Isn’t the Tour de France great! Everyone has well and truly caught the cycling bug! One person who has really caught this bug is our Head of Creative, James. Last month he took part in his second charity cycle challenge, which was called Veloflo (Velo-London-Florence). Upping his previous mileage, this cycle was a grueling 1,100 miles from the new Leadonhall building in the centre of London to the Ponte Santa Trinita Bridge in the centre of Florence, Italy, which all had to be completed in just 10 days.
Like past challenges, the whole purpose of this challenge was to raise as much money as possible for the chosen charities. These were Cancer Research, Alzheimer’s Research and Architecture for Humanity. We at Unit36 wanted to get involved as a company and do as much as we could to help create prior awareness of the challenge to possible donors. Obviously it would then be down to James and his legs to actually fulfill the challenge whether he liked it or not!
Many of the 22 riders and four support workers all worked at the renowned Richard Rogers Architecture practice in London. These guys specialise in creating the most advanced and amazing buildings all over the world. They wanted Unit36 to help, and use our creative design skills and expertise to produce design materials to help boost this vital initial awareness to get the donations rolling in.
We had various discussions with their Team and in the end we agreed to develop the logo for Veloflo, a donation landing page, Twitter and Facebook pages, a fundraising brochure and the official team jerseys which would be worn by each rider from start to finish. This was a huge responsibility given the amount of planning and preparation that there had been to organise such an event, not to mention the large corporate sponsors such as Lucozade, Vitra, Kone and Laing O’Rourke who were all also getting involved in such a good cause. We were proud to be part of such a project and challenge and to be playing such a vital role in its overall success.
The donations did start flooding in and the day finally arrived for the brave cyclists to hit the road. On day one, the 22-strong bunch departed London for France and travelled across Brittany, through the Loire Valley, over the Massif Central hills of mid-France and into the foothills of the Alps by the end of the first week.
After two tough days crossing mountains including the 8,678ft. Col du Galibier and the 6,752ft. Col du Lautaret, the tired peloton arrived in north-west Italy, weaving down the Italian Riviera on day nine and then into Tuscany for the finish in Florence on day 10.
It was an extreme challenge and now back in the studio, James has vowed to take it easy for at least a few months and rest his sore legs! The 22 amateur cyclists all completed their Veloflo charity challenge and this has been acknowledged greatly by donors large and small. Thanks to the cyclists’ blood, sweat and tears and brave determination, a huge amount of preparation and organisation from people all over the country and the crucial design materials that Unit36 produced to generate exposure, the final total which has been raised for charity is a staggering £103,000. This has exceeded everyone’s expectations and we are extremely proud to have been part of Veloflo.
