Design Offsite Merch

Design Team Offsite 2021

With the growth of Wheely’s ambition to become a luxury brand we had started to question the brand assets we had at the moment. Basically, good looks became more important and the app visual appearance was to be re-thought first. We attempted to respond to this situation with the Design Team Offsite.

We used the slogan “Okay is not okay” made by our colleague Ben Shaw to focus the designers on the idea that the current design is not enough. Of course, such an intention implies a lot of pressure on any creative. So we came up with a set of playful swag for the event: hoodies, temporary tattoos, stickers for the laptops and handmade bracelets.

The visuals we used for the merch were a mashup of all the things connected to the Design team and the Offsite meeting. The mushroom emoji 🍄 that we use to mark Design in our internal comms. The forest theme refers to the location. The slogan is set in Stratos font (also in letters made of pine tree branches). And the font itself — the letters set in a playful manner ignoring all the typography guidelines. Also, a silhouette of Lancia Stratos shares the same name with our font.

We put the paper items into the printed envelopes, and we packed the hoodies by the person as everyone has a different size. We marked them with the person's portrait stuck to the hoodie package.

Typography was expected to be our main tool to achieve the goal of making the app look better. So we made the event merch typography adaptive to different media and purposes. Reminding the designers that there are no rules, just goals.

Despite the whole event being thoroughly arranged by our project managers, the work process was expected to be pretty stressful anyway. And you never make your creatives to come up with something good just by pushing them into it. So we made the work sessions alternate with entertaining group activities that were all about creativity and making your mind operate differently.

Isolating the team from everyday routine to work on a complex task turned out to be pretty efficient indeed. Not only did we come back with a bunch of quality app concepts. The Product Design and the Comms Design teams have exchanged knowledge. Some of the enthusiasts had spontaneously formed a project group and work on the app visual update still to this day.

All the merch is being used. The tattoos left over from the event still glimpse sometimes on our faces at the office or on Zoom calls.