For over 45 years, the Motability Scheme has helped anyone with a qualifying mobility allowance get moving—whenever they want, wherever they are in the UK.
Motability Operations is the commercial organisation that delivers the Motability Scheme and is the UK’s largest car leasing company. The organisation leases brand new vehicles—and all the services needed to keep them moving—to disabled people across the UK, offering everything from cars to Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles (WAVs), scooters, and powered wheelchairs.
With a new range of exciting electric vehicles (EVs), they provide extensive support, including standard home chargepoint installations and help accessing the public charging infrastructure.
Motability Operations came to SomeOne to review and update the brand to better engage with disabled people across the UK.
Research revealed that not everyone who could benefit from the Motability Scheme knows about it—and many who do are unsure what it actually offers. Beyond helping people get a new vehicle, the Scheme provides access to a comprehensive leasing package with insurance, breakdown cover, servicing, and maintenance, offering customers great value for money and peace of mind.
So, it was clear that the new branding work needed to create ways to better explain the Scheme’s full offering, making it more representative, positive, and straightforward.
This created an interesting challenge: how to improve every aspect of the brand experience for its diverse audience.
A significant number of people qualify for higher-rate mobility allowances and could use the Motability Scheme. We want to ensure that everyone who can benefit knows about us. This new branding not only helps make that happen but also makes everything quicker, easier, and more rewarding to use than ever before.
Accessible — But not forgettable.
Many brands aim for high readability and legibility standards to ensure the widest range of people can navigate their information. Known formally as ‘Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) AAA’ standards, these usually mean only the highest contrast colour systems are used. But while black and white offers maximum readability, it’s not always visually engaging.
So, the challenge was to combine high levels of accessibility with high levels of visual interest. This is a brand that’s not selling anything but must be easily recognisable and understandable to benefit people.
The objective was clear: maintain efficiency to reach not only those easily able to digest visual information but also people with diverse physical, cognitive, and visual disabilities.
Ensure that Motability Scheme branding stands apart from Motability Foundation & Motability Operations—while still feeling like part of the same family.
Reflect the brand’s mission in a more contemporary, relevant, and approachable way.
Create dialogue around the shift to EVs and digital services, enabling more people to access the Motability Scheme easily and quickly.
Make it striking, not stark.
After extensive consultation and research involving a wide selection of Scheme users, we developed a progressive new visual, written, and verbal brand identity system. This makes the brand far more distinctive, clear, digital-focused, and future-ready, and more representative of all disabilities. It shifts the brand’s focus from being known only for cars to encompassing the full range of vehicles available.
Customer feedback showed that the existing logo was interpreted in many different ways (a sun, a flower, petals, an abstract shape, and more). While not harmful, these interpretations didn’t effectively tell the Motability Scheme story or convey the services offered. The logo also struggled in smaller or digital applications.
The solution? A new round wheel symbol, derived from the letter ‘M’ in the wordmark, helps solidify the brand’s reputation for supplying wheeled vehicles and freedom of movement, and it’s far easier to apply across all media.
Working closely with members of the disabled community, we developed a set of icons designed to help users navigate products and services quickly, easily, and clearly.
Why? With many vehicle options available, a long list of text can be overwhelming, while an interactive icon is easier to navigate. These icons can also visually illustrate ideas and guides.
A new, easy-to-read typeface was developed for maximum readability across everything from print to posters and digital displays.
Why? People read best the typefaces they’re most familiar with. However, some type designs lack the visual cues to differentiate, for instance, the number one (1) from the lowercase letter ‘L’ (‘l’). Although a lot of reading is contextual (we read word shapes more than individual letters), we redesigned the Motability Scheme typeface to include as many visual cues as possible, making it easy to read for the widest audience.
People recognise the Motability Scheme by its blue, but it was time to introduce more combinations, hues, and saturations for optimal readability and clarity.
Why? A more vibrant palette, joined by a wider spectrum of colours, enhances the customer journey in both digital and physical spaces and highlights the new developments in EVs.
This brand is all about keeping people moving, so we reflect travel in our design with elements like journey lines, compasses, navigation markers, and location pins. Just as they are useful in mapping, they are useful in design, underlining key phrases, pointing to better options, and highlighting destinations.
Why? If you look at a £5k bicycle, you are met by stunning photography, slick copywriting, film that tell a story and engaging concepts. If you buy a £5k wheelchair you are faced with a poorly photographed image of the chair on a white background with a functional description. For years the disabled community have been patronised and underserved by lacklustre work that demonstrates a total lack of care and respect. Change is long overdue.
High levels of clarity and accessibility need not result in dull outcomes. Getting a new vehicle should be exciting, not a misery. Yet many products, services and organisations continue to lag behind when it comes to talking, serving and working with disabled people. This new brand approach is designed to elevate every interaction. Making everything brighter, easier, quicker and better to use — plus bringing back the joy of getting some fresh new wheels.
Key information is now highlighted in easy-to-read stickers that appear throughout communications—noticeably designed to match the new Motability Scheme “M.”
Why? It’s fun, light-hearted, and charming. And most importantly, text on a solid sticker background is far easier to read than text superimposed on a photo.
The new brand work celebrates customers—everyone in the UK who is disabled and qualifies for higher rate mobility allowances. These are the people Motability Scheme works so hard for, so it’s only right they feature prominently in photography.
Why? The goal is to build an accessible brand that truly represents all disabilities and a diverse customer base. New images show people enjoying newfound freedoms—it’s not just about the vehicles.
Rather than hope people wade through a PDF full of rules and regulations, the new tools are all hosted on BrandCloudlines.com
Why? This digital platform allows access to all assets, strategies, copywriting approaches, and everything else needed to understand how to connect the Scheme to those who could benefit from it.
Huge thanks to the entire team at Motability Operations and Motability Foundation including:
Andrew, Lisa, Danielle, Mia, Sophie, Julia, Nabila, Tyra & Cassandra.
Founding Partner
Simon Manchipp
Creative Director
Mark Smith
Design Director
Ian Dawson
Design team
Amy Matthews
Florence Campbell
Gina Hopkins
James Bell
Luca Portik
Lloyd Wood
Account Management
Isobel Gillott & Amanda Leslau
Additional Copywriting
Stratton Craig
Typographic Design: F37