“All the drama, urgency and romance of racing.” Gold Front’s brand puts Apex Wheels in pole position

Apex Wheels, a California-based company with over 15 years of experience, is not your typical wheel maker looking to make an easy buck. With a team of dedicated engineers who are also diehard motorsport enthusiasts, they create wheels that are not just about aesthetics but real performance. They take a stand against the unregulated wheel industry, striving against misleading claims and protecting motorsport enthusiasts from underperforming products. Apex worked with San Francisco-based category design studio Gold Front to nail their reimagined brand image, aiming to put their wheels at the front of the pack. For both the brand and the studio, it was essential to highlight the problem customers were facing – a knowledge gap that companies were taking advantage of – and how Apex provides a solution with their “real performance” wheels, with its unrivalled performance-to-price ratio. Drawing inspiration from unique typographic personalities in the racing world, the new branding uses bold, high-contrast colours and an eye-catching type system to ensure recognisability in all contexts. “We knew we wanted something that was extremely identifiable and differentiated at a glance,” explains Partner & Creative Director Josh Lowman. “There were a lot of established pockets of typographic personalities in the racing world – thin extended type that felt futuristic, rounded monolinear san serifs that felt like a racing track, and bold italics that had the attitude of a skate brand – and each felt like their own tribe.”