• In the past few months, we (the DAO) have taken inventory of our brand and embarked on our brand evolution and expansion journey

• The precursor to much of the visual work was the much less pretty strategy work, which started with an examination of what brand means and how it gets translated, followed by a deep exploration of our existing brand elements, then an examination of the broader landscape

• This post walks through what brand is and why it matters, then walks through the steps we took - the research, the discovery, the discussion - to lay a foundation for evolving brand strategy that would come to inform the latest adaptation of our brand visual identity

Why are we talking about evolving the Gitcoin brand now?

Gitcoin was founded with the purpose to further the development and funding of open source software. Over the years, how we fulfilled that purpose changed - from bounties to hackathons to Gitcoin Grants. So has how we describe our purpose, switching between words like open source, public goods, and most recently, shared needs. In the same vein, as our vernacular has evolved, so has our look and feel. Illustrations have shifted from robots to astronauts, colors have shifted from dark to light to dark again. We’ve also had open forum discussions call attention to our evolving language and visual identity.

Today, we’re at a critical point in our evolution, perhaps as critical as when we unlocked the potential of Quadratic Funding, the mechanism that has to date made the Gitcoin Grants Program so successful. We’ve taken years of learnings and turned insights into action, creating a range of pluralistic tools that can be leveraged at scale, opening unprecedented opportunities for local communities and their supporters to build for global impact.

And with this change - this next phase of our evolution - comes the need to re-look at ourselves, and in particular, our brand - which is much more than our logo and illustration style, it’s the emotional connection that comes from the total sum of expressions by which we’re recognized. Inevitably, as we evolve, so do these expressions. But how?

How do we even define brand?

The terms brand and brand strategy are frequently used interchangeably. There isn’t always a shared, clear understanding of what they actually mean, or how they’re different from each other. This lack of clarity can sometimes result in misunderstanding – and a communication breakdown around a critical part of any organization or business.

So first goal: define Brand.

For many modern trad companies, brand is the single most valuable asset. Nike. Patagonia. Coca Cola. This is also becoming true for many recognizable brands in the web3 space - Uniswap, Aave, Lens, Zora, FWB.

What first comes to mind when you think brand? Probably logo. Maybe color. Maybe typography. Or if you’re a web3 degen, maybe a meme. But it’s also likely something else; something intangible yet incredibly powerful at the same time. It’s a feeling. It’s the gut reaction that happens when someone thinks of the brand.

It’s not just the logo, the font, the color palette. It’s more than the visual identity (all of those things – logo, font, palette - plus other visual elements like iconography.)

It’s more than the verbal identity (the vernacular or words you use, voice, and tone.)

Brand is the emotional connection that our audience, community and customers/users (and any other term you prefer for these people) have with our organization. It is shaped by our name, logo, overall visual and verbal identity, marketing, and—most importantly—the experiences our communities (contributors, users, audiences) associate with us. It’s the sum of all expressions by which an entity (person, organization, company, business unit, city, nation, etc.) intends to be recognized.

This means:

• How people identify us

• How we express ourselves

• How we create a shared understanding, appreciation or association

• …through memes

• …through visual cues like logo, color palette and typography

• …through written cues like unique vernacular

• …through serial content like blogs, podcasts

• …through events and experiences online and off

A few things brand has the power to do:

• Set a tone

• Leave an impression

• Cultivate connection between us (each other, internally - but also with people who are learning about Gitcoin for the first time)

• Inspire sharing (aka word of mouth marketing)

• Garner loyalty and trust

• Convert users to ambassadors or evangelists

• Distinguish us from others

• Attract people to build with us

But isn’t it different for decentralized brands?

I recognize that a lot of this sounds “traditional” and a lot of web3 builders might scoff, but most of these things are fundamentally tied to human psychology. Yes, while there are some nuances for decentralized brands or headless brands, that does not mean most of these aspects go unshared.

A lot of decentralized or headless brands will say the major difference is the brand is not created internally and thrust upon others, but is created by the community from the ground up, and is in their control. Other Internet says a decentralized brand belongs to no one, and can be remixed by anyone. It’s a meme. It can only be “designed” in a very limited sense. It has its own autonomy, generated by the contributions of individual actors, a million person chorus acting as one.

The fact is, brand is not nor has it ever been in our direct control – it’s always in the minds of our community. This is true for all brands, not just decentralized ones. There’s always someone creating, contributing, and someone else absorbing, interpreting, and remixing on their own - this is not new to web3. It’s part of human culture.

With that being said, there are ways we can take action to shape our brand indirectly in order to strengthen it and shift perception. It doesn’t need to be “yolo’ed.” It can be intentional.

How do we decide on those actions? How do we even know what kind of brand we want to have? How do we decide how we want to be perceived? How do we help shape the way our community perceives us as a whole? This is where brand strategy comes into play.

Brand strategy is the ‘big picture’ plans and tactics deployed by an organization to create long-term brand equity and competitive advantages from branding. It informs the set of tools we create to enable that million person chorus (see above) to grow to a billion and still sing together.

Aka, it’s:

• a plan to actively influence how people perceive our brand

• clarifies where we’re headed

• defines what we’re are trying to achieve

• provides a map and compass, setting a True North so to speak, to help us get there

• helps us figure out what to do, and perhaps even more importantly, what not to do

It’s not (important clarification here!)

• a business strategy, which is also being worked on simultaneously.

According to Other Internet, “headless brand strategy is an ecosystemic affair and entails the mobilization of a decentralized set of actors. At its core, it revolves around giving agency to different stakeholders in a way that lets them coordinate more effectively and feel connected to the brand. What projects can do, in this context, is provide the resources, tools, and wayfinding devices for different stakeholders to converge around a single narrative.”

Personally, I firmly believe there is a place and a need for brand strategy - especially for decentralized or headless brands. Strategy does not mean stagnancy or rigidity. It means intentionally building something modular, adaptable, interpretable that actively enables the feeling of co-creation and co-ownership.

We love a good iceberg meme - here’s one for Brand and Brand Strategy:

Why does this matter for Gitcoin?

1. To help us articulate and communicate our core values: People usually buy into why you do what you do before they buy into what you do. To attract and retain loyal contributors we must understand and communicate what we stand for.

2. To help us identify weaknesses in the Gitcoin experience (program, product, protocol or otherwise): If the experiences our audiences have interacting with us aren’t consistent, we’ll struggle to build trust.

3. To filter out ideas that would hinder our efforts: It’s easy to succumb to shiny-object syndrome. A clear brand strategy is essentially a filter that makes it easier to make decisions.

4. To create accountability: Committing to a clear brand strategy helps keep people accountable, focused on what will actually move the needle. It helps us stay on track.

5. To focus our product and marketing efforts: A brand strategy helps to narrow and clarify the scope of our efforts, which can ensure smoother and more effective execution of tactics. We know who we’re targeting, we know what they care about, and we know how to speak to them.

6. To empower creatives and designers: Brand strategy underpins creative decisions that would otherwise be inherently subjective and arbitrary - this includes decisions related to product design and user experience.

7. To align and engage the community in the vision: A major part of the brand strategy process is getting our community to buy into the vision and values of our DAO, our brand.

What are the components of an effective brand strategy?

1. Values: These are the beliefs that inform everything we do.

2. Vision: The message that speaks to our target audience, telling them what we’re here to do and why we’re here to do it. It tells them what to expect when they interact with our brand.

3. Mission: A brand mission is how we work towards our vision – or the “how we do it” complement to the “what are we here to do”.

4. Positioning statement: A positioning statement encompasses all of the above and effectively communicates value proposition to your ideal customer or target audience(s).

5. Audience: This is who we’re here for - and our target audience should be laser focused.

6. Voice and tone (as well as specific messaging/vernacular): A framework around how we communicate.

7. Look and feel of our brand identity: A good strategy can guide the creative expressions of our brand identity to make sure they are aligned with our positioning goals and the tastes of our main audiences.

So, what does all of this mean for the Gitcoin brand?

When not building a brand from the ground up, there are two ways we can talk about updating Brand Identity. They are brand refresh and rebrand.

A brand refresh is when a brand attempts to modernize its image while maintaining its core identity and strategy. A rebrand is a complete overhaul of the brand’s identity and strategy, typically enacted when the current brand strategy fails.

At Gitcoin, we haven’t had a clearly defined brand strategy documented to inform design in the past. This is not to say there wasn’t a strategy - just that it is challenging to objectively say whether or not we’ve succeeded or failed. However, given the success of the Gitcoin Grants Program, which can be considered our “MVP,” the subsequent initiatives that have succeeded and ultimately “spun out” of Gitcoin (like Kernel) and the brand affinity and equity we’ve established among our core audiences, it is appropriate to say we enter this next phase of our evolution with a range of achievements, and therefore owe attention to past visual and verbal expressions. We are not abandoning them - they are part of us, and will continue to be part of us.

So, where do we begin the Brand Strategy evolution process?

Brand Strategies start with insights and research, which is what we’ve been doing since this initiative kicked off a few months ago. We began the brand evolution work with a DAO-wide brand attributes workshop during a DAO-vibes takeover. Since then, we’ve conducted numerous discovery interviews, competitive/landscape research and working sessions in order to put pen to paper on a brand strategy that can inform the intentional evolution of those brand expressions - from typography and color palette to tone and merch. And that’s what we’re excited to begin sharing in the hope to kickoff a robust discussion around brand, and answer any questions you might have about this work.

Below summarizes our work to date, including:

1. Brand Attributes Workshop

2. Discovery Interviews

3. Brand Strategy Audit

4. Brand Visual Audit

5. Brand Working Group Work

6. Market/Competitive Insights

All of this is the foundation upon which we’re building a brand strategy. We hope that by sharing this here we can gather any questions and comments that arise and in turn answer them through future discussion forums.

I. Brand Attributes Workshop

To kick off the brand evolution work, we hosted a Brand Attributes workshop where we asked the community key questions from which themes started to emerge. These informed the themes we explored further in subsequent working group sessions as well as in key interviews. *See FigJam here. *

The TLDR:

• Questions we asked:

  • What makes us different?

  • How would others describe us?

  • How do we sound to others?

  • What impact will we have?

  • How do people feel interacting with us?

• Themes that emerged:

  • We are unbound by existing systems

  • We are hopeful for a better future

  • We empower people to make positive change

  • We enable regenerative initiatives

  • We celebrate the many, not the few

  • We believe in the power of collaboration over competition

  • We educate around the value of public goods

  • We welcome people with open arms

  • We are leaders not followers

  • We create foundational infrastructure - things to be built on top of

  • We help foster more equitable, whole lives

  • We invest in our community and their communities

II. Discovery Interviews

**Next, we interviewed key thought leaders across the organization, asking them a series of questions that would help us distill key insights (specifically areas of alignment and misalignment), uncover key strategic opportunities, understand history and flag challenges. *Find full Discovery Findings here. ***

• Where We Are: We’re in the in between - a state of flux - but we know there’s greatness in our future.

• What We Do & Why We Do It: We’re mission aligned and inspired - we empower communities to fund their shared needs. This expansive purpose shapes our product vision.

• What & Who We’re Here For: We are for the greater good. We’re human centric and community first - and we build in service of their needs.

• What’s Next: Our current brand identity isn’t always serving us - and there are opportunities for us to optimize to make the community feel more connected to our vision. A lot of what’s been done in the past was “yolo’ed,” and we’re ready to be more intentional with our visual and verbal expressions.

III. Brand Strategy Audit

Simultaneously, we reviewed publicly available expressions of Brand Strategy (Mission, Vision, etc.). As part of our work, we reviewed and referenced our community’s past work and defined a set of challenges. *Find entire Brand Audit here. *

• Challenge 1: Lack of Cohesive Narrative Across Past, Present & Future: There was no single source for our brand narrative - the where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going, which made it challenging identify intentional messages

• Challenge 2: Mission Incohesion: expressed in different ways in various places across owned and partner channels; additionally, there wasn’t a common thread connecting our mission to our product roadmap

• Challenge 3: No Defined Community Aligned Values: our values were never clearly codified for our community - and while they were several iterations of them, none felt wholly embraced

• Challenge 4: No Defined Personality Traits: while our brand has a personality, it often feels like an afterthought, and was never specifically defined in a set of traits acknowledged as shared by us/the community.

• Challenge 5: Inconsistent Messaging: Overall inconsistencies;Style, tone and comms hierarchy are unclear; often lacking call to action and reliant on descriptive, prescriptive language rather than inspiring or insightful

IV. Brand Visual Audit

Next, we reviewed publicly available expressions of Brand Identity (Logo, Illustration/Graphics, Web Design, etc.) to showcase where our Strategy and Identity are working in or out of alignment in order to make strategic recommendations for future design considerations.).

As part of our work, we reviewed and referenced specific visual expressions across touchpoints including but not limited to:

• http://decentralized.quadraticlands.com/

• https://schellingpoint.gitcoin.co/

• https://passport.gitcoin.co/

• https://gitcoin.co/

*Find entire Brand Audit here. *

• Challenge 1: Logo Cohesion: There are inconsistencies in how our logo and lockups are used

• Challenge 2: The Astronaut (or Robot) as a Symbol: While we use this as a symbol, some of the symbolic elements are misaligned with what we do

• Challenge 3: Iconography & Illustration: Iconography style inconsistencies which can create confusion and mistrust, plus not serving the core utilitarian purposes for communicating information

• Challenge 4: Website Visual Impact: Across certain touchpoints, we’ve intentionally created moments for users to feel connected and engaged with the overall experience - but interactive elements are inconsistent and lack relevance to our messages/intentions

• Challenge 5: Inconsistencies Across Product & Protocol: “Vibe” inconsistencies across product and protocols

V. Brand Working Group

We created a smaller working group (a precursor to what we’re now calling Pods - comprised of cross-workstream contributors) to begin ideating around Brand Strategy that builds upon our existing Brand Purpose, creating a cohesive Brand Narrative - giving us more clarity around key strategic elements and considerations that can inform the evolution of our visual identity.

To better understand our process, visit our Brand Evolution Board

• Our aim was to begin to define how we would align the DAO around a set of common values and objectives so we can collectively do a better job in allocating resources, setting priorities, executing, and evolving towards a shared “North Star.”

• Here, we looked closely at the role of audience within the strategy, reviewing past surveys to understand audience needs and where their current affinities lie

• We examined our product pipeline and positioning to better understand where we fit in the market today and where we’re going

• We took into consideration our own organization - the DAO - and what that means in relation to brand strategy

• We began to define our mission, vision and values, the foundation of the brand strategy

• Last, we shared this work with a bigger working group for feedback, as well as with Design contributors  in order to begin looking at design considerations - and that’s where we are today!

VI. Market/Competitive Insights

While we strive for originality, we must also take into consideration market trends and forces as well as what our “competitors” are saying and doing. This helps us ensure we’ve got an edge but are also remaining top of the game. Here’s a summary of our findings.

What comes next? Honing our brand strategy

With this foundational work completed, we looked to define our Brand Strategy. The Brand Strategy is not meant to be overly prescriptive. Rather, it aims to offer a framework as well as a set of tools that should give contributors and the community a clear sense of direction. It also helps to inform design development and decisions. . Simultaneously, it should also act as a membrane, not as a hard shell. We want to build a brand that feels inviting and inclusive enough for contributors to take it and turn it into something outside our wildest dreams in order to inspire greater affinity and connection across our audiences.

That Brand Strategy would become the lens through which to continuously evaluate and refine design and design decisions. Stay tuned for upcoming posts that map out that strategy and give explicit examples around how we’re applying it - and how we’re using it to drive more collaborative design.

Process

As a values-led design team, we’ve been working to mindfully create concepts and ideas that are meaningful. This work is rooted in our Brand Values, and evolved in parallel with the brand strategy. For a refresh on the preceding work, watch our December Community Call and follow along with our presentation.

Outcome

Our design team has been producing visual assets and ideas to support the brand strategy that many of you contributed to and led by Alexa. The design work being shared today is one part of a brand evolution process. The work is designed to shine a light on the larger function of Gitcoin, as well as reflect light on you as a contributor or community member.

Gitcoin’s Type Stack

Gitcoin currently uses Miriam Libre for headlines and Libre Franklin as a content font. The type scales are well-designed (thanks, Octavian!).

Making Changes

Our brand design process started with an internal conversation and spirited debate about typography. Do we need to change the fonts? Yes. Could we change our brand without changing the fonts? Yes and…it’s not an ideal path. How would a font update cascade across the web and product pages? In a way that considers each surface as a system with shared universal components. What is that process going to be like? Coordinated across workstreams and woven into the S17 roadmap.

TLDR: We’re changing the fonts! The goal of our design system is to be functional, relevant, and endure the next 3-5 years (at least).

To that end, there is one guiding principle for our typography:

Choose authenticity first.

In practice, that means no trendy fonts and no hypermodern fluff.

Font Shift

I lead creative with intuition and trust. There’s a healthy tension in this style of process. Logic is the foundation of good design. Design that allows for risk-taking leads to great work. Surprises found in the discovery phase can point a designer toward an entirely new and resonant direction. 

Our small brand design team (myself and Harry) spent time exploring and culling type options in equal measure, then repeating that process until we found the most resonant fonts that align with our brand’s tone of voice, and meet all of our practical requirements of legibility and considered context.

To help guide the work beyond personal preference, we consulted the brand strategy guardrails almost like an oracle. Does this font inspire trust? Is this font forward-thinking? Is the typeface open and friendly?

Choosing fonts

In the end, we chose one or two fonts that came into play early in the process. As we started stress testing the font pairings and found an early choice for paragraphs unsuitable for long term use, we found an alternative more suitable. 

There are so many decisions and considerations that go into a font stack. If anyone wants to hear more on this topic or about our process to align on the choices, let me know and our team will be happy to share a new topic on type.

For now, let’s explore the new fonts for Gitcoin!

Type System

Our type system comprises two categories that make our brand language a hybrid between traditional sets of rules and decentralized lines drawn in the sand. 

Core type is a set of boilerplate fonts that are friendly, functional, reliable, technical yet inclusive. The fonts selected for our core type stack are well-suited for a range of touchpoints, from print to product.

Flex type is a collection of display fonts that are experimental, abundantly joyful, thoughtful typefaces that stray from the norm and take risks. This type system is inspired by one of our designers, Biux, who is frequently bringing new and interesting typography into the mix of her work. 

Our Gitcoin Community Call banners are a solid example of how Biux’s work inspired an emerging permissionless playground of typographic expression.

Core Type

Our core fonts were chosen for their ability to play well together as a type stack. Their forms and designs are naturally compatible. 

Grad

Grad is a smart, friendly, warm, inviting font that says, “Welcome to Gitcoin! Come explore pluralism in the Quadratic Lands.”

Like Gitcoin, the typeface Grad has undergone its own transformations. Originally designed as a bitmap font by Phil Martin in the early 90s, it was completely reworked as a digital Opentype font in 2004 by Mark Simonson.

Chromatic

Chromatic is described by its designing foundry, Colophon, as being an “anti-genre” font. It spans many regions of styles, each with its own expression of the core font personality. We’re drawn to the Grotesk version of this font, and think it works quite well in pairing with Grad. Since our use cases for typography are as broad as the font styles available, we believe Chromatic is a font that can grow with our needs over time. For now, we’ve chosen a simple weight from a deceptively complex font.

DM Mono

DM Mono is an open source, monospace font from an extensive family designed by Colophon Foundry. It is reliable and well suited for clarity, brevity, and precision.

Flex Type

Dahlia

Dahlia is a romantic serif designed by an independent type foundry in Paris, Violaine & Jérémy. After working through  the idea of flex type, we decided to ship Dahlia and bring one weight of this font into our brand. Dahlia is a team favorite, primed to be mixed with our core type in headings or expressive type designs.

Serous

Serous is a geometric typeface by Formist Foundry, designed to “embody the feeling of liquid.” Serous is available in four weights and best used with a strong eye for typography. Its place in our flex type stack is special occasion use, such as partnerships, print materials, or limited edition merch.

Moret, Boulder & Perandory

As I wrote earlier, Perandory is our current font for community event flyers. Moret may find a home in one of our protocols as we extend the core brand in February. Boulder Mono is an intriguing option for sample graphics where we may want to call attention to an event, such as our presence at ETHDenver.

Thank you

Our next post will be about LOGOS.

This article originally appeared on the Gitcoin governance forum.

Process

As a values-led design team, we’ve been working to mindfully create concepts and ideas that are meaningful. This work is rooted in our Brand Values, and evolved in parallel with the brand strategy. For a refresh on the preceding work, watch our December Community Call and follow along with our presentation.

Outcome

Our design team has been hard at work producing visual assets and ideas to support the brand strategy that many of you contributed to and led by Alexa. The design work being shared today is one part of this larger brand evolution process. The work is designed to shine a light on the larger function of Gitcoin, as well as reflect light on you as a contributor or community member.

My belief is that decentralized design systems are a living, breathing public good. Sharing our visual brand design progress publicly is a milestone in translating the work from locked figma files to the broader web3 community. The purpose is to illuminate our team’s work, inspire your own, spark questions, and open a channel for our design team to connect with you, our community and peers.

Gitcoin’s Color History

When Gitcoin was transitioning from a company to a DAO, our creative department was a truly permissionless place. Every design asset was created through bounties, which is how Octavian joined the workstream. He organized all the designs and artwork flying around into a truly considered design system, giving a sense of clarity and purpose to the identity work.

The original brand colors are a balanced range of bright, mellow, cool, warm and neutral tones:

Color Evolution

Our evolving color palette reflects not only the changing brand strategy, it also considers the growing needs and considerations of our sub-brands and products. The color strategy I’m sharing below is a work in progress that our designers are refining. Our design system is scheduled to be complete in early February.

Change is imperative for cultivating growth and delivering the best possible experiences for the people who interact with Gitcoin. Whether our audience is developers, program managers, or new-to-crypto regens hoping to learn more about us, there is a color expression and strategy to welcome people to our ecosystem.

Reviewing Design

When looking at work in progress, I find it can be helpful to reference our brand personality guardrails.

Gitcoin is… Knowledgeable not pretentious Relatable not casual Dynamic not brash Intentional not chaotic Generous not overbearing Open not reckless Optimistic not naive Delightful not silly

Color Pillars

Our color pillars are designed to support a range of visual expression within the DAO – illustrations, social materials, product design, merch, print, and any unknown future needs. Color pillars are the individual color families outlined in this graphic.

Color System

Our color system is organized by color pillars, color families, and color expression. Color pillars are the individual colors outlined above.

Color families

Our color families are Neutral, Day, Dusk, and Spot. The purpose of color families is to provide clarity on how to approach a broad color palette. Designers can make thoughtful choices, organize color palettes based on use cases, and map decisions to how any color appears in our system.

Neutral

The Neutral palette comprises the Sand and Moon pillars. Essentially our lightest, softest tones and our deepest, richest greys make up the entirety of the Neutral palette. You can use these colors every day to establish a baseline or foundation for your work.

There’s a new opportunity to bring a more grounded tone to our design work. Drawing colors from the Neutral palette might encourage a subtle tone shift that conveys confidence, whether it's a presentation about protocol functionality or the web colors we choose for developer documentation.

Dusk

Dusk mode is for day to day use as our own dark side of the moss. The Dusk palette refers to the 700 and 800 shades of Lichen, Petal, Sun, Nectary, Wave, Sky, and Passionflower.

Day

The day palette is core to our everyday colors. When you’re designing an uplifting image or graphic, this is where to start. Our optimistic hues can brighten up any design or illustration. The Day palette is the range of light to mid tones of the Nectary, Sun, Passionflower, Petal, Wave, Sky & Lichen families.

Spot colors

Spot colors are intended to be used sparingly for a pop of color or an eccentric meme. Spot colors are for moments of intention, when you want to call attention to an action, or when you want to imbue a design with a jolt of energy. Spot colors are the 600 tones of the Lichen, Petal, Wave, Sky, Nectary, Sun & Passionflower families.

Color expression

The color palettes are in creative development!

Our team is working to solidify our choices and make thoughtful conjectures that benefit the brand, design, product and dev functions in the present moment, and the future of our collective as well. This is truly in progress, so you’re getting a peek into our process.

Lichenpunk

Lichenpunk is our core design palette for the flagship Gitcoin brand. Our team lifts from lichenpunk to communicate a sense of mutuality in our work, from design to illustrations to motion graphics.

Dawnpunk

Dawnpunk is a palette intended for special use only. Think occasional microsite experiences, limited-edition merch, or unique partnership expressions.

Lunarpunk

Lunarpunk is intended for products, protocols, experiences, and sub-brands that are connected to the lunarpunk ethos of security and privacy. Gitcoin Passport visuals to launch were created with this in mind, and the brand expresses a more serious tone through a darker palette.

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is a legacy ethos that creates a bridge between Gitcoin yesterday and today. flagship Gitcoin brand. As a guidepost, we use solarpunk to communicate regen vibes. Solarpunk is well-positioned to be the flagship colorway for our protocol suite.

Our Approach to Decentralized Color Design

Since Gitcoin is naturally evolving with a wide range of visual design touchpoints, we’re adapting our approach to color. Examples of visual design touchpoints are products, websites, protocol marketing, social posts, videos, events, merch and more.

Our biomemetic color palette reflects the diversity of our brand expression, and the biodiversity of the natural elements we’re drawing inspiration from. The range of colors allows us to flex and apply expressions to sub-brands and various product needs that gives them a unique look and feel while staying tethered to the Gitcoin core brand.

Our colors exist in the liminal space between modularity and autonomy. Stay close to the color values, and reinterpret the color families as needed. Aligning with the unique color values allows our brand to stay cohesive with plenty of room for creative, strategic expression.

Composability

Our palettes are designed to be composable. While our color families include logic and a framework for color groupings, every color is designed to be paired together. There are no wrong answers, with key exceptions for accessibility that we’re annotating as we complete our design system.

Part of working in a decentralized brand is making informed choices about how design elements go together. Our palette organization is intended as a launchpad for your creations with guardrails to support cohesion.

Thank you

Our next post will be about TYPOGRAPHY.

This article originally appeared on the Gitcoin governance forum.

Process

As a values-led design team, we’ve been working to mindfully create concepts and ideas that are meaningful. This work is rooted in our Brand Values, and evolved in parallel with the brand strategy. For a refresh on the preceding work, watch our December Community Call and follow along with our presentation.

Outcome

Our design team has been hard at work producing visual assets and ideas to support the brand strategy that many of you contributed to and led by Alexa. The design work being shared today is one part of this larger brand evolution process. The work is designed to shine a light on the larger function of Gitcoin, as well as reflect light on you as a contributor or community member.

Biomemetic Magic -> Lichenpunk

If you read my last post then you’re aware of our visual brand theory, Biomemetic Magic. The TLDR is an endless loop of creation, ideation, and feedback for the underlying design ethos:

We’re visioning a world through our protocols and programs with shared values that guide the way we build, coordinate, communicate, and use quadratic funding tools to expand and share as a network. When you consider the trust, structure, and interdependence required for us to build, it’s pretty incredible.

All of this meta strategy and philosophy starts translating to design elements through the doorways and modes of expression explored below.

Lichenpunk

There are many ways to draw metaphors about the Gitcoin ecosystem. Our team is inspired by the symbiotic relationship among lichen, mycelium and algae. Lichen are a strong example of multi-species symbiosis, essentially acting as a bridge for fungi to receive nutrients. They’re also a living, changing organism that is equally powerful and humble – strong without asserting dominance.

Lichen deliver nutrients to mushroom networks so they can thrive and grow. Their mycelial lives grow largely beneath the soil, forming the underground channels that trees use to communicate with each other.

The symbiosis of lichen and fungi networks is similar to the way Gitcoin acts as a bridge among our communities, our protocols, and the ecosystems where we offer sustainability and growth.

Harmony is achieved through coordination.

Lichenpunk is an expression of the rebellious nature of mutuality.

Introducing Dawnpunk

Dawnpunk is the “gm” of our visuals. It’s a resting place where builders, coordinators, and funders can meditate, share innovation, and find cryptographic creativity. Space and spaciousness are the keys to unlocking our creative source.

Dawnpunk highlights the memetic and magical aspects of our brand. The liminal edges of space and time converge in our brand expression through dawnpunk.

 Dawnpunk is an essence – a space between lunarpunk and solarpunk.

Where solarpunk is the brightest point in the day, and lunarpunk is in the inky black of night, dawnpunk is a calm moment of focus between the two. Dawnpunk as a design theme is intended for special occasion use only, such as events or partnerships with collaborators.

Dawnpunk is a state of mind, a slow and steady drumbeat, an echoing cavern of tranquility.

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is a throughline to our legacy visuals.

Gitcoin shares the values and perspective of the solarpunk movement in many aspects of our culture and community: a world focused on sustainability, harmony, and solving contemporary coordination challenges.

We’re looking at adapting solarpunk for our protocols - details to come!

Lunarpunk

Lunarpunk is a touchstone between our brand history and future.

Drawing on our darker palette for the Passport brand opened us up to a larger conversation about what it might be like to codify lunarpunk as part of our brand kit, design language, and UI systems.

Lunarpunk is a visual perspective we’ve been embracing with the launch of Passport. Building tools and structures to guard against Sybils and protect the privacy of our network is a keystone in our future as a Protocol DAO.

Thank you

For a look into our team’s visual inspiration, check out our are.na board!

Our next post will be about COLOR.

This article was originally published onthe Gitcoin governance forum.

This is the first in a new series on Gitcoin’s evolving brand strategy. Our visual brand identity is evolving as part of a larger reflection of our transition from an Impact DAO to a Protocol DAO, which we’re announcing at ETHDenver.

Process

As a values-led design team, we’ve been working to mindfully create concepts and ideas that are meaningful. This work is rooted in our Brand Values, and evolved in parallel with the brand strategy. For a refresh on the preceding work, watch our December Community Call and follow along with our presentation.

Outcome

Our design team has been hard at work producing visual assets and ideas to support the brand strategy work that many of you contributed to and led by Alexa Lombardo. The design work being shared today is one part of this larger brand evolution process. The work is designed to shine a light on the larger function of Gitcoin, as well as reflect light on you as a contributor or community member.

Starting in GR15, our visuals began to morph and evolve into new territory while maintaining a permissionless approach in an evolving DAO preparing for product & protocol launches. We started experimenting with shades, tones, and styles from our existing toolkit. Most importantly, we explored where to maintain the edges of the brand and when to break the rules.

When we started considering how developing our protocols might impact our brand language, we wondered openly in a community workshop:

Where does the humanistic element - the focus on the natural world - come into play?

What about human collaboration?

How important is it that these are included in the visual identity?

What role does creativity play when it comes to forward thinking?

Do we need to be direct about this?

This process of inquiry & community input led us to develop a unique vision: BIOMEMETIC MAGIC.

Biomemetic Magic

Biomemetic magic is our semantic vision of Gitcoin’s heartbeat, and more specifically the values we uphold as we build, coordinate, communicate, and use quadratic funding tools to expand and share as a network. Words are spells, and the underlying concepts defined below leverage our unique potential to create, fund, and share in service to the communities and cultures who would benefit from mutuality.

Conceptual Linguistics

Biomimicry is designing and building tools and structures that are based on organic materials and processes.

Memetic is the study of information and culture.

Magic is influencing ordinary life through acts of intention.

Biomimicry can be seen interchangeably with nature - our source of inspiration for building structures, protocols, and networks.

Memetic can be distilled to the word culture, in reference to our presence and contributions to the web3 community as well as our burgeoning audience.

Magic can be understood as intuition. In practice, intuition translates to clarity of intentions, the ability to read the energy of the market, encouraging ourselves and fellow builders to take risks, practicing steps of trust, and building with patience.

Biomimicry and nature can be read as intelligence, the invisible grid underlying our networks and protocols.

Memetic and culture can be refined further as ideation. Ideation is a constant source of energy – both inside the DAO and the web3 community. Our ability to constantly improve our products, protocols, strategies, and yes, memes - is a rational defining point.

Magic and intuition lead to action. In this context, action is any progress made toward a shared goal and desired outcome. Applied thought, reason, logic, science, and math all converge through magic.

Applied Concepts

You might be wondering, “How does this become something?” While we co-create definitions for that across product and content marketing, here is a window into our visual design work.

Introducing Lichenpunk

Lichenpunk is an expression of Gitcoin’s niche presence, and the biomimicry aspect of biomemetic magic. Lichenpunk is the rebelliousness of mutuality, the subtle and humble networks of relationships that allow our network to flourish.

Lichenpunk is our adaptive response to solarpunk and lunarpunk. It’s a little more granular and specific to our networks, protocols, and community expression.

While solarpunk aligns with our regen vibes, we’re expanding through the scope of that movement. For lunarpunk, Gitcoin isn’t necessarily pessimistic about blockchain security and bad actors. We just care about and plan for privacy/security protections proactively. We can be protective without being fearful. We can believe in a positive future while working through the practical hurdles to get there. Lichenpunk draws a figurative circle around all of that.

Next steps

Lunarpunk and solarpunk definitely have a place in our brand system. We’ll cover that and more in our next post, especially how brand applies to our product suite.

This article originally appeared on the Gitcoin governance forum.