POGOH Brand

Bike Share Pittsburgh was preparing for a major shift. Its Healthy Ride system was introducing a new fleet of bikes, including electric-assist models to make Pittsburgh’s hills less daunting. But its name and identity emphasized health and recreation rather than the freedom and fun bikes provide. We needed a new name and brand that felt distinctly Pittsburgh: approachable, full of personality, and memorable.

The name POGOH came from a simple idea: Pittsburgh (PGH) plus two bicycle wheels. I actually sketched it during my very first conversation with the client, while hearing them describe their vision for the system. But having an idea and knowing it’s the right one are different things.

Before sharing that concept, we brought together the organization’s leadership, staff, and board representatives to define what the new brand needed to accomplish. We distilled those conversations into a creative brief calling for a distinct, ownable name and an identity that felt fresh, friendly, and empowering.

We developed dozens of potential names against those criteria, checked them for conflicts and domain availability, and narrowed the field to a handful of candidates. POGOH was the favorite in the room, and a survey of a larger group confirmed the choice.

The logo was almost inherent in the name. We contrasted condensed PGH letterforms with perfectly circular O’s, bringing the two elements together in a wordmark that was simple, clear, and confident.

The bikes themselves then became an extension of the logo. Their blue and yellow fenders echoed the O’s in the wordmark, while simple icons distinguished traditional bikes from e‑assist models without disrupting the fleet’s consistent appearance.

With the project unfolding during the pandemic, my first in-person meeting with the POGOH team took place at a riverfront warehouse, where we tested decals and rode the new bikes around an enormous, empty space. It was a strange but satisfying way to see the work become real.

Knowing POGOH’s own designers would handle day-to-day communications, we developed brand guidelines that established a consistent visual language without limiting their creativity.

And they’ve certainly run with it. POGOH’s designers have taken the identity in directions I never would have imagined, creating unexpected applications that still feel unmistakably POGOH.

The new brand established POGOH as a more visible, approachable, and recognizable part of Pittsburgh. In its first full year, POGOH surpassed Healthy Ride’s all-time annual ridership record and was recognized by the U.S. Department of Transportation as the fastest-growing docked bike-share system in the country, with a 212% increase in ridership. By 2025, annual ridership reached more than 570,000 trips — more than four times Healthy Ride’s previous annual record.

• Discovery and Research
• Naming and Positioning
• Brand Strategy and Identity
• Creative Direction and Design
• Client Relationships
• Project Management

Created at Landesberg Design