We’re getting a new personality!

When we started out, it was just Ankit and me working out of our apartment. We wanted to get our business up as fast as possible and hacked together a basic logo and design which continues till today. After we received Angel funding, we started rethinking our brand and identity and went back to the drawing board to design from scratch. The whole team contributed and here’s what we came up with and the thought and steps that went into designing our new logo. In a following post, I’ll share our upcoming website design!

Our new logo:

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Our old logo:

Olacabslogowhitebg

What we wanted

We were clear about what we wanted our brand to stand for. One big decision was to drop the “cabs” from our logo and focus on building the “OLA” brand. Some characteristics we wanted OLA to convey were:

  • Reliability and Safety
  • Transparency
  • Youthful and a sense of humor

While listing characteristics, we also listed our inspirations, both Indian and International: Apple, Nike, Zomato, Cleartrip and even IndiGo Airlines.

A logo is key to any business and we decided to work with a good independent designer who would spend time with us to understand what we wanted. Our designer Anuj, who has his own design startup – DSYN, did a wonderful job of listening to us and patiently iterating through various concepts. We eventually narrowed down to the new logo keeping a few characteristics in mind.

Iconic shape

Logos based on shape are much more memorable. Think Apple, Nike, Cleartrip etc. For us, a very natural shape to work with was the circle. We decided to go with a customized geometric font balanced by an iconic circle in brush strokes.

Media and device portability

Logos need to be portable across many devices these days but for us, there was an added dimension of the real world – Our logo would go on our cabs. Our logo needed to be very memorable, short on text and usable in variety of scenarios. Here’s some different use cases of our logo.

Screen_shot_2011-09-13_at_5Screen_shot_2011-09-13_at_5

Timeless appeal

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We’re firm beleivers in the timelessness of logos (again think Apple, Nike!). We’ve tried to come up with a logo we feel is independent of color, background, media etc. Time will tell!

Accentuate with Color

We wanted color to just accentuate the shape of our logo and be sparingly used. We decided on green to keep the logo lively and pleasing to the eye.

Free from unintended baggage

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We were considering the logo on top but it inadvertedly reminded people of the Doordarshan logo! We wanted the logo to be fresh and not equated with legacy brands!

Going through the branding exercise has been useful beyond just getting the new logo designed. We got to think deeper on what we want to promise to our customers and what customers should expect from us. Many future strategies that were bubbling in our minds got discussed and compartmentalized.

What do you think? How do you like our new identity?

One thought on “We’re getting a new personality!

  1. VJ

    WELL I DONT WNAT TO TALK AS DESIGNER OR GREAT TALKSLOOK FORM ANGLE OF CUTOMER , YES THIS SHADE OF GREEN WITH BALCK IS NICE, WHY NOT HAD JUST ASH OR SLICE OF PINK TOO IN THE EXISTING LOGO , WILL LOOK COLORFUL AND GREAT , OR LILAC

    Reply

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