The Challenge: Making Invisible Software Recognizable
General Mobile (GMobi) was founded in 2011 to update the software of phones and tablets over the air. By 2014 it was MediaTek’s official partner for firmware updates on Internet of Things chipsets, and in 2015 it moved into connected vehicles, where an OTA update can fix a fault or add a feature without a trip to the workshop. That business took the name Carota, joining Car and OTA, and by 2017 it was updating the telematics units and electronic control units (ECUs) of connected cars.
In February 2018 GMobi’s marketing team found Geber through our website. It wanted a visual identity and a corporate film, and Carota’s first trade show under its own name was set for June. The name already had a logo: the word Carota inside a cloud outline, with signal waves below it.
Two things made the brief harder. Carota sells to engineers at carmakers and chip companies, in China and abroad. And the product can’t be photographed: an OTA update happens inside the car’s electronics while the owner gets on with the day. The identity had to earn an engineer’s trust, and the film had to make the update visible.
What We Found
We began in March 2018 with a review of how automotive software brands present themselves and with GMobi’s answers to our branding questionnaire. The first logo presentation, on April 3, brought in the views of Carota’s teams in Taipei and China.
- Engineers remember simple marks. Carota’s team in China asked for a logo simple enough to draw in one stroke, because the people choosing an OTA supplier are engineers at carmakers and chipmakers. Two of the software brands Carota pointed us to, HARMAN and Airbiquity, lead with their name set in type.
- The name says car, while the technology goes further. The same OTA platform updates smart meters and other connected devices. Carota’s CEO asked for a logo that would stand for OTA as a whole, with cars as one use among several.
- Security can be shown without a shield. One early design wrapped the name in a circle to suggest protection, and Carota’s team preferred that idea to the shield so many security brands use. They also asked for a flat design, in line with the two-dimensional marks of most cloud businesses.
- Bright color fits the field. New technology brands around autonomous driving used bright, open colors to signal innovation, and OTA updates were becoming basic equipment for self-driving cars.
What We Did
From March to September 2018 our design team built Carota’s brand visual design system, while our film team handled the video planning and production of its corporate film. The logo and the film both had to be ready for the June trade show.
One Word for Car and OTA
We presented logo designs in rounds through April 2018, the fourth on April 23, then refined the chosen direction until Carota confirmed it on May 3. The wordmark sets the name in rounded lowercase letters, “car” in blue and “ota” in orange, and above the c and the a the strokes rise into a cloud line, so an update from the cloud is part of the name itself. Traditional and Simplified Chinese logotypes (科絡達 and 科络达) pair with it for Carota’s markets in Taiwan and China.
- Car The connected car
- OTA Over-the-air updates
An Identity Built From the Cloud Line
The arcs of the cloud became Carota’s graphic elements: open curves in blue, green and orange that frame a page from its corners. The brand book fixes the colors, typefaces for English and both Chinese scripts, clear space and the misuses to avoid. It then applies the system to eight everyday items, from business cards, letterhead and envelopes to a PowerPoint template, a direct mail flyer template, an email signature and a staff ID badge. We delivered it in September 2018 as two brand books, an English edition and a Simplified Chinese edition.
A Corporate Film About a Day With a Connected Car
Our film concept follows a driver through one day, showing what OTA updates and remote checks do at each step. The car unlocks from the breakfast table, runs a health check before the trip, takes a security update that keeps hackers out and refreshes its maps on a personal dashboard. On the road it navigates from the city to the countryside and drives itself while the driver shops online, and on arrival it checks itself again. We shot the live action in a single day in Taipei and built the updates in 2D and 3D animation, as lines of blue light running through the car’s electronics.
The film was made in Chinese and English, each as a full version of about two minutes and a one-minute short version. Carota showed it at its June 2018 trade show, and after the English voice-over was recorded in July we delivered all four versions by mid-August.
The 2020 Update
In June 2020 Carota asked us to update the film for a September deadline. We added animated scenes for two newer services, remote diagnostics and Carota’s vehicle security operations center (VSOC), which watches connected cars for cyberattacks, recorded new voice-overs in August and delivered the update that September. In September 2021, when Carota asked about a Japanese edition, we supplied a master without voice-over or subtitles.
Project Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| February 2018 | GMobi contacts Geber through its website (February 8); first meeting (February 13) |
| March 2018 | Brand research and film concept; identity kick-off (March 27) |
| April 2018 | Logo design rounds (the first on April 3, the fourth on April 23) and refinements; casting and location scouting for the film |
| May to June 2018 | Wordmark confirmed (May 3); film shot in Taipei; Carota shows the film at its trade show debut in June |
| July to August 2018 | English voice-over; Chinese and English full and short versions delivered |
| September 2018 | English and Simplified Chinese brand books |
| July to September 2020 | Film update with remote diagnostics and VSOC scenes |
Results
Carota still uses the brand we built.
The brand at work:
- The wordmark. The 2018 wordmark heads the pages of carota.ai, which runs in English, Chinese and Japanese, and a white version sits in the footer.
- A logo that moved with the business. Carota now presents itself as a “Physical AI Lifecycle Orchestration Platform” that runs from smart devices and vehicles to robots. The wordmark was drawn in 2018 to stand for OTA as a whole, and it carries the new positioning unchanged.
- The film, kept current. Carota debuted the identity and the film at CES Asia in Shanghai in June 2018. Two years later it had the film updated to show its newer services, and in 2021 it asked about a Japanese edition.
- What customers took from it. In May 2020, briefing us before its first IoT trade show, Carota’s team told us that customers who watched the 2018 film understood what Carota does without anyone having to explain it.
The business since the rebrand:
- In 2018 the first mass-produced connected car with Carota OTA reached the market, and in 2019 more than ten carmakers worldwide named Carota their exclusive supplier for whole-vehicle OTA (Carota’s milestones).
- Carota opened a European subsidiary in Munich in 2022. By 2023 its OTA platform held TÜV Rheinland certification under International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard 60335 Annex U, which covers remote software updates for connected appliances, and the company had reached Level 2 of Automotive SPICE (Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination), the auto industry’s standard for assessing software development.
- ResearchInChina’s Smart Car OTA Industry Report, 2025-2026, names Carota among the third-party OTA suppliers growing their share of China’s passenger car market.
- Carota’s website describes it as a top three third-party automotive OTA supplier in Asia Pacific, with more than 30 original equipment manufacturer (OEM) clients (Carota’s own figures, October 2026). At COMPUTEX 2026 in Taipei its OTA technology ran a robot café.
Is your company better than its brand suggests? Many Taiwanese manufacturers lead their category and still introduce themselves as a supplier. Talk to us about closing that gap.
