Ilies AllaliFrom Swoop to Mute, four years building a brand
Sole designer of the brand, from the first competition deck to the company that industrialised.
Mute Energy, formerly Swoop, turns electric vehicle batteries into mobile power stations. I joined in 2022, with an identity already in place that I only touched up. In late 2023 I audited it, then rebuilt it entirely.
The context (2022)
Mute was still called Swoop. A startup founded in Roubaix by three partners, funding its early days by winning competitions, the Nova prize at Batimat, Hodefi, and named by Challenges among its hundred startups worth investing in for 2023. I arrived on a work-study contract in the first year, hired partly because I was already self-sufficient on the web. My first jobs were the decks for those competitions, then a first site put together quickly to show the product.
The Ukrainian proving ground
In late 2022, a circular economy company in Lille ordered generators for its craftsmen rebuilding in Ukraine, where the power grid had been destroyed. Swoop rethought its concept under pressure: reconditioned batteries inside a military case, transportable anywhere. A dozen cases went into the field, used where there was no longer a socket to plug into. Those first sales brought in 40,000 euros in two months, and the case became the company's core product. For me it meant continuous production: I taught myself Blender to show the product in situation, and turned out investor renders, decks, stickers and site updates back to back.
The turning point (late 2023)
The product entered industrialisation, the company was hiring, partnering, preparing its funding round. The brand, meanwhile, still told the story of the earlier startup, with the original identity I had inherited on arrival and only touched up. Rather than propose a facelift, I built an audit presentation and took it to the founders.
The audit (October 2023)
I started by setting a grid: good art direction is visually coherent, carries a precise message, and answers a problem. Then I applied that grid to the identity in place. The colours, a saturated green and blue gradient that ate the whole space and covered the text. The shapes, a wave that spoke of movement but crushed everything else. The copy, we promised quiet, ecological and mobile, exactly what every competitor promised, with a button inviting you to calculate your savings while the savings appeared nowhere. The product, a static image of a case that carried nothing. Two findings came out of it: no clear positioning, and a product that did not carry the brand's values. We were selling innovation, and we were now selling a military case with sockets on it.
The name
Swoop also had to change its name, and not by choice, the company was forced into it. Rather than deliver a list, I designed and ran a naming workshop with the founders: structured brainstorm, exploration by name type, descriptive, associative, neologism, deviant, then pitch and vote, each person defending their candidates with a story. Mute came out on top. The territory itself had been found twenty slides earlier.
The logo
Same method as the audit: a grid first, five criteria. Striking, versatile, memorable, adaptable to every medium, compatible with an art direction. Then the exploration, dozens of lockups and marks tested in parallel, on light and dark grounds, before narrowing to three routes. The chosen icon overlays three signs: a bolt for energy, an hourglass for time, meaning the second life of the batteries the product is built on, and a screw for manufacturing.
The brand guidelines
The identity rests on a simple principle: every visual choice must carry a precise message. One strong colour, an electric blue, on deep black and off-white, against the grain of the gradients. A geometric typeface with its full scale and one layout decision, a marked indent at the start of each paragraph that echoes the shape of the bolt. Blueprints as a graphic language, to show the care in the engineering and to educate about the product. A recycled paper texture that makes the circular commitment tangible right down to the materials. The goal was for the team to produce without me in the room.
What it covers
Being the only designer in an industrial company means holding the whole spectrum: over a hundred decks, print, product livery, engineering and sales 3D, videos, newsletters. The brand guidelines exist so all of it stays coherent.
The result
The ECHO-5 has been on sale since April 2025, certified, assembled in France. The brand dresses everything a customer or an investor touches: the product, the site, the decks, the manuals. Around it, the visible backers are Bpifrance, EuraTechnologies, the French Tech, Manutan and the Metropole Europeenne de Lille, and since June 2026 the Hauts-de-France region and the European Union have been supporting the development of the next solution in the range. Four years after I arrived, I am still there.