principles became the foundation of the positioning and the brand philosophy, and they are compressed into the tagline:

Technology. Craft. Result.

The three-word formula follows the actual sequence of work in a spray booth and states the brand’s promise without any further explanation. The brand story combines technological capability with local manufacturing expertise.

Technical Aesthetics
The design concept is built on technical aesthetics: a visual language where beauty comes from precision itself and every element on the label has a job to do.
Strict geometry, metallic accents and a modular packaging system position Max Paint as a serious, technology-driven manufacturer at first glance. A concise logo, a restrained color palette and metallic tones reinforce a sense of discipline, precision and control.

The label architecture is designed for fast product navigation. A clear information hierarchy, a pictogram system and containers with distinctive truncated corners help automotive body shop painters identify the product type and its purpose from a distance, before reading a single line of text. Across the full range, that silhouette becomes a signature shape the eye finds instantly on a crowded shelf.

The type pairing of Druk and TT Interphases Pro Mono balances strength with technical precision. A modular label system allows the identity to scale across product lines and packaging formats without losing consistency.

The project delivered a complete brand design system: logo, brand guidelines, visual identity, corporate workwear and packaging for the entire product range.

After analyzing the category and relevant benchmarks, we saw that the automotive coatings market was visually overloaded. To make Max Paint stand out, we moved away from decorative excess and focused on clarity and precision. This led us to a minimalist label system that reflects the character of the brand. We drew inspiration from the environment of professional body shops and removed unnecessary details in favor of technical aesthetics: geometry, strict typography and metallic tones.
Alexey Panov, Senior Designer, Radar

Results That Show at First Sight
The new identity helped Max Paint stand out in the category and build trust among automotive body shop painters. Branding, originally planned as the final step of the product launch, became the starting point of a much wider business transformation.
Dealers that had previously declined to list the brand added Max Paint to their portfolios. The sales team noticed the change in the very first meeting with a potential partner: where conversations used to open with price and technical specifications, the packaging now created a positive impression before the product itself came up.

The business results followed. In the brand’s first year, distribution grew from 5 to 38 regions, covering most of the country. The line expanded to 145 SKUs, and the share of the company’s own brand in total revenue rose from 5% to 75%.

In a market going through a major redistribution, Max Paint has become a clear and recognizable reference point for automotive body shop painters, a brand associated with confidence and predictable results.

The changes of 2022 created space on the shelf. Max Paint showed that filling that space with a quality product is only half the job. To earn the trust of automotive body shop painters, a brand also has to look, speak and behave in a way that makes its value clear from the very first interaction.

About Radar
Radar is a branding and communications agency specializing in complex, integrated projects: brand creation, rebranding, design and communication support.

The agency works across both Russian and international markets, with experience spanning China, the United Kingdom, CIS countries, Central Asia, South Africa and the UAE.

Radar combines strategic thinking, creative development and design to help businesses build brands that are relevant to their markets and ready to grow.

Credits
Radar
COO: Maria Lopatina
Strategy Director: Anton Grishchenko
Art Director: Daniil Shumakov
Senior Designer: Alexey Panov
Motion Designer: Maxim Lott
Creative Group Head: Daria Lukina
Senior Account Manager: Anastasia Goryushkina
New Business Manager: Daria Khramtsova

Designer : Radar Agency

Location : Russian Federation, Moscow

Project : Precision Over Decoration: A Packaging System for Professional Automotive Refinish

Client : Max Paint