Project Overview
Company: Ride Wild (Formerly Wild Gypsy Tour)
Project: Company Re-Brand
Company Description
Ride Wild is a Powersports & Adventures Collective that hosts women-led events across the country. The company’s products to consumers are primarily events, but also include limited merchandise. The company’s value to sponsors and partners is its highly engaged community (both in-person and on social media), as well as its original and relevant content creation. Ride Wild’s community can be seen in person at events, but is also actively engaged with Ride Wild’s social presence (>16k followers on Instagram).
Problem
COVID-19 shut down the company in 2020 – all events had to be canceled, what now?
The Company was experiencing:
Lack of consistency in brand assets resulting in diminished brand recognition.
Use of culturally derogatory and alienating word in the original name
As the company desired to broaden its key activities and target audience, the company needed a name that would enable broader opportunities and reflect its broader impact.
My Role
As the Head of Product for the company, I advised the Founder to pursue a full rebrand, including: name, logos, colors, fonts, and design elements. With the Founder’s buy-in, I designed and executed a full company rebrand through a series of workshops with the Founder alongside independent iterative design work. I led this process from conception to implementation. The rebrand culminated in a Brand Style Guide, as well as the full re-brand being reflected in the company’s social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, Medium, Facebook, Pinterest), and in the launch of the company’s first-ever custom website (another project I led, discussed more here).
BRANDING MOSAIC
To kick off the process, I created a tool called the “Branding Mosaic”. I have embedded a blank copy of this tool, removing majority of the content for the sake of privacy. This tool is essentially split into three sections:
Introduction to the Business Model Canvas & Lean Canvas
Business Model Exercise - Deep dive into the Canvases
Brand Identity Exercise - Applying outputs of the canvas deep-dive to cultivating a relevant and focused Brand Identity
Over the course of a series of Workshops, the Founder and I worked through the Canvases to achieve internal clarity on what the company is and what it’s trying to do for who and why. Prior to these sessions, the company had yet to establish its mission and purpose to keep it focused in terms of business decisions and activities.
As we segued into the Brand Identity section, it became much easier to think about the Brand’s voice, personality, look and feel knowing the personas we were aiming to connect with and attract.
ITERATIVE DESIGN WORK
Designing the brand assets started with creating mood boards. With a general direction in mind, I used Pinterest to create mood boards for logos, colors, and fonts. This was a great way to get iterative feedback from the Founder on preferences. Pinterest was also a great way to find off the shelf font packages and branding elements on platforms like Creative Market.
Using these boards, the Founder and I selected a color theme and font package. With these selections made, I put together several iterations of the new logo. These iterations were made prior to the rename of the company. The iterations started with building off one of the original logos, but I gradually moved into a new look altogether.
Towards the end of finalizing the rebrand, the new name of the company was finally decided. After making lists of options and discussing with the Founder, I proposed the name “Ride Wild”. It captured the original spirit from Wild Gypsy Tour, while being conducive to a broader audience. With this decision made, I had all the pieces to mock up the final version of the logo. After several iterations, and user feedback, we landed on the last logo on the right shown below.
BRAND STYLE GUIDE
With logo, colors, and font decided, I compiled a Brand Style Guide to maintain as reference as the brand continues to evolve. The Style Guide is accessible below. With assets created and complete, the Founder and I applied the branding to all other company assets: Social Media, Website, Email Campaigns and all other relevant collateral.
To seal the deal, I issued a name change amendment, on behalf of the Founder, to officially change the name from Wild Gypsy Tour, LLC to Ride Wild, LLC. (Trademark is pending).