Wheels
Ride safe
Wheels is the most cutting-edge, dock-less bike on the market. The core product focused on beautiful form, amazing function, and most importantly — safety. The mission we defined was to provide a low-cost, safer, and more universally accessible option to get around your city. Ride safe.
While at Wheels I was the sole designer producing everything you see below, and only hiring out contractors for videography and photography.
SCOPE OF WORK
Brand, Product design, Web, Illustration, Campaigns, Sales materials, GUI design
The
Brand
The Wheels mark paired with a custom logotype follows the form, color, and finish of the Wheels device itself. Ride safe.
Brand strategy, Brand identity
Why?
Everyone deserves safe travel.
Value Proposition
Wheels provides safety, sustainability, and an amazing rider experience.
Visual Identity
Wheels' visual identity is built on universality, with simple primary colors and gradient versions of those colors — all expressed on a black and white canvas.
The logo is a motif of a wheel traveling smoothly over a surface — which we simply call The Wheel.
A custom typeface was designed to allow Wheels to easily create subsidiary products and services while keeping the brand identity consistent.
Typography, Fonts
Go beyond just riding.
GoWheels.
Wheels is uniquely designed so that you can easily add attachments — like baskets for delivery. I helped to develop a subsidiary brand at Wheels called GoWheels, of which we did some internal branding and strategy to create a rental program targeting delivery gig workers.
The
Products
3 million rides... and counting.
While at Wheels I designed the entire application architecture on iOS and Android and created multiple product experiences — one for our riders, the other for our ecosystem of independent contractors known asTransporters, and lastly one for our employees know as the Pit Crew.
Product design, Illustration
Wheels Riders
Signed (up), sealed, delivered.
The app is meant to be engaged as quickly as possible so that a first-time rider can sign up and begin riding in a goal of 3 minutes, while a recurrent rider can start a ride in less than 15 seconds.
We improved onboarding through various iterations and got to a 90% success rate for the first-time user sign up, payment, and start ride process.
Wheels Transporters
Transport bikes. Earn cash.
The Transporter community is the life-blood of Wheels — they are responsible for moving bikes to Hubs so that our Pit Crew can pick them up, bring them back to the warehouse and re-charge them.
We developed an entire ecosystem around our Transporter community and paid out hundreds of thousands in cash for each bike bounty rendered.
Wheels Pit Crew
Every rider needs a crew. Repairs, inventory, maintenance.
The Pit Crew are the operations of the Wheels ecosystem. They pick up the bikes, bring them back to the warehouse and do all manner of maintenance.
We developed ML photo models to keep track of the millions of parts needs to keep our bikes in top shape.
Illustrations
Simple, flat illustration styles communicate clearly and universally so that riders can quickly capture the message and be on their way.
The illustrations are also built on the story of 'flying free' or 'the sky's the limit' — which is exemplified in the use of light blue throughout the visual language of the brand.
Illustration, Messaging
Different perspectives
Each illustration falls into two categories: isometric or frontal perspective. These rules helped me to more easily situate the illustrations depending on the context they were trying to communicate.
Representing every rider
A skin-tone palette to make sure Wheels was representing all of our riders in our illustrations.
The
Bike
Beautifully crafted with quality manufacturing, Wheels stands out amongst the mass produced devices of its competitors. With amazing features like Bluetooth speakers and a hygienic helmet, Wheels invests in amazing industrial design every step of the way.
GUI design, Photography
The
Web
Wheels on the web. Wheels has a unique website architecture in that they sell, rent, and advertise their micro-mobility options — all on separate sites.
The
Outreach
Wheels continuously invested in multiple outreach programs centered around the ethos of safety and community.
Advertising, Video
A campaign seen by millions, with over 50+ locations in the most trafficked parts of Los Angeles.
"It is rare to work at company where they say are passionate about something and they actually make projects to pursue that. Wheels actually does it."
– Amelia H., Senior Project Engineer
Giving back to cities. Serving those in need.
Every city we operated in had a diversity of people interacting with Wheels — including those living on the streets amongst the bikes. Oftentimes, the homeless community would confiscate a dock-less bike and use it to cart around their belongings. To establish a more positive relationship with that demographic we created a charitable outreach called Meals which would bring food and nourishment to those impoverished communities.
Brand, Photography
Social
Wheels riders are the heroes of the brand. We love to collaborate, photograph, and build a culture around the Wheels brand on social.
Photography
