Co-creating a Customer Experience + Uber + Wolf Ollins

Operating in over 600 cities around the world, Uber has been rebuilding their reputation and brand value for the last three years. In a perfect example of how design and collaboration can signal change, they enlisted Wolff Olins as creative partners to holistically redesign their brand experience by putting the diversity of their audience front and center.

A redesign done in collaboration with internal and external design teams is hoping to alter perception and unite the brand globally. Wolf Ollins and Uber worked in such a harmonious way together and their work pretty much speaks for itself.

You don’t typically get the thinking behind the complex design and marketing systems of a big corporate brand like Uber - you basically see your app icon update, right? Well, there’s so much more to that! Here’s a link to their whole process, designs and final concepts here (highly recommend checking this link out).

Forest Young / Global Principal at Wolff Olins

Forest Young is a designer, educator and speaker. He is a Global Principal at Wolff Olins — which was recently named Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company for Design. Here, he leads initiatives for the world’s most influential companies and cultural institutions, based in San Francisco. Prior to joining Wolff Olins, Forest was the Executive Creative Director at West, leading design across a portfolio of early stage companies. Forest is an MFA critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art, where he is also a distinguished alumnus and recipient of the Mark Whistler Prize. He recently served on the Board of Directors for AIGA/NY, and his work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Royal College of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery and at international biennials. He has received the industry’s highest design accolades including the Gold Design Lion at Cannes and the Art Directors Club Black Cube.

His passion lies at the intersection of storytelling, universal design, and futurism. He was invited by the California College of the Arts to envision and teach the inaugural MFA course in Future Design.

Peter Markatos / Executive Creative Director at Uber

With over 15 years of experience, Peter Markatos is passionate about finding the intersection of where Brand meets Product. Discovering customer-driven insights, aligning them with essential business needs, and delivering exceptional quality design is at the core of his design ethos.

Peter Markatos is currently the ECD of Brand at Uber (reporting into CMO, Rebecca Messina) leading the Brand Experience team where he recently led the successful rebrand of Uber (rated No. 1 on BrandNew 2018). His group of cross-functional designers works horizontally across business groups to find opportunities to create world-class brand experiences. He looks at Product through the lens of Brand and works successfully with Product teams to create magic that serves the business’s goals and enhance brand equity.

Prior to Uber, he ran MM, a successful brand design studio in San Francisco for 10 years. There he worked on high-profile projects for Amazon, XBOX, Nokia, and Discovery Channel providing design expertise from Strategy to Design execution. He was one of the designers of the original Facebook logo and continually works with many of the Bay Area’s leading companies defining their Brand and Product Strategy.