A Smarter Way to Rent Gear

Around mid–2024, Miles put out a call for a product and brand designer to help shape a new idea for the Nigerian rental space. After a few conversations with the founding team, I came onboard to help translate that vision into something tangible.

Miles was imagined as a marketplace for renting and listing equipment, from cameras, drones, and lighting kits to projectors, event gear, and production tools. But beyond the platform itself was a larger challenge: bringing more trust, accessibility, and structure into a highly fragmented rental ecosystem.

The idea partly stemmed from a challenge one of the co-founders experienced firsthand while trying to source equipment for an event in Nigeria. Finding the right gear meant jumping between referrals, scattered vendors, inconsistent pricing, and uncertainty around availability or quality. There was no central platform designed specifically for this market.

Miles became an attempt to bridge both sides: helping renters find trusted equipment more easily, while allowing owners turn underused gear into an additional source of income within a more reliable ecosystem.

Reports around 2023–2024 showed significant creator-economy growth across Africa, with creators increasingly hiring videographers, editors, and production support. technext24

The entertainment industry also grew to approximately ₦1.97 trillion in 2023, driven largely by film, music production, and content creation. Despite these industries growing rapidly, access to professional equipment remained highly fragmented, referral-driven, and operationally inconsistent. Miles emerged as an attempt to bring more structure into that ecosystem, creating a centralized platform where creators could access trusted equipment more easily, while owners could safely turn underused gear into a recurring source of income.

Miles was designed to feel active, flexible, and constantly moving. The identity leaned into cinematic motion, industrial forms, and creator culture to build something that felt native to both digital and real-world environments.

The custom wordmark featured an extended “L” to subtly express movement and range, while the wider system explored how the brand could live across equipment bags, fragile tapes, event setups, and marketing materials.

Because timelines moved quickly, the focus was building a strong, launch-ready foundation first, while leaving room for the motion system and brand world to expand over time.

Miles was designed around two very different user mindsets; people looking to rent equipment quickly, and people looking to safely earn from equipment they already owned.

To support both, we designed two lightweight web experiences that explained the platform in the simplest way possible. The renter side focused on discovery, trust, and fast access to available equipment, while the lister side focused more on ownership, passive income, and how Miles would help protect and manage their gear.

The goal was clarity at first glance. We stripped away unnecessary complexity and focused on building something that felt approachable, easy to navigate, and ready for market launch.

Miles gained strong early traction before launch, onboarding over 200 verified listers across multiple equipment categories in Lagos alone. The momentum was real, and plans for expansion were already beginning to take shape.

But only weeks before launch, funding challenges forced the project into pause. Even so, the founding team still believes in the idea and hopes to eventually bring Miles back to life.

Because of that possibility, some parts of the product and a few strategic features remain intentionally undisclosed here. Still, even in its unfinished state, Miles remains one of the clearest examples of a product solving a very real gap in the market.