Client: Universe Energy
Brand, website, and investor deck for an EV battery reuse startup
Contributions: Brand guidelines, logo, web design and development in WordPress, copy editing, HubSpot forms, investor deck, landing pages, and 3D animation direction.
Scope
Universe Energy dismantles and grades used electric vehicle batteries so they can be used again. Its robots and machine learning take each pack apart, inspect it, and decide whether to remanufacture, repurpose, or recycle it. Founder Wiebe Janssen designed battery packs for the Tesla Model X and Model 3, and the company is based in El Segundo, California.
In 2022 its website, built on Editor X, did not match the technology behind it. Wiebe wanted a site that read as a serious deep tech company, and in 2024 a new logo and investor deck to match a growing business.
Mining versus reuse, explained on mobile.
The reversed manufacturing blueprint from the website.
Challenge
The technology is hard to explain, and the copy had already been tested with investors many times, so the design had to make it clearer rather than rewrite it.
Visuals stayed schematic to protect patents, deadlines were set by investor meetings, and the battery in the 2024 animations was made generic to keep partner details confidential.
Process
- Set the brand direction and designed the first homepage mockup in June 2022.
- Refined the design over four rounds of mockups working from Wiebe’s notes.
- Built the site in WordPress on a staging server, then moved it off Editor X to universeenergy.ai in October 2022.
- Added a careers page, a newsletter signup, and HubSpot forms through 2023.
- Designed a new logo and a rebranded investor deck in March 2024, then a new landing page and team page.
- Storyboarded and directed two 3D animations in late 2024.
The brand on a can.
The 3D animation we storyboarded and directed, from collection to remanufacture, repurpose, or recycle.
The rebranded investor deck.
Results
The new site launched in October 2022, and newsletter signups started coming in soon after. In 2024 the new logo and investor deck were ready for investor meetings.
Four years after launch, universeenergy.ai still runs on the site we built, with Atravela credited in the footer.
Universe Energy website design
Founder and CEO of Universe Energy
The Universe Energy logo, redesigned in 2024.
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