Rydo
An around the clock taxi service that can drive you anywhere in Australia.
I was lucky enough to be able to work on a new visual direction for Rydo, using native Australian animals to add some character to the brand, and moments of delight, during the booking experience. These illustrations were to be used across their app, website and even the taxis themselves.
Unfortunately, most of it didn't go ahead, with only the thumbs being used on the website, as the client decided to change their approach. But I was super happy with how it all turned out. Dig in and have a look at the character concepts below.
CHARACTER CONCEPTS
Cute & friendly
The first piece of work involved creating some character concepts and setting the general style for this new brand direction. We decided on two main characters to kick things off — a taxi, to obviously represent taxis and Rydo itself, and a koala to represent the customer.
I then tried the koala in a few different styles. What a cute little fella.
In the end, we landed on the last one with the same stroke colour to keep things nice and simple. It's bold, so it helps the illustrations stand out. It also works better at smaller sizes, as opposed to the other two, which felt a bit wishy washy.
Here are the two main characters in the final style.
I also sketched up a secondary cast of characters to represent customers, in tandem with the koala. This would help add some variety to the illustrations, as well as giving me more options for scenes later on down the track.
Mobile APP
Moments of delight
The main goal of this project was to add moments of delight to the in-app booking experience and brand overall. Something I had a lot of experience with working for Hopper and creating their bunnies.
Below are the full illustrations by themselves and you can also see them in situ further down the page.
One area where we could add moments of delight, was where a user adds their various payment methods.
Another area was where a user adds their favourite locations, such as for home and work, or another location entirely. Exemplified here with a koala in a kangaroo's pouch. Cheeky little thing.
Empty states are always a great place to pop in a little bit of character.
Here are a few more random screens — bits and bobs, odds and ends.
I also pitched having some profile images of the characters that could be used as placeholders for users, instead of their own photo. It didn't get past this concept stage, but I ended up rendering out the taxi to be used as a placeholder for a driver's profile image.
Below are sketches for a bunch of the illustrations, for people who are into that kind of thing. I'm into it.
Website
Further moments of delight
Most of the illustrations done for the app were also going to be used for the website, where appropriate. The bulk of the illustration work for the website though were thumbs, which you can see throughout several pages on the website.
The only new character that was created for the website was the darker, boxier taxis for the iconic London cabs.
Originally, all of the thumbs used a character, acting something out to exemplify the content. But the client felt it was a bit much, so I swapped out about half of them with objects to represent the content instead. You can check the character-based approach below, which didn't move past the sketches.
There were a few other illustrations I did solely for the website, apart from the thumbs, such as these locations (Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne) for the main cities Rydo is in.
That's it. Next time you're in Australia, book a taxi with Rydo.
Credits
Role: Illustrator
Client: Rydo
Studio: The Bamboo Garden · Freelance
2021