Pentagram’s identity for eVTOL brand Vertical Aerospace gives its future added lift

Aviation technology takes time to get to market, understandably, with delivery timeframes that stretch into decades, not just years. That’s been the case with the forever imminent eVTOL revolution, which always seems to be just over the next horizon. 2025 saw many of the key players step up their game, buoyed by Chinese competition, while others – including Volocopter and Lilium – have thrown in the towel.

It's not so much about creating large-scale physical infrastructure of the eVTOL realm (after all, the whole point of Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing is low noise, small footprint), but about making the case for the safety, reliability and overall unimpeachable professionalism of the companies involved.

Here's where design and branding step in. To shape the public face of Vertical Aerospace, the Bristol-based company turned to Pentagram, working with Angus Hyland and a team of branding specialists to shape the identity, presentation and public image of its proposed service. From apps to billboards, logos to liveries, Pentagram has created a look and feel for Vertical and its debut aircraft, the Valo, that’s designed to point to future gains without stepping too far into the unpredictable world of science fiction.

The Valo is well advanced. Eschewing the magical thinking of true autonomous piloting, the rotorcraft carries a pilot and four passengers, with a projected range of 100 miles at up to 150mph. Vertical is targeting key routes, such as the trip from London’s Canary Wharf to Heathrow.

The company claims this takes 52 minutes by car (clearly on a very good day) and a more replicable 50-55 minutes via the Elizabeth Line, Valo can run the trip in just 12 minutes. Earlier this month, Vertical announced partnerships with Skyports Infrastructure and Bristow, a helicopter operator with six decades of experience, to set up the service for Q1 2029.

Underpinning this ambition is the freshly revitalised Vertical Aerospace company. Not only has Pentagram created the identity, but its in-house brand team helped define and name the Valo aircraft. As the agency notes, ‘Vertical had been a major player in the eVTOL space for several years and already possessed key elements of brand equity, particularly its distinctive hummingbird symbol which served as a metaphor for vertical take-off, hovering and flight – all qualities inherent in the vehicle itself.’

That logo remains, albeit stylishly redrawn and ‘streamlined’, becoming less abstract and more realistic, with curves taken from the svelte form of the aircraft itself. A new ‘Vertical’ wordmark was also developed, with the Universal Sans typeface used throughout, creating ‘a modern, technical and engineered look’.

Colour and gradients were also created, with the latter inspired by the changing sky throughout the day. Actual sky imagery has also been used to locate Vertical within the aviation sphere. All this should raise the profile of a company that’s still little known to those outside of specialist design and aeronautical circles.

By stressing Vertical’s role as a way of banishing the constraints of traffic, Pentagram’s new design approach seeks to make the company ‘more democratic and accessible – essentially the Uber of the skies’ (Uber itself sold its Elevate eVTOL division to Joby Aviation in 2020 and still plans to enter the air taxi market in 2026).

Finally, Pentagram shaped Vertical’s tagline ‘To the skies’, an inspirational and hopefully memorable affirmation that firmly sets out the company’s core operations. All this was put together as a cohesive brand package, covering everything from billboard advertising to website, app and aircraft livery, in addition to motion graphic elements and ongoing brand guidelines.

The goal is to ‘position Vertical as a pioneering and authoritative leader in the eVTOL sector’, making the Valo a visible and highly desirable new means of urban transportation.

Vertical-Aerospace.com, @VerticalAerospace, Pentagram.com, @PentagramDesign