Voi: Micromobility Accessibly Rebranded

Read about the project here

Voi is Europe’s largest micromobility provider, renowned for their e-scooters – their mission statement being “Cities made for living, free from noise and pollution”. In 2021, Voi was awarded Global Startup of the Year 2021 (Global Startup Awards), in recognition of its leading micromobility operations. I joined the growing design team in that year as Senior Designer, leading Voi’s in-house rebrand as well as responsible for large parts of brand roll-out and design implementation. I took lead on all international campaigns, including graphic profile for the award winning campaign "Let's get it right" (Svenska Design Priset 2022, Gold – Film/Animation, Technology & Services) Summer campaigns saw as high as 400% increase in email engagement.

In-house rebrand

With mission statement “Cities made for living”, “15-minute city” concept, and safety campaigns at the forefront of Voi’s communication, it meant redefining video and photography – translating concepts into tangible, relevant and meaningful communication – guiding audiences through concepts, products and services.

Illustration systems of Voi’s distinguished style were designed and implemented to improve communication in simple, straightforward and clear manners.

After having recently moved from the UK (where I had been focusing on implementation of AA accessibility), I knew Voi needed to meet AA a11y standards. It was also clear from the start that Voi would benefit from implementing a DAM (design asset management) system, with editable templates fit for localisation for the European market (solving labourintensive translations) and all the benefits that comes with DAM control of brand. Fonts needed to be accessible for the vast amount of presentations and pitches for new contracts, which naturally guided our choice of typeface, and in turn typography and design grids. These insights informed every step of the design system from typography, colour contrast and grids.

Project
Voi rebrand

Year
2022

Client
Voi Technology

Type
Corporate design

Location
Stockholm, Sweden

Project Role
Senior Designer

Photography

An improvement from staged images to a cinematic, yet journalistic lens – inclusive with product in focus without being overly obvious. A new narrative of micro stories centred around destinations and situations of Voi users with a cohesive and engaging look and feel.

Typography

Voi previously used a typeface which wasn't ownable, nor recognisable as Voi. In search of a new typeface, new requirements had to be considered. Sora, by Jonathan Barnbrook (Google Fonts) met all of our requirements.

Considerations and requirements

Enough character to be recognisable
Accessible and suitable for Voi's needs
Ownable in industry
Humane with a technological feel
Easy to use for non-designers
Affordable for international roll-out

Illustration

Voi's already existing illustration style by Katrin Hauks, were revamped and organised in composition, with a carefully considered file set-up to work seamlessly with the new DAM system's icon library. As a result, illustrations can be composed and localised for the international market – feeling relevant on each location.

Illustration formula based on three levels of depth and palettes:

Foreground (extended coral)
– Main message
Background (extended blue)
– Contextual
Distance (extended grey)
– Geographic

* Illustrations by Katrin Hauks

Iconography

Icons in the Voi app doesn't change often and when they do, they are given a lot of love. The scope hence turned towards everyday powerusers in pitches and presentations, where prominent factors of cohesive style and an extensive library became focus.

Colour themes

Voi colour palette needed to be revisited and structured to meet AA a11y standards. Voi coral needed to be slightly altered without being noticable. Main colour themes with specified purposes were created to guide the overall balancing of the palette. Coral theme for e.g. brand recognition, Light theme for web and other neutral environments, and a Dark Theme for moving image, and photography-heavy compositions.

Extended pallete

Illustration as well as data visualisation demanded an extended palette with inherent contrast requirements. To retain this control and limit misuse, each colour range was limited to five shades.

Data visualisation

The new extended palette is also designed for data visulisation and innate contrast requirements. Guides to charts and when-and-how to use them were also part of the task, as well as a range of other application examples.

Campaigns

Leading all international campaigns for digital, social and OOH. General considerations were localisation and translation into several European languages, animation and a need for brand recognition. A great opportunity to apply the new visual identity and see it come alive.

Let's get it right
Design of graphic profile for the award winning campaign "Let's get it right" (Svenska Design Priset 2022 – Gold, Film/animation,Techology/Services)

Events

Design for Micromobility Disability Summit 22. The logo acts as a vessel for composition and graphic treatments.

110_bus_station_urban_poster_mockup-Recovered

London-Underground-Ad-Screen-Mock-Up_MDS22

Templates

Design and testing of a wide range of templates and application guidelines for our DAM system, all based on messaging hierarchies, ease of customisation, usability testing, and costs.

Voi-Explorer_hanger-template_V2_99x210mm-1

Express-Van-Cargo-Carriers-Mockup-02-Recovered

All templates are accessible via the DAM system and can be edited where necessary, and downloaded through an approval system. In this example, hangtags are editable for localisation purposes.