TinyWins built the Joby Aviation brand identity for the electric air taxi era, rooting emotional trust in mid-century aviation design for a new category.

California-based TinyWins took on the full Joby Aviation project scope: strategy, identity, website, app, wayfinding, skyport concepts and aircraft livery. The challenge was not simply rebranding a company, but building a consumer-facing identity for a category with no historical user behaviour and no existing skyports. Before a single passenger booked a seat, trust had to exist.

The studio drew from aviation's golden age. Early conversations circled Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center, the Swissair guidelines by Rudolf Bircher, Lufthansa's identity from HfG Ulm, and the British Airports Authority system by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. That heritage shaped every detail of the Joby Aviation identity, from a custom typeface developed with Family Type to a colour palette extracted from Californian skies.

Designing the Joby Aviation Brand Identity for Unknown Space

A signature device called the Smile emerged accidentally. During a presentation, Creative Director May Kodama noted the warmth of rounded photo frames: "It feels so Joby." The name stuck. TinyWins also designed wayfinding for Joby Aviation skyports that have not yet been built, sourcing principles from Massimo Vignelli, Otl Aicher and Saul Bass.

The result is a system wide enough to cover an aircraft livery, a mobile app interface and a cinematic website developed with INK Studio. Photography splits into two themes: "Shot from Above" and "Head in the Clouds," each grounding the brand in everyday life while pointing toward a credible future. TinyWins has given the Joby Aviation brand identity a visual language for the dream of flight.

Credits: TinyWins