Why the change?
The time had come to do something about the brand. That feeling you can’t quite place, but which keeps murmuring ‘you need to do something’.
Those who know me know I work on impulse: feel, act and bam, done. But they also know I can be deeply indecisive — indecision at its peak. And this was a decision I’d been mulling over for months.
So? OXIA came to life back in December 2018, though it had been taking shape for two years. After many frames built and a few small production runs, it was time to take the next step.
The new identity had to convey balance and harmony. This rebrand is another step in the transformation I’ve been working on over recent months. You could call it small-scale R&D: visualising, studying and optimising every process so the final product keeps getting better every day. That’s called evolution, and it means an increase in the quality of the end product.
The overhaul had to cover a complete new brand identity: new logo and isotype, new typography, along with a major refresh of the website.
The whole represents balance: lines that, through contact, hold each other up. That’s a bicycle frame — a structure in balance held together by different contact points; if one fails, everything collapses.
An isotype that emerged unexpectedly and a logo that appeared as if by magic from Vitruvian Man, or Study of the ideal proportions of the human body by Leonardo da Vinci, the study he made in 1490.
Building custom bicycles is based on the measurements of our body, on the dimensions of our physique and on a good bike fitting to maximise performance. So the best starting point for this project was, without doubt, the ‘Vitruvian Man’; the new OXIA identity was born from the inspiration of that drawing.
At the same time, everything rests on a well-defined foundation: the essence of craft.
But a new identity without a colour palette to work with would fall short. Any ideas? Of course, a good designer always has good ideas: USA + cars + 70s and 80s. The classic cars of that era were, are and will remain benchmarks in design for their time. They’re still a source of design inspiration today. With all this, what could go wrong?
On the choice of colours, I’ll say little: spec-tac-u-lar.
That wasn’t all. I had a special request: each bicycle had to be identified with the process, and that was anything but easy. Craft and sustainable materials, but craft isn’t only in the frame: paintwork demands many hours of design and airbrush work, so it had to be represented too.
Craft is represented in the first imagotype. Steel, a noble and resilient material. The highest build quality based on care for the smallest detail, and as a result, the performance of a hand-built product, made with love and passion.
For OXIA, paintwork has always mattered. A water-based finish was fundamental, and very important: it had to be sustainable. And it is: all the bicycles are painted with water-based paints, non-polluting and easy to recycle.
Sustainable for the third imagotype: yes, you can say that 99% of the material used from start to finish in building an OXIA frame is recyclable and is sent for recycling. Leftover steel, plastics, cardboard, paints, etc., it all gets recycled. This is part of OXIA’s small contribution towards a better world.
Thanks to them, every day I remember who we are, where we come from and where we’re going.
All the creative work was done by Edu Hervas, Art Director and Graphic Designer at EH!; you can visit his website or Instagram to see other fantastic work he has produced.
Website: eduhervas.com — Instagram: @eduhervasdesign.
Hope you like it.
