Ona brand identity · product design

AISeries A12 / 27

Client: Ona
Category: AI · Cloud software engineering · Enterprise
Scope: Renaming, strategy, brand identity, product design, design system, motion
Timeline: 6 months
Rollout: New York and San Francisco
Live site: ona.com

Ona wasn't asking for a rebrand. It was asking to reinvent how an entire AI software engineering company shows up, in one of the fastest-moving fields in tech, where most brands look like their own terminals.

Over six months we led naming, strategy, brand, product and motion, plus the invisible layer underneath: the design system, documentation and alignment across Ona's teams.

A human-first, AI-native brand and product experience, rolled out across New York's Times Square and San Francisco.

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A painted blue mountain landscape with a
01 · The challenge
The ask wasn't just a rebrand. It was a reinvention of how an entire company shows up in the world.
Ona is a platform for running teams of AI software engineers in the cloud.
6 monthsFrom renaming to rollout
2 citiesNew York Times Square and San Francisco
02 · Strategy
The hard part happens underneath
The visible work was significant: a new identity, a design system and a large-scale rollout. But the more demanding work happened underneath: design systems, documentation, internal tooling and alignment across teams and stakeholders.
Brand ideaHuman-first, AI-native
1. 01Human first
2. 02AI native
3. 03Built to hold
03 · Identity
A name and a mark built to hold
A new name needed a mark with the same clarity: a chamfered, squared-off ONA, constructed on a grid so it stays crisp from a favicon to a billboard.
The black ONA wordmark on white
The Ona symbol drawn on a grid with its
Large black type on lilac reading 'a
The ONA wordmark over a soft field of
04 · Campaign
Painted landscapes, not circuit boards
Developer tools usually look like their own terminals. Ona went the other way: painted mountains, warm light and people.
A small Ona tile grows into two painted
From a phone screen to Times Square
The rollout took the same system to the street.
Ona billboards glowing over Times Square at
An Ona poster at a bus shelter
A hand holding a phone showing the Ona site
Overhead view of a developer on a laptop
Three vertical social frames
A person with dark curly hair seen from
05 · Product
The product, in the same calm world
The product carries the brand inside it: a dark, quiet workspace for running agents, where each task starts up its own environment, and where chat, git changes and running services sit side by side.
The Ona workspace
The Ona workspace in dark mode
A task list in the Ona product
06 · Impact & proof
What this means if you're reinventing a company
The visible work is the smaller part of a reinvention.
07 · Deliverables
Strategy
Renaming, Positioning
Brand
Identity and wordmark, Illustration direction
Product
Product design, Design system
Motion and rollout
Motion, Times Square and San Francisco campaign