Ringing in the New Brand at Passport

From the very beginning, Passport set out to be an innovator and bring operational efficiency to the transportation industry with smarter technology, starting with parking. Now, almost a decade later, we build technology products that are being used by millions of people everyday and have grown to be the industry leader in solutions for parking, transit and enforcement. With all this expansion, it is time for a thoughtful facelift.

 

When our team went to the drawing board, we agreed that the user our clients serve is always at the center of everything we do. We wanted to ensure the user experience within a community was appropriately represented in our brand — from messaging to visual identity, taking every button, color, and flow into careful consideration.

 

“Technology should facilitate the way people interact with each other and public agencies. Passport is about helping our clients closely connect with their communities.”

-Bob Youakim, CEO at Passport

 

What’s Changing?

All of it.  The visual representation of the Passport brand has been transformed into a simple interactive experience centered on the user journey.  Passport’s new branding also features a bright color palette that reflects the company’s forward-thinking initiatives.

 

Passport’s mark is built from four simple shapes, but encompasses the complete essence of the Passport brand, symbolizing the functionality of each of our products. We wanted it to be abstract enough so each of us can make a unique interpretation from street lines on a city grid, to a payment card with a chip, or even a capital P to reflect the Passport name.  One thing that is very important to us is the stakeholder our clients support, who is represented by a colorful dot, that is present in our new logo and each product mark.

 

Our new bright color palette also reflects Passport’s evolution from our roots of innovating in the parking industry to our comprehensive offering today that spans across the broader transportation sector of Parking, Transit and Enforcement. Each of our product marks represents its unique function with the ‘user dot’ ranging a variety of eye-catching and meaningful colors. The Parking yellow is associated to driving signage and our traditional color, the Enforcement purple indicates authority, and the Transit blue indicates trust.  

 

It’s not just our logos and collateral that are changing, either—we’re on our way to a new office in Uptown Charlotte later this year, built with a similar end goal in mind: to emphasize the importance of human connections. Our architecture partners helped us create a space that reflects our culture, so the layout is designed to reflect urban settings, including a grid pattern and a park-esque feel in common areas. You can read the full details on our new office here.

 

User-Centricity and Simplicity

“Even if we’re building a technology product, at the end of the day, it’s being created and used by people. In all decisions, interactions, and platforms, people remain at the forefront of our minds—people come first at Passport.”

-Kate Haffey, VP People Operations at Passport

 

From using our app to visiting our website, we want visitors, clients, and users to feel empowered and comfortable when interacting with Passport. We selected bold colors, fonts, and user experience elements to create interactions that are efficient and easy to navigate. We appreciate simplicity in every decision we make from designing our new brand to re-architecting our next generation mobile applications and platform. No matter how you’re interfacing with us, you’ll know exactly where you are, and how to get to where you want to go next.

 

Passport’s brand refresh will provide us with a consistent look and make our brand more recognizable in the market.  With our new brand architecture, we have the ability to build future products and enhance our user experience, disrupting the market once again with our innovative approach.