Studio Blackburn’s new identity for Nopinz cycling puts performance first
Nopinz, a British cycling brand built for competitive athletes, has come to be known for its obsession with speed and performance. It specialises in aerodynamic racewear and patented innovations that eliminate drag to give riders a crucial advantage.
After almost a decade in the industry, Nopinz felt a rebrand was in order to better reflect where the company finds itself today. They turned to the London-based brand, design, and strategy agency Studio Blackburn, who delivered a comprehensive facelift.
There were a few things the rebrand had to do. It needed to speak to Nopinz’s technical edge, reimagine its tone of voice, and create an identity that could keep pace with the brand’s growing success.
“Our fundamental DNA is that our kit can make you go faster,” says Colin Hatfield, director at Nopinz. “We wanted to celebrate that, and that’s what really drove the brief.”
Hatfield explains how every detail is designed to make riders aerodynamic, especially in time trials, where “it’s just you against the clock, and you’ve got no protection from the wind.”
This obsession – to make riders faster – sits at the heart of Nopinz’s design philosophy.
As Hatfield says, Nopinz’s products are built to slice through the air. This commitment to the performance-driven, technical nature of Nopinz informed Studio Blackburn’s creative decisions, as did the name of the brand itself.
Nopinz is a nod to the brand’s breakthrough innovation – a patented pocket that holds race numbers in place without the need for safety pins.
“Having a negative in the brand name is a bit odd,” says Hatfield. He adds that the team was unsure about the name for a while, until Studio Blackburn flipped the script, turning the negative into a positive, powerful statement.
In the resulting brand language, the studio chose to strike out certain words in the messaging (For example, For Weekend Warriors), setting the tone for Nopinz’s voice.
“That line through the word gives us the ability to communicate a message and cross out the words within it that aren’t relevant to the brand,” says Studio Blackburn’s CEO and founder, Paul Blackburn.
“It’s branding in its primal form, in a way. It feels very specific and intentional. By clearly defining what Nopinz is not, the brand effectively establishes what it stands for, setting it apart from other cycling brands.”
The idea instantly hit home with the Nopinz team. “As soon as we saw it, we knew that that was the way forward for us. It was a real eureka moment,” says Hatfield.
The brand language allows Nopinz to say things as they are, giving it a sense of confidence, which is also echoed in the minimalistic slant of the visual system. In their symbolic intent to “eliminate drag,” the team leaned on precise, strong typography, using a custom cut of Greed by Displaay Type Foundry for the wordmark, with the slashed zero (Ø) logo mark built into the typeface.
For the body copy, Studio Blackburn handpicked a single weight of Basel Grotesk by Optimo Type Foundry.
“We chose to work with only one weight because we were confident we could push it and get variation through different type sizing, instead of using lots of different typefaces,” says senior designer Will Cooper.
“Again, that comes from the intention of stripping it back as much as possible, to keep things very concise.” The minimalistic visual voice allows the brand “to speak with confidence,” he says.
“We don’t do minimalism for minimalism’s sake. We tend to pare things back to their simplest and most vital, and then we amplify,” says Blackburn.
“That’s what we’ve tried to do here; we’ve given it a behavioral quality as well, which also represents that ‘lack of drag.’ There’s something very simple and elegant about the way that the brand moves. It’s quick and urgent, but never over-the-top.”
Another defining feature of the rebrand is the introduction of a singular, signature brand hue, the Nopinz Zone 5 colour, that punctuates the identity.
Hovering between that line between red and orange, the rich colour injects new energy into the brand.
“In endurance training, athletes work in different zones of effort. Lots of different training applications use colour to track what zone you’d be in,” says Cooper.
“Zone 5, which is sort of that highest anaerobic area of performance, is usually marked by this color that’s not red, nor orange,” making it not just the perfect hue, but also a recognisable one for the competitive cycling community.
“We’ve had some feedback, and people seem to just get it,” says Hatfield. “When you’re in a time trial, Zone 5 is what you’re aiming for, so it just clicks.”
The larger rebrand has already struck a chord with the community.
Bigger rollouts are on the horizon, but the initial reception has been “very positive,” says Hatfield, adding that “people really have an affection for the brand.”
Perhaps the reason the refreshed identity resonates so deeply is that it speaks to Nopinz’s audience in their own language, while priming the brand for its next chapter.