Unless you’re a bicycle log fanatic (of which there must be some out there) you’ll be forgiven for missing one of the design stoires of this year’s Olympic Games in Rio: Avanti’s first rebrand since 1995.

The new logo, designed by Onfire Design, was unveiled on the bikes ridden by the New Zealand Olympic track cycling team (which included the silver medal winning sprint team).

Sam (“Sammo”) Allan, Onfire’s creative director who led the brand’s redesign, has had a long term relationship with the company, having successfully designed Avanti’s graphics back in the 1990’s. He was asked by Avanti to work on the graphic design of the bikes, but decided the bikes needed a new logo as well. 

“I thought the logo needed a bit of a refresh, so I pitched it to them and was quite surprised they said yes,” he says. “It’s almost an art deco-ish look to some of the letters. We just wanted to modernise it and make it more legible. The graphics on bikes are becoming a lot more linear, following the shapes of the frame so we bought the logo in line to tie in with that.”

New logo

“I did the logo to have historic ties to the logos from the past, so it’s not just something completely different, it ties into the logos of the 80s and 90s. I’ve been involved with Avanti since about 1996 so i know all the logos that have been before and it has design cues from the current one as well as the ones before that.”

Previous logo

The new design direction will be rolled-out across Avanti’s entire bike range over the coming 2017 cycling season, as well as all branding and marketing material, including the website, apparel and point of sale.

The Avanti Pista Team Olympic Edition and Avanti Pista Pursuit Team track bikes, designed by the Avanti team in close collaboration with Cycling New Zealand, have been nominated as finalists in the Best Awards for Best Product Design.