New visual language for Yandex Taxi

Yandex.Taxi’s new visual language: how to stand out on a yellow background

ONY Agency together with Yandex.Taxi team has developed a new visual language for the brand. Numbers, placed on the board of the car, and dynamic colour blocks have become a distinctive feature of the service’s vehicles on the city streets and makes it easier for passengers to find “their’’ cars.

Tasks

Since Yandex launched the online taxi service in 2011, the market has changed a lot. Just recently people were avoiding taxis but now they are used by almost everyone and the number of «yellow» cars on the streets has increased significantly. So it has become evident that there is a long-felt need for Yandex.Taxi to change qualitatively, while maintaining the main values of the brand: functionality and humanity.

Yandex’s communications are mainly focused on digital, and Yandex.Taxi is the most offline service of the Yandex family. For the user, it is not only a convenient app but also the real cars that they use to move around the city and see on the streets. Therefore the visual language of Yandex.Taxi should work effectively in both online and offline environments. Cars must be easily recognisable in any situation: it is important for the passenger to quickly see and identify “their” taxi, regardless of the time of the day or weather conditions.

Besides, several important nuances had to be taken into account when developing a visual solution: the design had to keep continuity and consistency (the logo, font and Yandex.Taxi brand colours had to remain intact), no classic “checker pattern” had to be used, and the pasting schemes for the branding of the fleet cars had to be both cost-efficient and take into account the features of different car models.

Conceptualisation

When we develop design concepts, we focus on the final consumer of the product and their user experience, which we are trying to significantly improve through design elements. Therefore, a crucial stage in the development of the new visual language for Yandex.Taxi has been benchmark surfing. We have done a lot of analytical work, investigated the best transport marking systems in the world’s most advanced cities, studied the visual codes of special purpose vehicles and even used sci-fi movies about the future towards which Yandex.Taxi is heading. We have also been looking for real-life insights, as we are all taxi users.

The Yandex.Taxi team has accumulated a wealth of knowledge about its users and knows all the production subtleties and legal restrictions of branding cars. This experience has proved to be indispensable in developing a new visual language for the brand. So together with the service team, we have held joint brainstorming and workshop sessions. This has helped us to find the best solution faster and create a bold and contemporary visual language.

Solution

“We wanted to achieve functional clarity and simplicity for Yandex.Taxi, to make the visual language a tool that improves the user experience. Surely many people have experienced a situation when in a crowded place there are several yellow taxis at the same time and you have to look up the number to find your car. This gave us the idea to place the number of the car plate also on the side of the vehicle and make it large and visible. The solution distinguishes the cars of the service and solves the problem of finding the right taxi among all the cars coming up”. — Max Orlov, Founder and Creative Director at ONY Agency

“When we were designing this project, we wanted to create a sense of a comfortable future. Not space and flying cars, but something comfy and simple, that is available already now.” — Sergey Lavrinenko, Art Director at ONY Agency.

We have combined the minimalistic concept of on board numbers with a new graphic system. This solution, first and foremost, creates a smooth user experience at every stage of interaction with the service — from the app icon to the look of Yandex.Taxi’s cars. It also ensures consistency of brand communications and 100% brand recognisability.

The visual solution is based on the idea of dynamic colour blocks, the ratio and position of which can be changed in response to tasks and carriers. Yellow, white and black were chosen as Yandex.Taxi’s corporate colours, the choice has provided the necessary continuity in design.

Three spines are layered one on top of the other, forming the letter «Т». A T-shaped element is a super-simplified logo that reinforces brand identity and easily adapts to different offline and digital media. The logo is stretchable across any surface, branding it and dividing it into three zones, which, in turn, can be used to visually highlight information blocks.

To choose the best solution for branding cars, together with the Yandex.Taxi team, we have conducted a reality check and tested various sticker options on real cars. Now the angle of the colour blocks on the cars forms an arrow — a symbol of dynamicity. The design is suitable for all car models that are used by the service. Three colour snipes instead of numerous components and a partial lamination of the vehicle make car branding technology much easier and more economical, which is especially important for cars in the regions. To minimise the number of mistakes in the process of new design implementation across different taxi fleets, we have developed a universal system and provided the flexibility to change the ratio of colours, angles and other branding elements while keeping the number and logo unchanged.

Result

The first cars with the new design appeared on Moscow roads in early September. Yandex.Taxi has a lot of work ahead to implement the design in other regions. The mobile application, which is the main channel of communication between the service and the user is also changing. A new app interface is being developed, as well as an application for smartwatches.

The new visual language of Yandex.Taxi is a small revolution in taxi design. The chosen branding scheme does not repeat the geometry of the car but modifies it. The flexible graphic system based on branded colours works for instant intuitive recognition, while large numbers placed on the car side bring us closer to the comfortable city environment, by making the life of taxi users better today.