The brief was scale.
Volta Energy was building a network of EV charging stations across Ontario. They had the infrastructure contracts. They had the locations. What they didn't have was a brand anyone would recognize at 100km/h on the highway.
They needed a full identity system that could work on everything from a highway pylon sign to a 4-inch app icon, across 200+ stations, in every weather condition, day and night.
Three weeks. One designer. No agency.
Designed for recognition at speed.
EV charging is a wayfinding problem first. Drivers need to spot a station from a highway, identify it on a map, and trust it at 2am in a parking lot. Every design decision was filtered through that lens.
The green-on-navy palette was chosen for maximum contrast in both daylight and low light. The wordmark is heavy enough to read at distance. The icon reduces to a single glyph for map pins and app icons without losing meaning.
The system had to feel inevitable. Not trendy. Not techy for the sake of it. A brand that looks like it was always there.
Station interface concept. Replace with rendered mockup.
Wayfinding that works in the dark.
Station signage was designed for illuminated display. The green accent marks the brand from a distance while directional elements guide drivers into the lot.
Every sign specification included mounting heights, illumination requirements, and material callouts for the fabricators. Production-ready, not just pretty.
Physical touchpoints.
Membership cards, station decals, safety signage, and promotional materials all pull from the same visual system. No one-offs, no exceptions.
The brand guide shipped with templates for every application so regional teams could produce materials without design support.
The app had to be as fast as the chargers.
Drivers pull into a station, plug in, and want to know one thing: how long. The app strips everything else away. Find a station, start a session, track your charge. That's it.
I designed the full UX flow from station discovery through payment confirmation. The dark UI matches the station hardware, creating a seamless brand experience from screen to physical environment.
A system, not a logo.
Volta didn't need a pretty mark. They needed a brand that could scale to 200 stations without losing coherence. Every piece I delivered was built from the same components: the palette, the type scale, the icon system, the grid.
The final package included 40+ production files covering station hardware graphics, illuminated signage specs, app screens, social templates, member cards, safety labels, and a brand guide that any printer or fabricator could work from without calling me.