Carnext

Brand revamp,
website redesign, illustration style development and a lot of micro animated prototypes

Illustration style

Carnext is a relatively new brand and originated from LeasePlan. At this time it grew quickly into a well performing business. Branding-wise there was room to shift from a brand that was heavily based on leasePlans’ brand to something more of its own.

Next to ongoing flow- and pagedesign improvements, one of the very first steps to build a more compelling brand of its own was to introduce illustrations. Through user research its current brand was perceived a little distant and it could use some ways to connect more to people. I developed an illustration style that would fit, at that time, Carnext’s current brand identity.

Shapes are based on Carnext’s visual language, colours where distracted from the brand and we chose to show people for a more human touch. Sometimes humorous scenes would be illustrated to give the user-flows and brand itself some light-weighted feel.

(These illustrations where live on carnext.com till begin 2022)

Brand revamp

Somewhat later my team had advocated for more differentiation from leaseplan fundamentals to a more carnext-like brand. We pushed for a full rebranding, Carnext agreed on a revamp of the brand instead. This made the project’s focus much more on the visual aspects of the brand to be changed rather than its strategy, position and vision. Those where changing along the way by a different team, to which we sought collaboration with.

For starters started to set up design principles.

Friendly Premium

Highlight the important, rounded shapes, animate

It’s about the car

Big photos, car brand feeling, visualise when possible

Sales advisor

Wizard, ask when in doubt, suggest alternative cars, make appointment

Building trust

Real photos, fixed price, people of CarNext

New design principles, brand revamp

Without going into details of how each design principle manifested in the new design*, I’ll display some highlights.

*Please reach out to me if you’d like to know

Its about the Car

Make the car stand out.
Let it sell itself

Artificial intelligence

All images are unique and show the actual car, AI helps recognising car features in the photo’s. That way highlighted features per car can be displayed on the car detail page.

Full focus

Everything of the car is shown, full rotational views, as well as the full maintenance history.
The View service history will activate an ‘deep-dive’ -a take-over with all the details shown in a timeline. Full focus.

Animation

The pages are set up really spacious, with the goals to create as much focus as possible. One step at a time, one action per scroll. Full detailed information will be displayed in deep-dives, full take overs where there is plenty of room to showcase all sorts of detailed information.
Smooth animation plays a important role in navigation, to guide the user.

Result

There’s much more to show, invite me over, or simply visit the live website of carnext.com

Visit website