HumanForest
Living trees
HumanForest is a new mobility company, committed to help cities reduce CO2 emissions and become greener. By offering Londoners 10 minutes free every day, on a truly green e-bike, it makes cities healthier places to work, live and play for people.
Whimsical animated “living trees” were designed by a New Zealand based studio, South.
A collection of whimsical animated characters personify the brand concept and create a sense of community and collective effort. Key design considerations around colour and messaging represented an opportunity to capture classic British culture and ensure the brand complements the environment — a definitive aesthetic point of difference to competing brands. The primary green (inspired by historic British racing hues) gives the bikes an understated and fashionable look.
Thoughts
Sometimes (or always?) I feel like making a great identity depends on what the company’s name is. If a company (or a product, a brand) has a great name, it’s like half of the work of developing an identity is already done. This project also does.
As everyone might think, but yes the characters are so cute. Cute, I said but actually it has really a nice balance between playful and mature. If, let’s say it was in my country Japan, it might have had a kid shape, anime-like eyes 👀, and bright green color. In short, it could have been childish. But this characters (what is their name? I want to call them with a name!) has only legs and, it makes them whimsical and humorous and emphasizes “pedaling”.
I like how they chose the main green color : classic British racing hues. Because it gives a sense of British culture while mentioning environment, and more over, it seemed they declared it starts the transition of the way of mobility — from car to bike.
More on South project page
