Sogand Nobahar
Brand Strategist & Creative Director
I help founders build brands that reflect the true value of what they have made.
I work across strategy, visual identity, websites, photography and 3D. Not because I collect disciplines, but because a brand is not delivered in pieces. The person who decides what it should feel like should also be the one holding the camera and choosing the typeface.
Based in Piedmont. Working internationally.
Emotional Spatialism
Emotional Spatialism is the idea that identity is spatial. A brand is not only seen, it is felt, and it occupies space the way an object does.
It came out of making things. A ring changes the space around a hand. A piece on a wall changes the room it is in. When I started building brands, I found the same thing was true and almost nobody was designing for it. A brand occupies emotional space or it does not occupy anything.
So I do not start with a logo. I start with the question of what someone should feel in the first three seconds, before they have understood anything. The visual decisions come out of that answer.
How I Got Here
I was born in Iran and studied industrial design in Tehran. I came to Milan in 2008. A master’s degree in Product Service System Design at Politecnico di Milano, then two specialist master’s, jewellery design at Politecnico di Milano and jewellery engineering at Politecnico di Torino. I live in Piedmont now, in the hills where the wine I help make comes from.
The digital came before the physical. I was modelling and rendering from 2014, three years before the first piece existed as an object. That order matters, and it is the reason I can say something most people offering 3D cannot: I make the things I render.
In 2017 I founded Nobahar Design, a contemporary jewelry and design brand, and built it alone. Product, identity, exhibitions, e-commerce, photography, press. Fifty exhibitions in twenty countries. Paris Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, New York Jewelry Week, Florence Biennale.
In 2018 I became creative director for Francesco Iandolo, a winery in the Colli Tortonesi, and built the brand before the first bottle existed. It is now in Forbes at 96 points.
From 2022 to 2025 I co-founded and ran Orbyline, a digital fashion studio in Milan. Digital collections for SYKY and DressX, AR work, and a three-film animated series funded through the Octant Community Fund.
I also write and I shoot. Articles for Klimt02 on 3D printing and the digital shift in jewelry. Editorial work as a contributor at ALANA. Every photograph on this site is mine.
I am not one thing. I never have been. I work across disciplines because that is how I think, and it is what lets me see the connections a specialist misses.
What I Do For Founders
Brand strategy and positioning. Visual identity. Websites, designed and built. Photography and art direction. 3D and CGI for products that need to exist as an image before they exist as an object.
I take on a handful of projects at a time. I work independently, with a small network of specialists when a project needs them, and I direct everything myself.
Selected Recognitions
- Florence Biennale, Special Commendation from the President, for MyCity Bloody Tehran in the I AM MAHSA project, 2023.
- SNAG “Revolution”, selected among 55 from 230 submissions, 2023.
- Gioiello in Fermento, selected 2019 to 2022.
- London International Creative Competition, Honourable Mention, 2019.
- Milano Jewelry Week, Avanguardia Wunderkammer Selection, 2019.
- Bijoux Museum Casalmaggiore, Award for “Redefining a Jewel”, 2018.
- Venice Design Week, Third Prize, Jewellery Selection, 2017.
- “A Jewel For Life” International Contest, First Prize, 2017.
- Fifty exhibitions in twenty countries since 2017.
Press
Photography
I shoot as well as I design.
If you are building something real and it does not yet look like what it is, write to me.
→ Email me