Ride Love Live

AIDS/LifeCycle is an annual seven day, 545 mile bike through some of California’s most beautiful landscapes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This life-changing ride raises awareness for AIDS/HIV and helps fund the work of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. They needed a new campaign identity to honor their loyal community and attract new participants as riders and volunteers.

A branding strategy process was implemented to solidify goals, values, and positioning for the campaign followed by the creation of five concepts. “Ride Love Live” was selected as the campaign theme.

The challenge was to create a visual system that is distinct and exciting for the Ride, but can live within the AIDS/LifeCycle brand for years to come. With strong shape, custom illustrations, and bold weight, this campaign design is something you’d want to rock on the back of your jacket. The logo uses a unique custom typeface, heavy linear design, consistent weight to the stems, and the illusion of motion around the wheel of a bicycle.

A warm color palette utilizes the AIDS/LifeCycle orange and complementing shades of gray along with a screen printed texture. These elements combined capture the vibrant, iconic, powerful, and welcoming energy of the AIDS/LifeCycle community. We used the new brand to design apparel, printed and digital advertising, a welcome kit, and leave behinds.

I’m so happy that the concept has been accepted by the veterans of the AIDS/LifeCycle community which are notoriously (and hilariously) unapologetic.

One participant had the logo tattooed on their wrist, which happened to be a success criteria for the brand, but also a tear jerking and validating moment for me as a designer.

In 2018 the AIDS/LifeCycle raised $16.6 Million, with 2317 riders, and 650 volunteer “roadies”. We worked on refreshing the Ride Love Live identity for 2019 and 2020.

Credits

I contributed to the brand strategy, art directed, and lead the design for the campaign, brand guidelines, and collateral with production assistance and creative guidance from the team at verynice. Images by AIDS/LifeCycle.